Time to replace my HD Radio?

I live about 15-20 miles (as the crow flies) from most of the radio transmitters in Philadelphia. My 2012 Subaru Impreza with stock HD Radio & Antenna does a pretty good job of picking up HD Radio where I am. If I start heading away from the towers, things can get a little spotty, but that's usually in areas where I'm heading "downhill" -- this area is very hilly.

My previous Subaru (a 2005 Legacy) had the stuck-on-glass style antenna. My new Impreza has the little stubby stick on the roof. I have not yet taken the time to research possible antenna alternatives, but I know there are some out there that I could put in place of the stick if I wanted to. Coming up with alternatives for the on-glass in my Legacy was a nightmare.

What you haven't mentioned is in which direction from Boston you are.

Boston FM stations have two main transmitter locations. The "Newton-Needham Tower Complex" off of 128, and the intercity FMs (PRU, 1 Financial)

If you are 20 miles south-southeast of Boston, the Newton Needham HDs drop out a lot. If you are southwest, you get terrain blocked by Blue Hills.

With that said, I replaced my JVC KDR-HD1 with a Pioneer DEH-4400 HD, and so far the only disappointment I have is the broadcast audio quality is not as good.
What I found is, the tuner works excellent. Better than the JVC. And the Pioneer I bought at BestBuy for under $120. The Pioneer is really sensitive/selective with a sensitive HD and RDS detection. YMMV.

Good to hear that the Pioneer works well, as I am looking for recommendations on a good tuner. I have the first JVC car model that came out about 6 years ago, and I am wanting to upgrade for a more sensitive tuner. Also considering Kenwood, but sounds like that Pioneer may be a good choice. Now if just more stations would increase their power a bit.

I am using my car's stock antenna, which is, ironically, junk. It's not tight to the metal frame, so there is that, plus I am using an antenna adaptor to feed it.

Even though they may in fact be the same connector, I would not just swap them until you confirm that the same signals are in the same pins. I had a pair of stereos that were like this (maybe many brands are using a common connector now?), but left versus right were reversed between the two units. Most (but not all) stereos also use a standardized color code for the various signals and speaker outputs, so that might help figure out if the wiring matches.

It's either Pioneer or, perhaps, Fujitsu. - at least according to a quick search on the forums on nasioc.com. With the Nav system, right? I have that one myself, and the HD Radio is decent, tho the Nav itself leaves me wanting more compared to my old TomTom.

BTW, if you're thinking about the Impreza, I love mine - fuel economy is awesome, car's fun to drive, and I had a someone larger-than-average woman riding in the backseat describe it as "roomy". (c:

That's a gripe I've got that I've been learning to work around -- the CVT likes to "downshift" when you take your foot off the gas. It seems the assumption is "if you're not accelerating, you must want to slow down", tho there's some nuance to that. i've gotten used to it, and found that a combination of hitting the right paddle-shifter to pick a high gear or putting my foot "slightly" on the gas pedal to hint "hey, I don't wanna slow down, I wanna coast" seems to work. Subaru's followed up with a couple general "How do you like your new car?" surveys, so I've had opportunities to provide feedback on the matter. ;-}