Jvc Kd-hdr1 - Page 2

pduncan-

I do not know about aftermarket car antennas, but it will be more important to fix the noise problem than to change antennas (unless the antenna or its cable is bad, and is the source of the problem). What year and model is the car with the problem? Ignition interference can often be fixed or helped by using resistor spark plugs and/or resistor ignition wires, or it could be caused by a bad ground wire connection somewhere that must be found and fixed. Did the car have the problem since it was new (if you got it new)? Has the car had any "unusual" electrical problems, flickering lights or other weird occurrences?

Thanks for the reply Chris. The car is a 1996 Nissan Sentra. I've only had the car a couple of months now. The noise was there with the stock radio that I replaced with the JVC. As of right now, I haven't noticed a ground issue. The noise isn't present when I'm setting still with the car running, just when I'm accelerating.

The car has 108k miles. It does seem like I have limited power while accelerating and the wires look original...... I guess that could point to a problem with the plugs/wires.... But I'm a back yard mechanic at best, so don't know.

Something else. I used the ground on the wiring harness as the ground for the radio. Might it help if I grounded it directly to the chasse?

Yes, grounding to the chassis could help. Also, there are noise filters for the power wires, and one of those on the +12V wire could help as well.

I've been researching this Receiver for a few days, sounds like a good deal to try out this new HD Radio plus it can play MP3s which my current one can't.

One question I have, does it have RDS info built in,, "Radio data service" I think thats what it means. You know where infomation about the radio station, current song title and artist will show up on the screen.

I like that feature, Its a must have for me

Thanks

No, unfortunately the KD-HDR1 does not display RDS information. (The Boston Acoustics Receptor HD table radio does, though.)

If the radio station you are listening to is a HD station, then this radio does display artist/title information if the station includes it. Most digital stations I get here in the D.C. area include artist/title info. Some of the stations have a lag between the start of the song, and when they transmit the title/artist, other stations do this right on time.

Got my JVC the other day and it is awesome to say the least!

Phila has 13 HD FM stations which = to 26 HD stations!

HD AM is crystal clear, WDAS AM is in Stereo and sounds

like regular FM Stereo! HD Radio is the future!

I can't wait for a bookshelf system and of course full blown

receiver!

JohnnyJT
South Philly

hey guys, newbie here.....i have a question about this head unit. i bought it a few days ago and noticed it had the optional aux input and i was figuring i could use this to hook to my mp3 player so i can play the songs on it over my car speakers. i received the unit only to find a bigger input than what i thought. i have seen a lot of front aux inputs on other head units which are just a headphone jack that can connect to the mp3 player's headphone jack. my question is will this optional aux input on the back of the cd player work with an mp3 player? do i need to buy a certain cable at radio shack or some place like that with a 3.5mm headphone jack plug in on one side and the other side being whatever the other input is on the back of the cd player. or if they even make such a cable. any help is appreciated. thanks
paul

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

Sorry chipper. They only place you are going to find that is Crutchfields or the like. I researched it also....

Chipper,

I just bought the cable from Crutchfield after searching around like you did. I don't think you are going to find it at a bargain price. It has a specific jvc connector on one end for the radio, and there is a little box containing some circuitry in the middle of the line, probably an attenuator to protect the radio from too much signal coming up the line.

By the way, it works like a champ!!!

-Ken

ok thanks for your help guys. i think i might hold off on the cable for now just because the cd player can play mp3's so i can fit quite a few songs on one cd. although i guess i shouldn't make too much of a big deal having to pay 39.99 for the cable considering i got the cd player for such a good deal off of ebay brand new

Mine finally shipped...are these things hard to put in? I've never really put in a car stereo before...

It you got it from Crutchfield... it will come with EVERYTHING you need to install, and will have step by step instructions. And, if you run into a problem, they are just a phone call away. It's kind of weird how it seems like they are in the seat next to you... they are that good.

But, if you got it from somewhere else, it's still an easy unit to install.

One word of caution....... if you have a powered antenna (a lot of new cars do), make sure you hook it up or you will have very little signal going into the unit.

yeah i ordered my last unit from crutchfield (before this JVC i just got) and was able to install it with no problems. this one didn't take much longer either. like the the other person said crutchfield even gives you papers that show you how to install it for the most part.

I don't know why but the MP3 disk I burned didn't play at all.

I know this will sound kinda stupid but it really depends probably if it's REALLY a mp3....since mp3 players have gotten big there's a ton of different standards...apple says the ipod is a mp3 player but they are AAC files...then there's others for different units (real format, wma's etc)

the manual lists what won't work...it won't play mp3 pro for example. Also if it's a audio hybrid with a dvd it won't.

I have some cheap sony cdrw's I've been downloading podcasts on and then deleting it every night...so far so good.

I'd recommend

1) checking the files to make sure the file format is OK and it isn't too high or low of a bit rate

2) if it has a label that might not work well

3) if they do suddenly start to play you might want to make sure that the TAG id that's in the file doesn't contain anything bad...let's say you have a song title with swares...you turn it down but technically you could have it scrolling on the dashboard

My MP3 discs have played fine so far. They are just ordinary "Nero copy and paste data disc" format. I use only Verbatim CD-R discs, and they have always been the most compatible with all players I have tried.

For the owners f the JVC head unit: I've seen a lot of comments on the radio performance (which makes sense, given that the is the HD Radio forum ) but nothing on the CD performance. How does the CD player sound? A few years ago I bought a Nakamichi CD player head unit for my car. It has a 20-bit digital-to-analog converter, and I noticed a difference between it and the 1-bit "bitstream" players I'd had before. Now I see that 24-bit digital-to-analog converters have dropped in price and can be had much cheaper than they were when I bought my CD player. But the JVC has a 1-bit D-A converter with "24-bit resolution" (whatever that means). The JVC unit looks like a great deal, but I'd hate to see a large drop in CD playback quality from my Nak. Any opinions on the JVC's CD player?

My stock car cd player was pretty good but I'd say this one is better. There's more settings towards more of a surround sound than what I had...although I wish it did allow for a forward/rewind of a higher amount of space...like if I go back or forward it seems to only go about ten seconds back or forward per second pressed.

I will admit however that I haven't touched the bass and treble functions yet...it has preset ones but you can really manually adjust quite a bit of it. the only other product I have that allows for the same detail of it is a phillips hdtv!

The only bad thing I'd have to say about the radio is there's so many functions on it you should REALLY get to know them before driving...there's way too much to look at if you just had it installed. Let's say you messed around with the steps and put it in the EU mode and were listening to AM (steps are 9K instead of 10K) now unless you have presets it will take awhile to set back...

Also there is a volume function to go beyond (remember "But it goes to 11" from spinal tap?) what some would like. I think it would be extreamly easy to blow out the speakers of most cars with this but I wouldn't advise it.

Just installed this unit in my '00 Celica. It is an outstanding upgrade to my factory head unit. During the install I discovered I had a factory installed amp? A pleasant surprise considering it was not on the invoice.

The stereo station finding is nothing short of outstanding. I am picking up stations I didn't even know where there (this is based on old factory unit, another vehicle, 2 clock radios, and an $700 Pioneer surround receiver!)

The CD performance is excellent. It plays harshly scratched discs my original unit would hiccup on. The menus are so deep in this thing I won't post on my sound findings until I get it tweaked. For the time being, I would say that CD sound sounds like surround sound, nicely separated....

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.

Are there any other HD decks coming out soon that may be better than this? Does JVC have a next generation deck coming soon to replace this? just looking to get some info. thanks.

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....

Anyone using this with JVC's Sirius receiver? Was thinking of that combo but would like to know what the HDR1 display shows. Anyone have pics?

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.

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

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

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.