Insignia head unit

**fn4970mlee** · 07-13-2005, 02:14 PM

I purchased this unit about 3 days ago. So far it's working great. I had Kenwood, Alpine, and Dual head unit before (most of them were stolen along with my 240sx.... sigh...), but this one has all the bells and wistles I want: USB port, sub-woof out, 2 pair line out, Aux in, FM/AM radio recording, MP3 & WMA playback...

I plugged in my memory card reader and it read up to 1GB of Compact Flash, SD, or memory stick! My 1GB jump drive (thumb drive) works pretty well, too. I'm trying to see if I can attach 2.5 inch USB Hard drive or plug in Creative Muvo mp3 player ....
No need to burn MP3 CD again, again, again, No need to worry about scratched CDs (esp when you have 3 boys around...) or cheap CDs you buy at Fry's/Compusa having the surface peeling off....

AUX-In sound is very clear and I cannot hear any noise/ground loop feed back. I plug in my Carputer and pocket PC and it sounded good. I used to use Sony Cassett Apator for my Alpine Cassett Deck, but it had mechanical noise and feed back noise.

direct WMA encoding off of Radio need a little improvement. On some recordings you can hear reverb/echo effect similar to music recorded with low bit rate. But overall, it's satisfactory.

By the looks of it, it looks like Dual (maybe Dual, which is Korean Company called Namsung, made Insignia for Bestbuy.) However Dual has much rich bass compare to this unit. This unit has cripy high range as Alpine unit.
I haven't plug in my Alpine Sub yet, so I'm sure bass will improve once I connect the sub.

Also the nice thing is that I purchased 4 year warrenty for $19. I can even trade in the unit to get full $100 credit toward the other unit if I should decide to go with much more expensive, but nicer Alpine unit.

For overall features and price, (with extended warrenty) I think this unit is a good choice.

**HHdesign** · 07-13-2005, 06:00 PM

I bought and Alpine, 9847 I think was it. Its not too fancy, but its great. I figure, for 117$ your getting way to much and you have to be giving up something.

**thesupe87** · 08-23-2005, 12:19 AM

If Insignia headunits are made by Dual :/ but if it's really a panasonic

that's a quality brand.

I just bought this a week ago-the thing that sold me was the usb port - seeing that I have 3 thumb drives, I'm a graphic designer, so I use them all the time. I've had the same jvc headunit for the last 5 years (45wattsX4) and I've got to say, the sound quality in this Insignia is not quite as good as the jvc. I can tell the difference...I have 3 tens, a 600 watt fosgate amp, and midrange speakers in the doors and rear deck, that I run off the of the headunits 4 channels.

Honestly, though - the sound quality on the headunit is pretty good - the main diff b/w this and my jvc, is that the highs are just a bit more muffly, that's what I can tell. The bass is definitely there, though. How can you go wrong for 99 bucks I said to myself, though. The audio inputs are nice, even though I'll probably never use them in this car.

I NEED YOUR GUYS HELP-I'm kind of disappointed now that I'm reading in the manual that the max size drive you can read through the usb port is 1gb....is this true!? I wanted to buy a freakin 2.5" laptop drive (30-80gb) and put it in a usb2.0 enclosure (10 bucks ebay) and run it off of the usb port. Has anyone ever tried this? Sometimes those manuals are wrong - japs write them, and then the english is converted and it doesnt always sound right. That would be like converting your headunit car into an ipod- for around the total price of 150 bucks, ballpark !!!

I'm contemplating whether or not I should keep this. I have noticed, that sometimes the disc wil lag, when switching from cd/mp3/to radio, and back - and the only remedy is to power down the unit, wait 3 seconds, and then turn it back on - which can get annoying. One benefit of this headunit over my last, is being able to read the artist and titles of songs that I play off of mp3 discs, whihc hold around 150 songs. That's still not enough. I want to be able to have thousands of songs in my car, and never have to change discs, that's why I was so turned on to this headunit. I have 512 thumb drives, buying a 1gb (supposed max size, according to the manual) would be pointless, seeing that a cd already holds 700mb. I want to be able to hook up an external usb drive thats like 30+ gb.

Dammit, why can't they just make more headunits with usb ports!? There are no other brands that have that, I've seen a PYLE that did, but it was cheap looking. I'm happy with the looks and display on this headunit.

What should I do? I could just reorganize all of my mp3s and burn up mp3 discs, but that's still kind of dumb, since I'm still scrificing some sound quality compared to my last headunit. Should I say screw the usb port, exchange it to bestbuy and spend a bit more on a higher end mp3 unit? But then I still want to have some way to hook up an external hard drive.

**thesupe87** · 08-23-2005, 11:51 AM

anybody?

**kickerl7** · 06-28-2006, 01:52 PM

I have the insignia head unit pictured above.
I am trying to hook up my Boss mono block amp to the head unit.
The head unit only has 1 cable that says subwoofer and it is green.
The amp has the standard stereo inputs (1white connecter, 1 red connecter).
How do i hook up the amp to my head unit im so confused.
Do i not hook it to the one called subwoofer?

Thx for your help.

And to contribute to this thread I will say that the head unit i have sounds exceptionally good using my sandisk 1gb thumb drive, and my infinity kappa 3way 6.5 in. speakers.

**chuyler1** · 06-28-2006, 02:17 PM

You can probably use either the green subwoofer output by itself (since it is mono) or you can use the stereo outputs. Either should work. The amp is mono, so whether you connect one or two RCA cables the sub will get the same sound.

**kickerl7** · 06-28-2006, 03:15 PM

but if i only hook it into the red or white one, will i only get the bass from the bass from the left or right side?
Some songs will only play bass on one side and then the other side sometime.

**chuyler1** · 06-28-2006, 04:24 PM

If the output is truely mono, it will be a summed output of the left and right channels. Try it out for cryin out loud. Plug it into the green RCA output and put some music in. Use the head unit's fader to adjust between left and right. Does the bass go away? If it doesn't the output is summed. If it does go away when you fade all the way to one side you should use one of the other outputs on the back of the head unit instead.

**cezar** · 01-10-2007, 11:06 PM

I just purchased a '99 Civic EX and this deck came with it. I have been having a few problems with it and would like to know if anyone has experienced them as well:

1) Sometimes the deck won't read my CDs. It'll say CD (MP3) or something that to effect and look like it's loading but it does not. When I try to eject the CD it won't allow me. I have had to take off the face plate and put it back on to remedy this problem. Why does it do this?

2) Let's say my MP3 CD has the following 4 songs in order: Led Zepplin, Neil Young, Metallica, and Pink Floyd. I turn my car on and I fast forward through Led Zeplin, Neil Young, and listen to half the song of Metallica before turning off the car. The next time I turn the car on it'll start at Led Zepplin all over again. How do I fix this?

Thank you!