Quote: Originally Posted by
williamn333 
hithere, does your H701 work to switch the input without it being a alpine device? I am not worried about a few punches of buttons, I just want to make sure that it works. My main question is, Will it work with NON-Alpine devices and be able to switch between inputs (that means analog AND digital) with just the touch of a few buttons?
Yes, it will switch inputs just fine (I don't have any other alpine units)...it's just a pain to have to navigate a menu to do so. Currently, I run my factory head unit thru an LOC into the "analog in" on the H701, along with optical from the CarPC. I was hoping to use one other optical in for Sirius, but it's that much of a bother I'm using the "line input" of my soundcard...which introduces barely audible noise to the system when it's active, which leads me to aggrivation...because I'm anal about that sort of thing.
It would have been so easy, just a simple firmware change, to make the "channel" button switch between available inputs (the button is inactive when you're not navigating a sub-menu of some kind)...or to add another button (they spared no expense for the goofy bass processing "mx" button, which invokes another goofy menu)...or to save inputs with presets, or any other of a host of ways they could have made it work better, basically for free.
It's a shame when you pay $200+ for the dedicated controller, which has no CD transport, no flip-up face, no CD loading mechanism, no A/D converter of it's own, no laser pickup, nothing to justify the fact that it costs just as much as many full-fledged CD head units...just a display processor and a UI...and the most basic of functions is crippled for the sake of selling more head units. There's really no explanation other than that for the "oversight"....I don't believe there's another dedicated digital processor controller out there that doesn't perform this basic function in a freindly manner. It's like, job one of any basic UI of this kind.
As a customer, I expect my loyalty to be earned, not force-fed with a bunch of "value added" features needlessly segregated to more expensive "options". It's a business practice i'm not fond of, because it means that the market isn't providing enough competition to push basic functionality and features, even if they wouldn't add to the cost of the unit.
I feel the same way about Creative soundcards...you find many of the "basic" editions lacking access to features that are indeed built into the cards themselves, but needlessly segregated to more expensive versions of the same hardware (only with el-cheapo "riser boards" and "drive bays" at premium price tags...they've gone so far as to re-brand a driver package for Dell laptops with the "audigy" logo, even though it adds no hardware to the laptop at all...they're charging for
drivers, and with Vista coming, it's not going to stop there).
Other than that, the H701 is a fine processor that offers a lot of features and control you'd normally pay big money for. I just have that one gripe.
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