Adding HD to the car finally

[mikl73]

Except it won't happen today

I have called all over town and no one has a Motorola Antenna Y-adapter in stock locally. So I will be waiting patiently on one from Amazon of all places.

Why? well I don't want to loose FM on the actual tuner because the spec on the HD add on tuner aren't so hot.

I ended up going with a Pioneer AVH-P4000DVD
the fm tuner claims 8 dBf sensitivity.
the add on HD tuner says 14 dBf (the reason I don't want to loose the main tuner).

so no I wait to take my dash apart once again to install the HD & XM tuners.

So will I be the 2nd person on here with HD? (thinking DE is the first?)

 

[Tom Wells]

When you do get it hooked up, please check some weak AM and medium strength AM signals and let us know if
this HD tuner throws a bunch of whistles into the AM reception.
Also, does the y-connection result in decreased AM sensitivity for you?

 

[FastBytes]

Don't know about number of people here that have em. I've got the JVC KD-AHD39 (9.3dBf on the tuner BTW).

I still find myself listening to the i-Pod much more than the radio.

 

[mikl73]

I'm enjoying the USB port and MP3's on DVD now.
I don't actually own an IPOD.

I haven't been impressed by the FM section so far which is a shock since I have always respected Pioneer FM tuners. I think yesterday I determined the FM is being desensitized near by FM TX's just farther out than I would expect it. There is a difference in distant FM I noticed yesterday just by going south a couple miles from Midtown. I may head out away from everything and see if the FM opens up more. My former Blaupunkt deck was good until I was almost under all the 100kw sticks and when outside of a couple blocks of 95.7. Doesn't seem like its a selectivity issue.. there is no bleed over.

All in all its a nice radio. I am happy to be loosing the external XM tuner to one that is hidden and controlled by the radio.
The AM is crap like nearly all new decks. It doesn't help that I have a capacitor for my amp which seems to introduce some extra noise on AM also.

UPS should be dropping off the Y cable today or tomorrow so I may try to get things connected this weekend.

 

[mikl73]

so the results...

The Y cable did not affect my FM reception to any noticeable degree. I did before and after checks using several distant stations.

FM- The HD Tuner on FM's reception is comperable to the radio but it does seem to suffer overload from nearby FM's more than the main decks tuner. No bleed over noticed just lose open channels when not too far from TX's. This is not a huge issue.

I get all the local HD's fine in Midtown
I drove south to see where I lost the Class A's
I lost lock on 95.7 WHAL around Stateline Road.
I lost lock on 92.9 WMFS around Church Rd.
I obtained a solid lock on 90.3 WMAV around Nesbit Rd pretty much.
all the 100kw's were still solid in Hernando
WSNA 94.1 lost lock once for a split second while driving on Commerce in Hernando.

WDIA maintained lock well driving around midtown only lost it at a couple intersections.
It was working fine each time a checked going south and in Hernando.
Most music sounds decent on WDIA. If you can stand a low bit rate sound its better then standard AM. For music it's a step up. For talk from what I could hear I don't like it.
WREC will not maintain lock anywhere.. it's in and out... and very very anoying.

The HD Tuner sounds much much better on analog AM and receives the locals much better.
Distant stations are not usable on either AM like KXJK. On AM the HD tuner dues much analog where not station with a decent signal exists.

Radio Disney sounded pretty decent as did 1210 WMPS.
The AM is not very wide but isn't so narrow as to annoy either. It just sounds pretty decent.
I couldn't tell if the HD caused any whistles or anything as I already have some AM issues due to a Capacitor on my AMP.

WKNO HD-3 is very low but with a little more modulation sounds no worse than the BBC feed on XM.
HD2 sounds better than HD1 on WKNO. Something I didn't expect.

WMFS-HD1 sounds good when there isn't too much clipping. This happens on the analog also with some tracks.
WMSF HD-2 is a little to loud sometimes. Sounds pretty good otherwise but no track id's displayed.

WSNA HD-1 is a major improvement over analog as the analog sounds like crap. You can really hear how bad some of the songs in their library sound on HD1 also.

WHAL HD-1 sounds like the analog which usually isn't much to write home about.
WHAL HD-2 sounds decent

WHRK HD-1 is ok nothing spectacular
WHRK HD-2 has a serious issue. Sounds like a problem with how it's being delivered to the TX site. I really can't listen to it even though I heard some songs I liked.

KJMS HD-1 sounds as bad as the analog and some songs even sounded out of phase or something. Ex: was a Keith Sweat track Stan Bell played just after interviewing him this afternoon. It actually sounded better on the analog side
KJMS HD-2 sounds really good. I like the smooth jazz on there also.

WEGR HD1 and 2 are ok.

WRVR HD1 sounds better than the analog
WRVR HD2 actually may sound better then HD1 on some tracks.

Intresting formats on the WEGR & WRVR HD2's

WMFS HD2 seems like a waste... it's a novelty format just like WSNA HD2 with the commedy.

as for XM the XM tuner sounds as good as you can expect. It sounds better than my previous set up.

 

[Tynosaur]

So you're the SOB who nearly ran me off the road three times yesterday afternoon on I-55 South! No wonder you couldn't control your vehicle!

 

[mikl73]

I don't know if i did that since I tend to maintain control of my vehicle unlike a lot of drivers around here.

I did think I was gong to die one time when the traffic was backed up and a car came barreling past everyone on the left shoulder with the brakes locked up.. was that you Tynosaur? I would have waved if I had known.

55 is pretty nice now that they have widened it some but I think they should be taking it farther than they did.