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Jvc Kd-hdr1

31K views 131 replies 54 participants last post by  tylerSC 
#1 ·
I'm thinking of getting a JVC KD-HDR1 for my '98 Cherokee. Anyone have experience with them? They're pretty reasonably priced, and look to have enough features they'd be relatively future-proof.


The Jeep still has the default factory system, w/out even CD, so adding that alone should be useful. Having HD radio is just icing on the cake, but I could save $100 and just get a CD if that part sucks. And it's not like it's a brand new car I'll be driving for the next ten years, either.


-Chris
 
#52 ·

Quote:
Originally Posted by chipper_85 /forum/post/0


well i did some more searching online and i found out that JVC does offer a specific cable that i am looking for. the cheapest and pretty much only place i have found is on crutchfield for 39.99, however i am looking for an alternative. does radio shack sell any sort of cable like this or is the input on the back of this JVC head unit only an input for this specific cable that they sell? thanks again for any help

paul

I'm thinking about getting this receiver and I noticed that the connection for the aux input looks identical to the old Alpine AI-net connectors. If the wiring schematic is the same, then you can pick up an ai-net aux input for $20 from davidnavone.com


Not sure if it works, but I'll give it a shot if I get this receiver. I already have the ai-net aux input adapter.
 
#54 ·
I don't think that nay technology company would let a product sit without doing some modifications.


I own one of these and can recommend a few things (in no real order)


1) end the muting of the radio while ejecting a disk


2) maybe have a feature that you could tune for a station without actually hearing it just to see if something could be received (bars could be nice)..


3) going direction to a subchannel would be nice


4) somewhat of a built in memory would be nice...say a 5-10 minute buffer to save...so you could hear what was said up to 10 minues ago and see in the text what it was


5) a variable speed for going forward on a track. most cd players I know of go faster the longer you hold it...this one doesn't....
 
#56 ·

Quote:
Originally Posted by johsti /forum/post/0


I'm thinking about getting this receiver and I noticed that the connection for the aux input looks identical to the old Alpine AI-net connectors. If the wiring schematic is the same, then you can pick up an ai-net aux input for $20 from davidnavone.com


Not sure if it works, but I'll give it a shot if I get this receiver. I already have the ai-net aux input adapter.

I just installed this head unit, and my old Alpine AI-net aux input works perfectly. You can pick one up for $15 or so. I believe the part# is KCA-121B from Alpine.
 
#57 ·

Quote:
Originally Posted by Spyponder /forum/post/0


If anyone has any suggestions on how to improve AM reception, I'm all ears. The FM stations seem to be coming in fine, the HD feed sounds great when I get it. I'm going to give this unit a chance, but so far I am leaning towards returning it - I can't live without my morning and eveining traffic reports and sports talk...

I am in the same boat. FM reception on my KD-HDR1 is totally great... and CD's are fabulous... but I can't get even one AM station even sitting half a mile away from the station's 50,000 watt broadcast antenna. I even went so far as to replace my car's antenna and wiring with a brand new one... not an easy task... but still no AM signals whatsoever. Not even a bleep.



Is my KD-HDR1 radio defective? Or is it a setting I missed and/or messed-up? I have reset several times with no luck. Anyone have any ideas? All help is greatly appreciated!



TIA,

Rusty from Boston
 
#58 ·
Hey Rusty:

Sorry to say that the one area where the JVC receiver sensitivity suffers more than usual seems to be on the AM side of things. The FM side is superb for both useable sensitivity ( give or take aggressive FM Mono blending) and SELECTIVITY. You will hold onto your favorite FM while passing pretty closely into an adjacent channel market which makes for less "dial hopping" to get away from station splatter. So much for the FM side of things.

As far as AM goes, the selectivity is very good but the sensitivity is poorer than usual. I compared the pickup against a Delco radio that I had replaced with the JVC unit. I appears that that isn't an effective preselecter section that tightly tunes into the desired AM frequency while robustly rejecting strong signals. This hurts the AM HD reception range. I had to result to making a manually tuned preselecter which boosts the desired signal while rejecting other strong signals in the same AM band. It's getting hard to find small portable (walkman sized) radio circuit boards with variable capacitors on them these days; everything has gone digital, but that's what I'm using to trap the desired signals on AM in better. I wish that someone could make a fool-proof AM Band preamp with preselecter options ( match a frequency on this unit to the desired station frequency). Actually the closet ting to a preselecter is an antenna tuner from MFJ but I didn't plunk down the $80.00 or so dollars to check it out but that would work very nicely. Bottom line: until JVC goes back to the drawing board to tweak-up their AM front end, a passive antenna tuner inline with the car's whip antenna (and FM frequency bypassed to prevent degraded FM reception) can virtually DOUBLE the reliable AM HD reception range with this radio. I know that the engineers are dancing on a thin line between overload, self generated noise, and other things, but they COULD have added another teaspoon of AM sensitivity and they HAD BETTER with their next generation effort! The receiver manufacturers have to make this technology look as great as possible to the end user, and AM in particular is COUNTING on favorable opinions from end users like yourself to garner favorable attention and capitalize on the improved sound of AM HD.

By the way, Rusty, for 10 glorious seconds, using that preselecter I spoke about during one evening in October, I managed to hear your WBZ 1030 in AM HD Stereo. I couldn't believe my ears!. The atmosphere held their signal intact without stretching it to distort the digital signal virtually 500 miles west of Boston in Cuyahoga Falls Ohio near Akron.

.....Anthony W
 
#59 ·
My KD-HDR1 picks up AM stations quite well, in a Mercury Sable with factory power antenna. I can listen to KCBC 770 in Modesto, Cal. (60-70 miles away) with reliable HD reception. Other stations (analog) such as from Sacramento are about equal to my previous car stereo, a Sony CDX-MP70 I think.
 
#60 ·

Quote:
Originally Posted by ChrisW6ATV /forum/post/0


My KD-HDR1 picks up AM stations quite well, in a Mercury Sable with factory power antenna. I can listen to KCBC 770 in Modesto, Cal. (60-70 miles away) with reliable HD reception. Other stations (analog) such as from Sacramento are about equal to my previous car stereo, a Sony CDX-MP70 I think.

Same here. I live 45 miles south of Indy (pick up 4 am-hd), 60 miles north of Louisville (pick up 2 am-hd) and 65 miles west of Cincinnati (pick up 1 am-hd). It could be your unit, or it could be you have an antenna with a factory installed amp (I had that same problem with a 2005 Vibe, couldn't pick up any AM at first.) If that amp is not powered by your radio, then that may be your problem. If you bought the unit from Crutfield, give them a call.... they will be able to help trouble shoot it over the phone and fix the problem or replace the unit if it's bad.
 
#62 ·
FYI, regarding the Aux connector for the JVC KD-HDR1:


I bought one off ebay back in December. It works fine. Do a search on ebay for a KS-U57, which converts the AUX into two RCA plugs. I attached a 3 foot RCA cord and a converter to a stereo plug onto that. I have a little cubby under the head unit that I coil the cord into that contains my MP3 player also.


I got my adapter from darvex.


You have to set the JVC unit's Aux setting to EXT-IN for it to work properly. Reference the owner's manual for the instructions.
 
#63 ·

Quote:
Originally Posted by dj99wa /forum/post/0


FYI, regarding the Aux connector for the JVC KD-HDR1:


I bought one off ebay back in December. It works fine. Do a search on ebay for a KS-U57, which converts the AUX into two RCA plugs. I attached a 3 foot RCA cord and a converter to a stereo plug onto that. I have a little cubby under the head unit that I coil the cord into that contains my MP3 player also.


I got my adapter from darvex.


You have to set the JVC unit's Aux setting to EXT-IN for it to work properly. Reference the owner's manual for the instructions.

If you get the KS-U58 it is terminated with the stereo mini plug for mp3 players etc so you don't have to do the conversion above. There is also a special cable for the ipod that will allow the radio controls to take the place of the ipod controls.


-Ken
 
#64 ·
You guys got me really excited. I just ordered mine through Crutchfield with the install kit and then I found this thread. Now I can't wait!


I have a 2001 Ford Focus so it will be interesting to hear how this thing sounds. I really like the stock 6 disc CD changer that came with the car. The only problem is that the darn thing starts screwing up after just a few years.


Will let you know how the install goes. Thanks for all the great info!
 
#65 ·

Quote:
Originally Posted by DICE3720 /forum/post/0


Quote deleted by admin

Why would I want another antennae? That item doesn't sound so integrated. Especially if I had a CD-Changer/Satallite on that input of the stereo. For $200? That is how much the JVC costs. Pretty soon we are going to look like HAM operators from all the antennae we have on our vehicles from the add-ons.
 
#67 ·

Quote:
Originally Posted by mattdp /forum/post/0


twisted_oak - don't pay attention to him. He's some kinda marketing bot (view all his posts, some of them are on totally irrelevant threads). I've already notified the mods about him.

Thanks. I got it. It's gone.
 
#68 ·
Got my radio from Crutchfield yesterday. Install went very well. Crutchfield sent me everything I needed (except for the tools of course). I've never ordered from them before. Very impressed!


The radio sounds great. Much better than my stock unit. We have 4 HD stations here. A few of them have HD2. There is one AM talk radio station that was apparently testing HD right after I installed the radio. Sounded great.


I do find it interesting that the JVC starts out in analog mode. Once it locks on to the HD signal, it switches over. Some of the stations here have a disparity between the analog and digital signal so I hear the same segment of music twice. Thought that was funny.


What a great unit! Highly recommended.
 
#69 ·

Quote:
Originally Posted by Chris Blount /forum/post/0


I do find it interesting that the JVC starts out in analog mode. Once it locks on to the HD signal, it switches over. Some of the stations here have a disparity between the analog and digital signal so I hear the same segment of music twice. Thought that was funny.

That's up to the radio station to configure. Some stations don't want to have a 5-8 second delay on their analog signal and some haven't bothered to turn it on so the digital will be a few seconds behind. This can be maddening if you're getting fringe reception causing it to bounce between analog and digital.
 
#70 ·

Quote:
Originally Posted by scowl /forum/post/0


That's up to the radio station to configure. Some stations don't want to have a 5-8 second delay on their analog signal and some haven't bothered to turn it on so the digital will be a few seconds behind. This can be maddening if you're getting fringe reception causing it to bounce between analog and digital.

It can't be set to ignore analog and purely use digital?
 
#72 ·

Quote:
Originally Posted by scowl /forum/post/0


That's up to the radio station to configure. Some stations don't want to have a 5-8 second delay on their analog signal and some haven't bothered to turn it on so the digital will be a few seconds behind. This can be maddening if you're getting fringe reception causing it to bounce between analog and digital.


I don't know of any IBOC station that doesn't delay their analog audio. That goes against the IBOC set-up and makes no sense. In NYC when WFAN does a baseball game they shut off the IBOC to eliminate the delay but following the game the IBOC goes back in as does the delay.
 
#73 ·
WKSC Chicago "Kiss 103.5" and WCKG Elmwood Park-Chicago "105.9 Free FM" both have issues with the analog audio not being delayed, or delayed enough, to match the HD Radio audio. The problem is intermittent at Kiss 103.5. It's always mismatched at 105.9 Free FM. 104.3 Jack FM (WJMK Chicago) had the problem for a long time. I don't know if it had anything to do with my unanswered e-mail or not, but they corrected the problem about two weeks ago.
 
#74 ·

Quote:
Originally Posted by hdmi4ever /forum/post/0


It can't be set to ignore analog and purely use digital?

The problem with using pure digital is that whenever the digital cuts out in a weaker area, you hear NOTHING. I can't use the HD2 channels in my town (28 miles from Boston) because they constantly cut out. The digital signal has less range than the analog.


-Ken
 
#75 ·

Quote:
Originally Posted by kenvt /forum/post/0


The problem with using pure digital is that whenever the digital cuts out in a weaker area, you hear NOTHING. I can't use the HD2 channels in my town (28 miles from Boston) because they constantly cut out. The digital signal has less range than the analog.


-Ken

I'm actually 30 miles from boston but I can get hd2 stations w/ this radio. Granted yes there are some drops here and there. I think it's better at night...it's actually gotten to the point where I know where the drops are within town. I can be a red light and not get reception...turn around and drive say 80 feet in a parking lot and park and then they'll show up fine.


For boston I think wzlx and wbcn work pretty well. I actually can get whjy from ri... I'm also starting to think that they might turn off the hd2 portions sometimes...just like not all have the text on the tracks. I'm going to probably change a bit of the sparkplugs for the am portion and get a new antenna later in the year. I've received these as being the furthest for the FM band


wpro which is nearly 39 miles from me, wcrb which is 46 miles from me, wwli which is 37 miles from me,


For AM

wpro (33 miles), whjj (33 miles) these are nearly on the boarderline of reception, I got a bit of wbur once which was nearly 42 miles....


As the channels increase I'm sure about of hd2 and hd3 (more?) content will increase.
 
#76 ·

Quote:
Originally Posted by R.F. Burns /forum/post/0


I don't know of any IBOC station that doesn't delay their analog audio.

Well now you do. KMHD is run by a community college, it's pretty low power (7.5 Kw), and it plays stuff like jazz and blues that most people don't listen to so nobody complains. I'm sure they'll fix it someday.
 
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