Home > Consumer Reviews > Aiwa CDC-X504MP CD/MP3 receiver

I purchased an Aiwa CDC-X504MP CD/MP3 receiver a few weeks ago and have been VERY happy with it. I fully expected to pay twice as much to get this good of a receiver that had MP3 capabilities. Some of the things I've noticed:

Good radio reception - I listen to quite a bit of AM (talk) and some FM. This unit has better reception than the last several units I have owned (mostly Sony units and factory units).

Great Sound - It comes with a 3-band EQ which is nice. It also has an `H-bass' button that REALLY gives it some kick! I was surprised that my factory speakers could sound that good!

Front AUX input - I was amazed that almost every single MP3 receiver I checked either had no AUX input, or had one in the back of the unit. What good does that do?! Who wants to pull their unit out of the dash anytime they want to hook something to it? This unit has a handy plug right on the face plate. You can plug in an iPod or a laptop. I work on the road a lot using my laptop. I keep my entire music library on my laptop in MP3 format. With a simple $2 cord from Radio Shack, I was able to plug my laptop into the Aiwa unit and listen to my entire library through my car stereo. This allows me to utilize the song selection features in my laptop software to play what I want from my entire library. Even if it's something you very rarely need, having the plug in the front is very handy.

ID3 Tags - One of the several display options is to display the ID3 Tag info when playing an MP3 disc. When this option is used, the display will scroll the file title, the artist, the album, and the song title in that order as each new song starts. When it finishes, it will leave the first 8 characters of the song title displayed. I have thrown some songs at it with pretty long album/song titles and it has scrolled them all.

CD formats - It plays all the main CD formats. Regular audio CDs, CD-Rs, and CD-RWs.

Shuffle play - There are 2 different shuffle modes. The first shuffles the entire disc (this is the only option on regular audio CDs). The second will shuffle the songs within a file folder (for MP3 CDs). Both of these are very handy when listening to an MP3 disc as it gives you the option to randomly play from an entire disc or to limit the random play to a folder (which could be a particular artist or album or whatever).

MP3 playback - I was impressed with the MP3 playback capabilities of the Aiwa unit. To start out, I made an MP3 disc using a CD-RW disc. I filled it to capacity with over 200 songs at CD quality. In the root directory I created a separate folder for each artist. There ended up being over 20 folders with anywhere from 1 to 25 songs in each folder.

Using this MP3 disc, it takes the unit about 5 seconds to start playing after first inserting the disc. From then on, each time you turn on the unit with the same disc inserted it only takes about 2 seconds to start playing wherever it left off last time. Also, in either shuffle mode, it only takes about 2 seconds to find and start the next song. That's good speed for a regular audio CD and surprisingly fast for an MP3 CD!

(note - the unit plays songs back in alphabetical order by filename within each folder. If you want the songs to be in album order then you need to rename them with the song number in front of the song title.)

As I said, I have been VERY happy with this unit. Especially at the cheap price. I have no real complaints and would not hesitate to recommend it to my friends.

I bought this car stereo because it was one of the few models that had an AUX input on the faceplate, and I wanted to easily connect my iPod to this. There are loads of FM and AM presets available, and the reception of many hard-to-reach college FM stations in my area has exceeded my expectations. The MP3 feature is also cool, meaning I can make CDs containing hundreds of songs rather than the dozen or so that fit on a regular audio CD. This model also reads ID3 tags, meaning that the artist/title/album data appears on the bright and easy-to-read display. I only wish that the ID3 tag data scrolled continuously rather than just display the first 10 letters/numbers or so. And the detachable faceplate can be a bit tough to snap back on (especially in the dark), but that's the price I pay for security.

I have had mine for a week now... I got a refurbished one, and installed it myself. Don't forget to order an installation kit. It is so sweet! Why don't the more expensive units include an AUX plug in the front? They don't like the popularity of portable MP3 players? I got this unit so I could "plug in" my XM2Go portable XM radio. However, I like this unit as much, if not more than the XM! An MP3 CD holds a lot of music. Radio reception is great. I thought my factory car speakers were no good.. but with this radio pumping some more power to them they sound a lot better.

The good: reads Mp3 CDs very quickly, resumes MP3 tracks from the same part when the unit was turned off, very reliable (5 months now), good sound, never skips. The bad (for me): When using track shuffle, the unit doesn't remember the previous track. For example, if you want to play a track again when in shuffle mode, you better replay quickly before the next track starts, otherwise it will be lost among the hundred or so tracks. The annoying (for me): Anytime you power on the unit from the power switch on the deck, it goes into "demo" mode, flashing its features on the display until you select TUNER or CD or AUX. This can be avoided be just turning it on and off by the ignition switch. If you manually skip to the next track during shuffle mode there is an unneccessary delay while the display shows a visual simulation of the shuffling by diplaying rapidly changing numerals.

For the last few years, I've been using my portable MP3 player to listen to music in the car. I connected my player to my stereo using one of those tape adapter thingees. This worked well enough, though the tape hiss was a bit annoying.

When my factory stereo decided to commit suicide a few months ago by eating the tape adapter, I decided to replace it with an aftermarket unit that had an aux input and be done with the tape hiss nonsense.

I used the following criteria to select a stereo:

1. Aux input, preferably on the front panel.
2. Good FM reception (<= 10 dBf FM sensitivity)
3. CD player
4. Low price (<= $150)

The Aiwa CDC-X504MP met all of these criteria. It may be the only one around that meets all four; there are very few front-panel aux inputs out there.