i have both,
first i bought alpine cda-9856, but then i bought pioneer 6800, both have awesome sound quality, both look great, but i like pioneer better because it has more sound control, easy access to sub control, and a rotary 7 key button, however pause and att buttons are only on remote, and the buttons are little bit too bright. both were around 250, hope this helps.
This is exactly my thoughs...Pioneer will give more sound control, but Alpine has better sound quality from CD playback. I have the Alpine 9857, the newer version to the 9856.