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new car radios compared to earlier years are not audiophile!

761 views 5 replies 2 participants last post by  DrDon 
#1 ·
the reception is weak
 
#2 ·
That's going to depend on a lot of things. Where you live, type of radio, kind of antenna. I run around in a ten-year-old pickup with a whip antenna. Reception is fantastic. Better than my wife's Caddy. As for HD Radio (this forum section) the power increases are helping tenfold. Have to get close to Flint before WOMC-HD goes away. But, then, Detroit is pretty much the gold standard for HD. You don't mention your location, but I'm sure things are different, there.


As for the audiophile reference in your title, we've found that the vast number of car radio listeners don't even notice when something's in stereo, let alone perfect audio. I'm pretty sure that's why SiriusXM throttled back its bandwidth and added more channels... nobody cares. To me, their audio quality is lower than a well-oiled FM station. Anyhow, I'm sure manufacturers know that mp3-obsessed Americans aren't going to notice if the audio quality isn't what it used to be.
 
#4 ·
drdon so regular old radio waves are better and clearer then satelite radio you mean? I had a few friends who had satellite radio, but cancelled it after a year. I always wanted satelite radio in the past, but couldn't afford it then and a friends car who had it didn't work well.
 
#6 ·

Quote:
Originally Posted by keyboardcat  /t/1447858/new-car-radios-compared-to-earlier-years-are-not-audiophile#post_22754450


drdon so regular old radio waves are better and clearer then satelite radio you mean?

It's not the waves, it's what they do with them. Plain ol' analog FM has quite a broad frequency spectrum. Satellite is all digital with a number of stations occupying the same stream of 1s and 0s. Think of that single stream as one pie divided up into a bunch of stations. The better the audio quality, the bigger slice of the pie the station requires. Cram in a lot more stations and you have to shrink the size of the slices (audio quality) to fit them all in. That's what Sirius XM did... even more after the merger when each system has to carry everything. Audio quality suffered.
Quote:
Originally Posted by keyboardcat  /t/1447858/new-car-radios-compared-to-earlier-years-are-not-audiophile#post_22754467


DrDon do you also own a hd radio for the house by chance? If so how is the reception on the home tuner? I just picked up a older kenwood tuner for the home at the thrift store last night. I hope that it works.

I have 3 for the house, 3 walkman-style and 3 car radios. The table radio (Insignia's CD boombox) has a whip antenna and its HD reception differs with where it is in the house. Analog is pretty good. HD drops out on some of the weaker stations. Upstairs, it gets all of Detroit in HD and most of Toledo in analog.


OTOH, the BA Receptor is connected to the roof television antenna. It gets all FM and all HD. AM, not so much, but the important AMs in Detroit are simulcast on FM HD subchannels, so that's really not an issue.


As for car stereo reception, it depends on where you are and what station you're tuning, as well as the kind of radio and the style of antenna. I've never had a lot of luck with the in-the-windshield antennas. And a 1000-watt FM station at 500 feet HAAT isn't going to come in nearly as well as a 100,000-watt station at 5,000 feet HAAT. Radio stations are very different. Transmitter location and effective radiated power differs from station to station.


For me, I prefer an aftermarket radio with a whip antenna like my truck has. And I'll find the weakest station and locate the radio's antenna trim pot and adjust until I've maximized everything. But then, I'm a bit of a geek. Disassembling new radios is not something most people do.
 
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