Customer Reviews

Dual XC4100 In Dash AM/FM/Cassette Receiver

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(14)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

I put the DC4100 in my boat (inside the cabin, not waterproof for exterior use) with the pure intention of simply having a radio on my boat that was iPod ready. Having looking at other decks with more features, I really couldn't see spending more money for stuff I likely wouldn't use. I wanted to have some power for driving medium sized speakers, and I didn't want to waste time installing a used deck, so I opted for this product. It met my expectations on quality and construction, and it sounded as good as I hoped using either the radio or the iPod. A good solution for the money.

Before I say anything else about this item, bear in mind: this is a very inexpensive piece of car stereo equipment.

This being said, it pretty much gets the job done. Sound quality is decent. Don't know how well it would do as a stand-alone receiver, as it has only two speaker outputs and rather low wattage. On the plus side, it also has two RCA outputs, so plugging it into an amp or a CD player (which is what I did), is pretty easy. I had some major issues with ground-loop hum at first, though. (One car-stereo guy I consulted said that it may just be an issue with how the tape player is grounded.) Got rid of the hum, but it took some doing.

Another plus, though: the front 1/8" aux input jack is great. I really wish that this would become a more standard feature - I mean, how many people don't ever want to plug an iPod into the car stereo at least occasionally?

Bottom line: this isn't comparable to a bottle of fine French wine, but what do you expect at Thunderbird prices?

My husband uses it to hook his portable MP3/CD player to. The sond is really good, although the radio part is weak and does not stay on the station well enough to listen to it for long before the occasional static gets to you. Luckily his CD player holds up to 400+ songs, so he does not use the radio often. But it's generally a nice little piece of equipment.

Let's face it, it's a dirt cheap cassette player with little or no bells and whistles. The "bass" button does close to nothing, the overall sound quality is slightly less than "OK," and there are only wires for front speakers and not for rear. That being said, I'm not complaining. I actually love this thing. It was easy to fix the rear speaker problem by splicing a few wires together on the wiring harness. Don't forget, if you are looking for sound quality, you shouldn't be looking at a $30 cassette player.

The perks are as follows:
-There is almost nothing to break or go bad.
-It was super easy to install.
-No one is going to steal a cassette player from your car unless they are clinically insane or terribly stupid.
-The 1/8" stereo jack is perfect for use with an iPod or MP3 player.
-It's dirt cheap.

This unit is worth the money so far. I did not expect a top of the line deck. When you have an early 1970's vehicle and dont want to butcher the dash you dont have much choice anymore. I am running this unit without amplification as it is just in one of my work vehicles. Drives two good 4 inch speakers just fine without distortion. Has a RCA type sub outlet for those needing to jack things up. Came with all necessary mounting items and good installation instructions. The only 2 negatives I have is the radio station tuning seems to be a bit weak (I live ruraly)and there is NO treble/bass adjustment other than a bass boost button that does increase lower levels.

Good basic radio with a mini plug input. Plug your MP3 or CD player and it plays directly on your car stereo...nice!

The main selling factor of this thing is that it is one of the cheapest ways you'll get a stereo with an audio input. First of all, I find the claim "CD-R/ CD-RW compatable" to be a an outright lie since it has no way of reading even CD-ROM (no optical drive!) however, that's ok, I didn't buy it for CD playback but for the audio input. I give it one notch off (4 stars) just for being overall a cheap player with a cheap on/off bass boost rather than even a treble/bass analog control. Another notch off because the 15W per channel is pretty low end stuff and I have to turn my MP3 player (which boasts a higher than usual output at 30mW per channel) almost all the way up and its volume almost all the way up. If you have only two speakers in your car or truck, this may work a lot better, but, most of us have four, so that 15W per channel becomes 7.5W per channel in essense.

Overall, it's a very cheap and still pretty decent choice for hooking up your MP3 player or whatever else you may have in your car. You might still want to consider something a little better if you are planning on having a high quality system using an external player, but for most of us this is good enough to get by with.

EDIT: As of 2008 (probably sooner really) I'm starting to see more and more players pop up with line inputs for vehicles. I would recommend shopping around a little more. If I could change my rating I'd drop it down to 2/5 stars because it now is no longer as good of a buy as it once was (and it never was great btw.) You can do a lot better these days. In fact, it's not THAT much more to get a system with a MP3 CD player as well as an input (and some now even support other media such as USB cards, SD cards, and so on.)

My breakdown of things:

Audio quality: As others have noted here, the sound quality on this is better than what you'd expect for a unit this low-priced. I found the high-end to be slightly soft, but nothing too bad. The bass response is pretty good. The audio-in jack on the front of the unit is the main reason I bought this, as I don't bother with CD's anymore, and just wanted something simple & cheap that I could plug my smartphone/mp3 player into...thankfully this is where the best fidelity of the unit lies. The FM radio frequency response is weaker in the treble department than the input, but it doesn't bother me much....radio isn't really worth bothering with where I live anyway, other than public radio/college stations.

Power output: Not bad for the price. Don't expect it to compete with power amplifiers, but to put it simply, I've still never needed to turn the thing all the way up, even for freeway driving.

Tuner: A bit weak here, though it hasn't bothered me enough to care. I haven't listened to the radio enough enough to say if it has lost stations around town or not, but I can say that the visual mechanical tuner display is rather small, and with a lot of tuner travel per turn.

Ease of use, features, and connectors: This thing is stupid-simple to use. When adjusting things while driving, you don't even need to look at it. 2 potentiometers - One for volume, the other a split-shaft for tuning/balance control w/center detent. An AM/FM button. A 3.5mm audio-in jack for mp3 players and the like. A bass boost button (which I actually like, because it is subtle and DOESN'T overdo the boost). Cassette player with an eject/FF button.
This thing couldn't be simpler to hook up; a wire each for: power, ground, remote turn-on. A female antenna connector. Wires for 2 speakers. RCA jack connectors should you wish to use to a power amp.

Wishes: simply that this unit had a 12.5khz treble control/boost button.

Overall, this is a great deal for the money. I can't say anything about long-term quality, as I only bought it a few weeks ago, but so far I've been quite happy with it, and would recommend it to anyone else looking for a decent low-priced car stereo. As others have mentioned, it's an added bonus knowing that nobody other than a complete moron would attempt to smash & grab a $29 cassette car stereo.

I installed the unit in a 1976 Ford Pinto. The radio replaced the original AM radio without having to cut or drill into the dash. I didn't want to alter anything on the car (everything is original) so I wired the left channel into the one speaker in the dash. The stereo reception can be turned off. I live in the countey. Because I am on the fringe of the listening area of the stations I listen to, I was worried about reception. To my surprise the reception is as good as the reception on the radios in my newer cars. I am very happy to have found the radio. I haven't used the tape player.

I added this cassette player to my car as a separate system simply to play audio books on cassette. This player will not win any awards for high fidelity, however the sound is clean up to about half volume and then some distortion can be heard. I hooked in a set of modest speakers with 4" woofer and a tweeter and I can hear the audio books clearly over the road noise at about half volume. Music is predictably of low quality but wow and flutter is tolerable - more on that below. The bass boost doesn't seem to make any difference so I leave it off.

The 1/8" input to hook in an MP3 players is a nice bonus though. I do have to turn my cheap Creative Labs Zen Stone all the way up and then it just does match the volume of cassettes. Still, it works fine without annoying buzzes or line noise. I didn't hook up the radio antenna so I have no info on reception but I suspect it would be fair to poor on the analog (dial) tuner. Likewise, it has power antenna control and pre-amp output on RCA plugs but I did not use either for my install. I don't think big power amps hooked to this cassette player would be a good match or the best way to get the most bang for your buck.

I tried to play a cassette this morning (brrr, about 5 degrees above zero and my car sits outside all night) and it played slow and with lots of wow and flutter. (Bear in mind that many cassette players will not play at all at such low temperatures.) However, after the car (and cassette player) warmed up for only 5 minutes it started playing at correct speed and flutter went away quickly too. That is to be expected and is sort of typical for many cassette players.

The install was easy and it looks great in my dash just below my factory installed CD player. It sits nice and flush just like the heater controls and the CD player in my center console. My wife likes the idea that it didn't cheapen or trash up the way the console looks.

In summary - for listening to audio books it is just the ticket for me. You will NOT enjoy loud music with bass you can feel - but most buyers will understand that you get what you pay for. I rated it a 4 or 5 "for the money". As compared to my Bose home system or the killer audio system in my Altima it gets a dismal 1 or 2. But for the money it works and looks fine.