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Installation

We went ahead and did the installation ourselves of the Aiwa CDC-MP3, which should have given us an accurate representation of how easy the unit is to actually install. Because we received our unit from Crutchfield, we also ordered the correct wiring harness and mounting kit for our target vehicle (a swank '90 Buick Century Ltd). If you've never had any experience in installing car audio equipment, this is probably the easiest approach to take. The wiring harness simply bridges the original wiring in your car to the required wiring of the head unit - making splicing a thing of the past. Not to mention that you leave the original wiring in place, so that you can put the original stereo back in if you sell the car down the road.

As with any car stereo installation, the toughest part of the job always seems to be getting the original stereo uninstalled. Fortunately, the process was about as painless as it can get. GM was nice enough to make dismantling the dashboard a quick process, for the most part. Once you've got the dashboard removed, and the old stereo out, you're ready to mount the head unit. If you picked up a mounting kit for your car, this is as simple as installing the wiring harness. Just drop the head unit into the sleeve, lock it down, and slide it into the mounting - screwing the whole thing down exactly how the original was.

A few minor points to consider while installing the unit border on common sense, but they're worth noting anyhow. Keep the car turned off while replacing the stereo, unless you're testing to see if you've got the new head unit powered correctly, or you're a sadomasochist. Once you've got the wiring harness in place, it's a good idea to hook up the head unit, to ensure it's powered correctly and the speakers are all hooked up. If you run into any problems at this point, you can fix them fairly easily since the dash is still removed. Once the dash has been reinstalled, fixing problems becomes a complete hassle.

Using the CDC-MP3

Let's take an up-close look at the layout for the Aiwa-CDC, which incorporates several nice design features. These include the large display area, control knob, and poignant button layout - and help to make this unit extremely easy to use.

Big Display, Easy To Read

As you can see from the picture above, the display area is really quite large, and is made possible by having the face fold-down for inserting CD's. This allowed the designers to enlarge the LCD, in an effort to allow for the scrolling 32-character strings that mp3's demand. These characters are shown on the 10-character upper portion of the display, with each character displayed by a 5x7 matrix. This makes the display very easy to monitor while driving, a key concern since taking your eyes off the road is generally viewed as a bad thing. This portion of the display shows all valid mp3 id3 tag information, such as the artist name, album, track name, track time elapsed, and the current time. If no ID3 tag exists, the filename of the .mp3 file is used instead. Pressing the 'Disp' button next to the display changes what is currently displayed. The other half of the display simply shows a VU meter, and might have been better implemented by Aiwa (several other display options could have been used).

The Faceplate After Lowering

The lowering of the faceplate is not a motorized process, as it is in the Kenwood head unit, as well as others available on the market. Removing the faceplate is as simple as slightly pulling on it when it is in this position. Putting it back in requires you to get one of the hinges in place, and then push inward until it clicks, then lift the face back into its original display position. This is a fairly simple process once you get enough practice taking the faceplate off and replacing it.

Continue: Using the CDC-MP3