CDR-22 upgrade in '99 996 cab. Which head unit?

Hello Rennlisters! The CD section of my CDR-22 has died and I want to upgrade the head unit. I am happy with the rest of the system, but I have read somewhere that the M460 (Haes?) Amplifier is fussy about which head units you use, (because it expects 2v on the line-in) wherease many aftermarket head units are around 500mV. Can anyone shed any light on this, ie can I just wire in a new head unit (like a SONY or whatever) and use the existing amplifier, or do I need to replace both (head unit and amp)? Cheers Darrin '99 996 Tip Cab 18" Ocean Jade Metallic/Black '98 Boxster White/Tan (spare car!) Perth, Western Australia

Oops forgot the pics. Will get better ones soon.

Darrin - Welcome to the Porsche Phunny Pharm and congrats on getting another P-car. That's a nice looking "stable" of P-cars you have! Sorry, I can't help with your CDR question, but I did want to say "Welcome."

As it happens, I've been doing a little research on this for myself. Check out the Alpine CDA-9820XM for instance. A nice head unit, which outputs 2V from the preamp out. That's the first mod I'm making when I get my P-car in a couple of weeks

Hey Darrin, Have you considered replacing it with another CDR-22 just to keep thing simple. They are often cheap on ebay, and it keeps the stock look if you like that. Also at SWStereo.com I saw a Becker CD unit that is similar but it also plays mp-3's etc. And hey great idea keeping both! I have an 03 Boxster and 99 996 too. best of both worlds.

Thanks for the input. I didn't want another cdr-22 cause I want MP3 playback and unfortunately the only Becker distributor (soundlabs.com.au) I can find in Australia wants AUD$1295 (about US$773) for the Mexico tuner and AUD$1955 (about US$1,505) for the mexico pro! That's eye-watering! I can get a complete nay/dvd system with screen for that kind of $. I have seen a few JVC and Pioneer units that have mostly black facias and have orange displays so I might end up with on of those. Unfortunately here the market is dominated by Japanese cars and they tend to favour the silver interior finishes, whereas my cab's interior is completely black, I call it the black hole!

Hey pvanosta I couldn't find that model on the alpine site? Still looking for something with black facia and orange screen. I've only found one a pioneer that does it (actually the screen can be several colours). it's a 5800 I think from memory, but it must also be last year's model cause it's not on thier website either, even though the dealer said it's an 06 model. Cheers DS

I can second the Alpine unit recommendation. About 2 years ago I bought the Alpine CDA-9833 head unit (but I was replacing the amp and adding a sub also so I can't comment on the 2v issue). The nice thing about the Alpine is the colour of the main buttons can be user-selected and you can make the orange look identical to the rest of the dashlight. While at night it still has the white/green text and green accent lights but overall it goes very nicely with the dash since there's a lot of black on the faceplate and it's a smooth single-**** design. The other nice thing is the display has 4 levels of tilt and at position 2 (mid-tilt) it falls nicely to your fingertips when you rest your hand on the shifter. Aesthetically I find it matches very nicely and it has the XM/CD/MP3/WMA/Aux-in capabilities as well.

Darrin, Considering XM is a US-based satellite radio service, that model may not be available in your neck of the woods. You can always google it and see what you come up with. My understanding is that, if this model outputs 2V, then the other models of the same generation should do the same.