****e sony head unit

I must admit I'm not really hot on car audio, I just like to have reasonable
quality sound and a good selection of music in my car. I had a Sony CDX-MP30
which I removed from my previous car before selling it. The new car came
with a Vauxhall CDR500 which is made by Delco. The sound quaility of this
unit is very good, so I didn't initially bother fitting the Sony.

Today I decided i'd had enough of swapping CD's constantly, so went about
fitting the sony MP3 player.

To be quite frank, the sound quality is **** poor compared to the delco
unit, even to my untrained ears. There is a very large amount of background
hiss which increases as the volume increases. The sensitivity of the tuner
is very poor too. I can't recieve some of the more distant stations that I
could with the delco.

I did not have the engine running at the time. I also unplugged and remade
all the connections in case of a bad one but this made no difference. In the
previous car, I did notice the hissing slightly at very low volume, but I've
recently had my ears syringed and can hear a lot better now. I assume this
is why I couldn't hear the hissing much before!

Is this typical of Sony head units (this was at the cheaper end of the
spectrum) or is it more likely to be faulty?

TIA

--
The Dervboy

Reply-to address is valid as required by my news server, but is a spam box
and is never read.
My real e-mail address is thedervboy{at}btopenglobe{dot}com
(substituting "globe" with "world").

Try disabling the sony DSO if it has it, it made my cdx-mp40 hiss loads but
its great with dso turned off.

"DervBoy" wrote in message
...
I must admit I'm not really hot on car audio, I just like to have
reasonable
quality sound and a good selection of music in my car. I had a Sony
CDX-MP30
which I removed from my previous car before selling it. The new car came
with a Vauxhall CDR500 which is made by Delco. The sound quaility of this
unit is very good, so I didn't initially bother fitting the Sony.

Today I decided i'd had enough of swapping CD's constantly, so went about
fitting the sony MP3 player.

To be quite frank, the sound quality is **** poor compared to the delco
unit, even to my untrained ears. There is a very large amount of
background
hiss which increases as the volume increases. The sensitivity of the tuner
is very poor too. I can't recieve some of the more distant stations that I
could with the delco.

I did not have the engine running at the time. I also unplugged and remade
all the connections in case of a bad one but this made no difference. In
the
previous car, I did notice the hissing slightly at very low volume, but
I've
recently had my ears syringed and can hear a lot better now. I assume this
is why I couldn't hear the hissing much before!

Is this typical of Sony head units (this was at the cheaper end of the
spectrum) or is it more likely to be faulty?

TIA

--
The Dervboy

Reply-to address is valid as required by my news server, but is a spam box
and is never read.
My real e-mail address is thedervboy{at}btopenglobe{dot}com
(substituting "globe" with "world").

DervBoy wrote in message
...

Is this typical of Sony head units (this was at the cheaper end of the
spectrum) or is it more likely to be faulty?

I've not been impressed by anything Sony of late.

"Doki" wrote in message ...
DervBoy wrote in message
...

Is this typical of Sony head units (this was at the cheaper end of the
spectrum) or is it more likely to be faulty?

I've not been impressed by anything Sony of late.

OK, £50 I'll have it off you if you like.

Mail is

"Paul Morgan" wrote in message
...

TBH Sony stuff was never one of my favourite brands for car audio, but I'd
be surprised if it's worse than the factory fit sh1te vauxhall/ford and
the
like put in.

Depends on the maker. The vauxhall units are just rebadged units made by one
of many companies including VDO, Phillips, Grundig and Delco.

Thus far I have experienced tape players made by Grunding and Phillips and a
CD player made by Delco. The quality of the Delco and Phillips seem good,
but the Grundig was apalling.

I've got a Sony MD unit in my Impreza which is only there cos it was up
the
loft doing nothing when I bought the car and I bunged it in to replace the
OE tape deck until I get something decent. It's nowhere near the sound
quality of my Alpine setup in my other car (daily driver so it gets more
emphasis on the sound system than the Impreza which is my "weekend car").
But my dad has a 2001 Vectra with the top-spec head unit and CD changer
(CDR600 or something?) which quite honestly makes the sony sound like a
marvel of engineering. The brochure bleats on about the "10-speaker
system"
etc but quite honestly I'd prefer if they simply left a DIN hole for the
customer to fit a stereo themselves cos the junk they throw in there only
serves as an unattractive door-stop ;-)

Sounds unlucky to me.

This of course isn't confined to VX, he had a 2000 Mondeo company car
before
that with the Fisher-price type CD head unit (you know the one with the
massive buttons suitable for the kiddies to play with) and the SQ of that
was positively awful. I replaced the front speakers on that car to try and
improve things a bit as the OE ones are a marvel of cost-cutting (not a
tweeter in sight) but as they say you can't polish a turd, the sound did
improve slightly but the garbage coming out of the head unit would make
£1k
speakers sound awful.

I had an escort with one of these, but the tape one. It too was pretty grim,
and I didn't even have any media for that funny shaped slot :-)

Sounds like either your sony has a problem, is set up very badly, or they
really have done the unthinkable and produced a head unit so bad it's
actaully worse than mainstream OE stuff. I do find that hard to believe
mind, even for Sony!

This I think was their cheapest MP3 head unit, so maybe they cut the corners
a little too much. I doubt that changing the speakers will help much because
the main problem is background hiss which will only be made worse by fitting
better tweeters.

However, I wouldn't say that it's worse than mainstream OE stuff, but it is
definitly worse than my vauxhall head unit.

The Dervboy.

Is this typical of Sony head units

No it's not, even tho Sony are not exactly noted for their quality at
that end of the market. It's not acceptable, return it.


--
Lordy

Is this typical of Sony head units

No it's not, even tho Sony are not exactly noted for their quality at
that end of the market. It's not acceptable, return it.

I can't get a refund as I bought it about 8 months ago. All I can do
now is send it back for "repair".

Fk it off as a bad job then, put your DervChip plans on hold for a bit
and put the money towards a decent player in the £200 to £250 area


--
Lordy

try disabling DSO if it has it. It makes my sony hiss.

"DervBoy" wrote in message
...
"Paul Morgan" wrote in message
...

TBH Sony stuff was never one of my favourite brands for car audio, but
I'd
be surprised if it's worse than the factory fit sh1te vauxhall/ford and
the
like put in.

Depends on the maker. The vauxhall units are just rebadged units made by
one
of many companies including VDO, Phillips, Grundig and Delco.

Thus far I have experienced tape players made by Grunding and Phillips and
a
CD player made by Delco. The quality of the Delco and Phillips seem good,
but the Grundig was apalling.

I've got a Sony MD unit in my Impreza which is only there cos it was up
the
loft doing nothing when I bought the car and I bunged it in to replace
the
OE tape deck until I get something decent. It's nowhere near the sound
quality of my Alpine setup in my other car (daily driver so it gets more
emphasis on the sound system than the Impreza which is my "weekend
car").
But my dad has a 2001 Vectra with the top-spec head unit and CD changer
(CDR600 or something?) which quite honestly makes the sony sound like a
marvel of engineering. The brochure bleats on about the "10-speaker
system"
etc but quite honestly I'd prefer if they simply left a DIN hole for the
customer to fit a stereo themselves cos the junk they throw in there
only
serves as an unattractive door-stop ;-)

Sounds unlucky to me.

This of course isn't confined to VX, he had a 2000 Mondeo company car
before
that with the Fisher-price type CD head unit (you know the one with the
massive buttons suitable for the kiddies to play with) and the SQ of
that
was positively awful. I replaced the front speakers on that car to try
and
improve things a bit as the OE ones are a marvel of cost-cutting (not a
tweeter in sight) but as they say you can't polish a turd, the sound did
improve slightly but the garbage coming out of the head unit would make
£1k
speakers sound awful.

I had an escort with one of these, but the tape one. It too was pretty
grim,
and I didn't even have any media for that funny shaped slot :-)

Sounds like either your sony has a problem, is set up very badly, or
they
really have done the unthinkable and produced a head unit so bad it's
actaully worse than mainstream OE stuff. I do find that hard to believe
mind, even for Sony!

This I think was their cheapest MP3 head unit, so maybe they cut the
corners
a little too much. I doubt that changing the speakers will help much
because
the main problem is background hiss which will only be made worse by
fitting
better tweeters.

However, I wouldn't say that it's worse than mainstream OE stuff, but it
is
definitly worse than my vauxhall head unit.

The Dervboy.

"Lordy" wrote in message
lworld.com...
Is this typical of Sony head units

No it's not, even tho Sony are not exactly noted for their quality at
that end of the market. It's not acceptable, return it.

I can't get a refund as I bought it about 8 months ago. All I can do
now is send it back for "repair".

Fk it off as a bad job then, put your DervChip plans on hold for a bit
and put the money towards a decent player in the £200 to £250 area

The "DervChip" plan has already been broken by my trip to africa. It's
working out to be a lot more expensive than I thought!

This player cost £200. The Kenwood I bought for the cav (not MP3) cost £100
but sounds better!

The hiss is inaudible once the old oil burner is rattling away, so I think I
will just tolerate it.

The Dervboy

"KingStew" wrote in message
...
try disabling DSO if it has it. It makes my sony hiss.

Hmm, can't seem to find that option. Perhaps I'll have to get the manual
out.

The Dervboy