Rockford Fosgate has been at the forefront of mobile MP3 players since the format first became available in the car. The new RFX 9400 is at the top of the latest crop of source units from Rockford with MP3 capability (it also plays regular CDs). The recent legal battles at Napster have not put a stop to the sharing of music files over the Internet; and now you can rip a CD with your favorite MP3s and play it in the car.
The unit has a removable, shiny metallic faceplate with a logical control layout. The volume control is a rotary encoder with a red aura, and surrounded by 4 semi-circular buttons. Most of the main control functions can be accessed via these buttons in conjunction with the knob. There are ten direct-access buttons across the bottom of the faceplate for selecting AM/FM stations and CD tracks. The display is an easily readable LCD matrix with large characters and adjustable contrast for extreme viewing angles. CDs are loaded by pressing the button labeled Open, which drops the faceplate to reveal the CD slot. You can choose to have the faceplate close automatically or manually; if you change CDs often this is a handy feature (no more waiting for the faceplate to close and open again).
When you create an MP3 disc, you can store your files in folders. The RFX 9400 display will show you the folder names as you scroll through the disc, and then the song titles within the folders. A button labeled Root takes you back to the top level, or Root folder. If you just insert the disc, all the songs on it will play in alphabetical order, first by folder name and then by song name. Burners of up to 12X speed are supported, with bit rates from 32 kb/second to 320 kb/second. File and folder names of up to 16 characters are scrolled across the 10-character LCD display. When random play is selected, songs will play at random from all folders on the disc, one "tree" level at a time. A tree level can be thought of as a branch. The root is level 1 and any folders in the root would play first; then folders within those root folders and so on.
The CD player and CD changer controls have all the standard features, and you can program up to 100 disc names, each with up to ten characters, into memory. There is an auto-wakeup feature that will start playing a disc upon insertion when the power is off. Another nice feature is the ten-second rule for track changes. If you press the Down button before the track has been playing for ten seconds, it takes you back to the beginning of the previous track. If the track has been playing for more than ten seconds, it takes you to the beginning of the current track.
The tuner has two FM bands and a single AM band, each with ten presets. There is an auto-store feature to pick up the strongest stations automatically and save them in the current band. You can program your own titles for each of the station presets.
The included remote is about the size of a stack of three credit cards. All functions of the deck are accessible via the remote except for the mechanical faceplate open button. It's buttons are laid out in a simple rectangular grid.
Tone controls are simple and straightforward. You have shelving bass and treble controls with steps of +8 to -8, although for some reason there are only six levels of actual adjustment. Changing from +1 to +2 does not change the EQ applied to the signal, and the same is true of changing from +7 to +8. In any case, there is plenty of control over the sound to suit your tastes. Also included is the "Punch" button. This is a volume dependent loudness control, which boosts the lows and highs. It has a larger effect as the volume is decreased, which is exactly what you want from a loudness control (see graph).