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Need your expertise with purchase of Car Stereo Receiver FM Strength Vital

G

GekkoRadio

I'm so glad I found this site after searching all over the internet for some clarity about car stereo receivers and FM sensitivity. My stock radio has finally bit the dust and I need to purchase an aftermarket stereo. The most important thing to me is FM reception and because I won't be installing this myself it is very important that I get this right the first time. In the Long Island area to pull in distant NYC stations I always turn the stereo off and listen in mono, with the stereo on there is too much annoying hiss.

I was about to buy a Kenwood KDC-HD458U until I started doing some research and I became hesitant on the FM sensitivity numbers. It has a 9.3dbf with a quieting dbf of 10.2, this concerned me as the JVC x210 model has an 8dbf with a quieting dbf of 17, and in fact many of the newer Kenwoods have the extended range of 8 to 17dbf.

But this is where I am confused, is it better to have a 17dbf on the mono end to sufficiently get rid of the hiss noise or will it be too high and not strong enough to pull in the distant NYC station to begin with, maybe the Kenwood is better suited for what I need, I don't know.

However in an older thread the people here have praised Pioneer's Super Tuner IIID system and I like the fact that they give you 4 levels of FM tuning, the MVH-X370BT was one that I was considering, the only thing is that its lowest dbf is 11 with a range of quiet all the way to 30dbf, is the 11 going to hurt the long distance listening or is the difference between 8/9 not a big deal?

I would be losing HD if I went with the Pioneer but the most important thing is FM reception and I have heard that HD is not that great of an experience. Thanks for any help and guidance.
 
GordonGekko said:
I'm so glad I found this site after searching all over the internet for some clarity about car stereo receivers and FM sensitivity. My stock radio has finally bit the dust and I need to purchase an aftermarket stereo. The most important thing to me is FM reception and because I won't be installing this myself it is very important that I get this right the first time. In the Long Island area to pull in distant NYC stations I always turn the stereo off and listen in mono, with the stereo on there is too much annoying hiss.

I was about to buy a Kenwood KDC-HD458U until I started doing some research and I became hesitant on the FM sensitivity numbers. It has a 9.3dbf with a quieting dbf of 10.2, this concerned me as the JVC x210 model has an 8dbf with a quieting dbf of 17, and in fact many of the newer Kenwoods have the extended range of 8 to 17dbf.

But this is where I am confused, is it better to have a 17dbf on the mono end to sufficiently get rid of the hiss noise or will it be too high and not strong enough to pull in the distant NYC station to begin with, maybe the Kenwood is better suited for what I need, I don't know.

However in an older thread the people here have praised Pioneer's Super Tuner IIID system and I like the fact that they give you 4 levels of FM tuning, the MVH-X370BT was one that I was considering, the only thing is that its lowest dbf is 11 with a range of quiet all the way to 30dbf, is the 11 going to hurt the long distance listening or is the difference between 8/9 not a big deal?

I would be losing HD if I went with the Pioneer but the most important thing is FM reception and I have heard that HD is not that great of an experience. Thanks for any help and guidance.
Click to expand...

Pioneer Supertuner 3D have HD models, or did until recently. Mine is the most sensitive I have ever owned. In the recent past, I had an FM station 150 miles away on my presets because it was rock solid reliable. In places, it can do Dallas FM stations from Houston - not all over town, but that has more to do with the Dallas stations using HD than it does any deficiency with the radio. Three decades ago, a local 97.9 shut down in Houston and for a full week until its replacement signed on, the 97.9 in Dallas was easily receivable all over town. That is a distance of 250 miles. About 10 years ago, before a local 93.7 signed on in Dallas, a 93.7 from Austin was easy to receive. About 35 years ago, a 104.1 from Houston was almost like a local in Austin, 170 miles away.

Bottom line - Pioneer has the circuitry where it counts - amazing sensitivity and selectivity. The newer ones are even better because they have adaptive IF - narrowing the IF bandwidth in over 20 steps depending on signal strength. It pulls in any signal that is on the frequency. One time, I had somebody who went all over work saying how great their Alpine was. I had enough, and had them drive up next to my car and we did a bandscan. This was central Florida near Deland. The Pioneer pulled in a signal on 80 of the FM frequencies. Alpine did 42. He ripped out the Alpine that week and had a Pioneer. I've tried a top of the line Kenwood, it is only so-so. About the same as the non-D version of the Supertuner 3. Still a step up from you average OEM car radio, but disappointing if you are used to the Pioneer Supertuner 3D. The newest HD version of the Supertuner 3D also have enhanced AM, I can drive on the Katy Freeway in Houston and have no static at all on WBAP Ft. Worth.
 
Thank you for that detailed information, to play it safe I will probably go with the Pioneer, most of the new ones including the HD models have a low range of 11 instead of 9, I gather you are not worried about that? The few remaining 9dbf stereos don't have ideal seek button placement and I need that because I am always changing stations. And better AM reception is a great thing as well.
 
Two things. First is that selectivity may be just as important as sensitivity. Out on the Eastern end of LI, there are many second adjacent stations out of Connecticut. Difficult to tune out without decent selectivity as well. Second, the car antenna is just as important as the sensitivity of the receiver. All the sensitivity in the world won't help without a decent antenna (30' whip on the front preferred).

Then there is always WUSB - a station I picked the call letters for :)
 
The only thing that slightly worries me is this from Crutchfield's description of Supertuner: In addition, the Supertuner IIID creates enhanced stereo during multi-path interference, unlike conventional tuners that collapse to mono.

If it never collapses to mono I'm worried about that hiss effect that happens on most stereo signals which is why I always revert to mono, perhaps the radio handles it differently and it will sound clear.

I'm more central Long Island than way out east but I find even on more local stations I need mono: 91.1 WSHU out of Connecticut, 90.1 WUSB, 90.7 WFUV out of NYC, 89.5 WPKN out of CT, some of these are CT as the previous poster mentioned, I assume the 4 levels of SuperTuner will allow these to come in if I want them.

93.9 WNYC
 
Bruce, I'm looking on Pioneer's website, and a few of their "new" models (AVH-X5700BHS, AVH-X3700BHS, DEH-X8700BH and DEH-X5700HD) don't say they have the Supertuner III D. Do you think they've either chosen not to put that in those units, or maybe there's a newer version of the tuner that's a different name? I'm thinking of replacing the stock radio+cassette in my '02 Honda Civic LX, and I'm looking mostly at the Pioneer CD and digital media single-din devices, but not the ones with DVD, GPS or touchscreen. Also having an SD card slot for music would be nice, but not if I have to get a touchscreen display. I want to maintain my safety while I'm driving. :)

Reception on my stock radio (using the rear windshield antenna) leaves quite a bit to be desired, especially in selectivity on AM. (I haven't tried FM much yet.) Also when I was driving & listening I think a week or two ago, I noticed local AM stations cutting (not fading) in and out in the middle of the day, and when that wasn't as much of a problem, I was noticing I think engine noise or something on some weaker stations. Could that be an antenna/grounding issue?

Also, Bruce, if I want the best AM performance possible, do I need to get one with HD (because it'd have a better AM section to enable HD to work better), although I don't expect to use that feature? If so, at least on yours, can you force the HD off? And how is the selectivity / adaptive IF when you want to DX a station adjacent to a local HD signal? For example, for me, those could include 590 KTIE, 594 JOAK, 610 KEAR and 610 KAVL, next to my local 600 KOGO about 8 miles west of my house.
 
They all utilize SuperTuner IIID but for some reason not all of them are highlighted on the website, you have to download the manual. You can turn off HD on all of the ones that have HD built in.

I don't know if the DVD receivers have Supertuner as I have not checked their manuals.
 
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All my aftermarket tuners in the past were Sony (For AM stereo) or JVC ........BUT I now have Pioneer DEH-X33HD (I think thats the model number). Only thing it does not have is CQUAM....HD, USB, CD/MP3/WMA player and a line audio in.....The performance is excellent.......BTW JVC owns Kenwood now.....so YMMV :)
 
I emailed Pioneer to see if they could answer whether the SuperTuner IIID provided a true mono and all the person did was give me stock answers on the website and advised me to call product support. I called product support and the person kept telling me that mono was when the sound only comes out of one speaker and then the call was discontinued.
 
Ahh thanks, Gordon. :) Now I'm glad I listed the model numbers, as I'm making a comparison chart from the specs data on their website, and I guess I'll need to add those models to my preliminary list. :)

And C-Quam would be nice to have, but there's nothing around here in C-Quam to listen to, the closest station being a country station in AZ that's co-channel with one of my local 50 kW blowtorches. The last station I used to listen to C-Quam on, 1110 KDIS, discontinued it when they started running HD at night. (They have more recently discontinued nighttime HD, but from what I can tell haven't resuscitated the C-Quam exciter.) Also 1280 KFRN was running it for a while, but they haven't had it on in several years, iirc.

And your product support post got me thinking.... Considering how untrained some support people seem to be, compared to some of us enthusiasts that may try to *get* support ... I wonder how long it would be until one of us (here or any other radio site or wherever) happens to know more about the inner workings of the radio than the engineers who *designed* the system? (Or are we already past that in some cases?)

Hmm ok what do I need to search for in the manuals? Searching "supertuner" comes up dry, even if I pull up the manual for a unit the website says has the IIID.
 
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http://manual.kenwood.com/files/GET0970-001A.pdf

Thanks for all of your help, I decided to go with the Kenwood kdc-hd458u because it was ordered before starting this thread and I realized that my old stock factory radio did not have a mono option and it was pulling in all of those stations fine with stereo, so I'm taking a chance that the following specs will be enough to have good FM reception:


FM Frequency Range
Usable Sensitivity (S/N = 26 dB)
Quieting Sensitivity (DIN S/N = 46 dB)
Frequency Response (±3 dB)
Signal-to-Noise Ratio (MONO)
Stereo Separation (1 kHz) AM Frequency Range
Channel Space Selection
Usable Sensitivity (S/N = 20 dB) Frequency Response (±3 dB) Signal-to-Noise Ratio

fm sensitivity: 87.9 MHz — 107.9 MHz (200 kHz space) 9.3 dBf (0.8 μV/75 Ω)
quieting sensitivity: 10.2 dBf (1.13 μV/75 Ω)
20 Hz — 20 kHz (HD Radio broadcast)
30 Hz — 15 kHz (Conventional broadcast)

signal to noise ratio: STEREO 75 dB (HD Radio broadcast) MONO 75 dB (Conventional broadcast)
Stereo separation: 45 dB
530 kHz — 1 700 kHz (10 kHz space) 10 kHz
AM sensitivity 28 dBμ (25 μV)
40 Hz — 15 kHz (HD Radio broadcast) STEREO 70 dB (HD Radio broadcast)

Also the signal to noise ratio and stereo separation were close to the Pioneer levels.

As far as where you can find the manuals, usually on the company's support page or if you go to Crutchfield and click the details on any radio it usually is there at the top as a download.
 
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rbrucecarter5 said:
Pioneer Supertuner 3D have HD models, or did until recently. Mine is the most sensitive I have ever owned. In the recent past, I had an FM station 150 miles away on my presets because it was rock solid reliable. In places, it can do Dallas FM stations from Houston - not all over town, but that has more to do with the Dallas stations using HD than it does any deficiency with the radio. Three decades ago, a local 97.9 shut down in Houston and for a full week until its replacement signed on, the 97.9 in Dallas was easily receivable all over town. That is a distance of 250 miles. About 10 years ago, before a local 93.7 signed on in Dallas, a 93.7 from Austin was easy to receive. About 35 years ago, a 104.1 from Houston was almost like a local in Austin, 170 miles away.

Bottom line - Pioneer has the circuitry where it counts - amazing sensitivity and selectivity. The newer ones are even better because they have adaptive IF - narrowing the IF bandwidth in over 20 steps depending on signal strength. It pulls in any signal that is on the frequency. One time, I had somebody who went all over work saying how great their Alpine was. I had enough, and had them drive up next to my car and we did a bandscan. This was central Florida near Deland. The Pioneer pulled in a signal on 80 of the FM frequencies. Alpine did 42. He ripped out the Alpine that week and had a Pioneer. I've tried a top of the line Kenwood, it is only so-so. About the same as the non-D version of the Supertuner 3. Still a step up from you average OEM car radio, but disappointing if you are used to the Pioneer Supertuner 3D. The newest HD version of the Supertuner 3D also have enhanced AM, I can drive on the Katy Freeway in Houston and have no static at all on WBAP Ft. Worth.
Click to expand...


I might have to buy a Pioneer as I'm not happy with the newly installed Kenwood as you'll see in my latest thread. Can you give me the model # of your Pioneer and you can turn off HD correct? Also can you eliminate any animated effects on the display? Can you simply display the clock or frequency and not both together?

On the Kenwood in analog mode there is an annoying HD lettering that flashes when you land on an HD station, does the Pioneer have anything like that?
 
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