Car Stereo's
My wife and I currently drive a 2000 Jeep Grand Cherokee Laredo 4WD that we bought a few years ago at a used car lot. It's a very nice SUV that goes nearly anywhere we want to go.
The cool thing isn't just the 4WD or the fact this baby is fun to drive even in 2 WD but it came with the original Chrysler RAZ Stereo, the features include: C-Qaum Am Stereo, FM Stereo, 3 band EQ, Dolby Cassette and Compact Disk. It sounds great and has wonderful reception on both AM and FM.
WLS-AM and a few other stations broadcasting in C-Quam sound great when sky wave is in my favor.
We do not have any stations in my state that broadcast in AM Stereo so the skip at night is a real treat.
Now then, we have burned cd's to play in the Jeep while we are away from our stations tiny coverage area but cd's on these older stereo must be burned as .wav files because the older radio's do not decode mp3 cd's.
The older cd format only allows for what? 15 songs or so before you run out of space, my wife and I decided it was a good idea to replace what we have with something a bit newer.
That's where the Sony CDX-G3150UP comes in, for around $100 you get a lot of features we couldn't get on the factory stereo. Features are AM/FM ,55 watts x 4 channels, plays from USB devices, iPod and Android compatible, RDS, AUX port , CD player capable of playing store bought or burned cd's as well as mp3's stored on compact disk. And of course rca jacks for adding an external amplifier ( i don't feel the need to make my tinitis worse so I won't be adding an amp).
We bought this after dark at our local Walmart and it was much to dark on the carport to install it when we got home, so I will be installing the radio while I wait for my wife to take her 1 hour 15 minute class in college.
After installing the radio, I will report here with the published specs, my take on it's overall performance and how easy or difficult it was to install. Might even include a video. We'll see.
I plan on using the Chrysler Car Stereo in my studio for DX and as a monitor for Blue Bucket Radio.
Stay Tuned
Thanks
Barry and Stephanie
Blue Bucket Radio
The Little Things Radio Show.
If you have ever bought a car stereo other than an exact replacement for a factory radio you could be in for surprise and your work comes to a screeching halt when you realize the mounting hard ware you bought from walmart is for the wrong year of vehicle you drive.
Factory radio's made to fit certain brand of cars/trucks/suv are naturally made in the factory to fit like a glove, however if you bought a car stereo from a store or online be prepared to buy the wiring harness that mates your new radio to the cars wiring and a mounting kit that allows you mount the new radio into the dash seemlessly so that it looks good and stays in the dash nice and snug.
The Scosche kit I bought was not the right one, i saw Cherokee and just assumed it would work, i didn't see the year or the fact that i have a grand cherokee which makes a huge difference.
So lesson learned and I will be going back for the right mounting hardware and should have this radio installed this evening.
It is wired up and it plays rather nicely but it's got to look nice too.
You may have to put it in a blue bucket.
Carl,
I don't think the blue bucket would match my Jeep's interior lol
If impedances can't match, as with Part 15 antenna systems, at least auto interior colors should match.
Well this project is on hold until tomorrow after a college class and a trip to walmart, we have been tied up with other things around the radio ranch and couldn't get to the store for the right mounting hardware.
Do yourself a favor and buy a wiring harness adaptor. The radio will work better and you wont ruin the factory wiring harness. It is also way easier to hookup this way.
Lucky for you unlike a lot of aftermarket stereos, this one isn't deaf. The specs are showing fantastic FM Sensitivity of 7 dBf.
In the future, buying from Crutchfield gives you all the mounting hardware and wiring.
http://www.crutchfield.com/S-1FNZwIzlK52/p_158G3100UP/Sony-CDX-G3100UP.html
I already purchased the wiring harness adaptor the same night i bought the radio, i avoid butchering wires at all costs and it looks nicer even if it will be tucked in behind the radio and dash.
While i waited for my wife to finish her class, i had time to listen to the radio a bit.
Keep in mind, my dash is still opened up and the radio was just sitting inside the hole, so it looks bad with the gapping hole but doesn't affect the performance of the radio, it just bugs me a little. Okay a lot!
So while I was waiting i had a chance to mess with the functions of this receiver and let me tell ya, there are a ton of features. Some are pure fluff, like the lighting which can change colors or pulsate with the music.
Remember color organs? If you are parked somewhere just listening to the radio with the lights flashing with the beat and changing colors then it really isn't too bad, but could be a distraction to the driver especially at night.
Another fluff to me is the Infra red remote control, I wouldn't use it since the radio is within 6" of the steering column but could be useful if you have a back seat driver who has to be in charge of navigation and the music.
As Mighty mentioned, 7 dBf on fm is nothing to sneeze at compared to a lot of crap being sold at these big box stores. There is a 2 watt lpfm in Combs,Ky which is just barely a part of Hazard city limits.
While i don't now exactly where the tower is, I do know they seem to be having some sort of technical problems with the transmitter or audio chain. There has been a bad hum, mono audio and modulation is low but despite that this radio pulled them very nicely even though i had to turn the radio up to 20 to hear them.
Distant stations were detectable at a distance of nearly 20 miles on FM, those stations were in surrounding counties, i was on high ground. Even a repeater was heard, albeit with a lot of static and in mono.
The seek function mutes station's too weak to be worth listening to, well unless you own a low powered fm or like to dx then you might want to use the manual tuning feature, if it's there this radio will lock on to it and like most receivers will switch to mono.
The RDS feature is good although I think it has trouble with long words, I recorded a video the other night but i hesitate to post it here since it might cross that line of deciency/indecient. The band name and the song is often displayed on the RDS around here, the band in the video i shot was One Direction minus a letter.
The RDS couldn't scroll the bands name because it was such a long word or the RDS was having trouble on the transmitter side of things. When playing Mp3 from a cd or thumbdrive it had no troubles, The Red Hot Chili Peppers, Ozzy Osbourne, Five Finger Death Punch all displayed the whole text as it scrolled.
Not a big deal for me since I do most of the driving and don't really pay attention to the display on the radio.
I usually set it and forget it or my wife dials in something we both like.
So I have mounting kit and hopefully tomorrow I can mount the radio in the dash and test this baby out in style. Meanwhile, I will be doing the same thing MRAM is doing and moving our studio from the living room to a spare bedroom and part of that project is hooking up the origianl RAZ Chrysler radio to a power suppliy so that i can use the radio in the studio for dx'ing on AM and monitoring Blue Bucket Radio.
Before I forget, the AM did really well at night. I was parked under our carport which is mostly metal and station's were booming in from all over the country incluiding WFTD 1080 Khz from Atlanta.
More later.
Sitting in a car at night monitoring America.
That's what life is for.
Digital AM could never be as good.
Nice. I sat and listened to the sounds of a new LPFM last night. Beautiful.
So Stephanie and I were out most of the day, yeah i never had a chance to mount the radio into the dash.
I hope for time to do this tomorrow.
Finally Installed!
A full review is coming up, for now here is a teaser.
Looks good!
Good listening ahead.
I took my time to get aquainted with the Sony CDX-G3150UP AM/FM CD Player which is why this review took so long to happen.
First things first, Features are FM/AM Compact Disc player with RDS, USB and Pandora/iPod/iphone compatibility. There is also an AUX jack to plug in an mp3 player that does not work with pandora.
First the specifications:
Tuner Section
FM Tuning Range 87.5 to 107.9 Mhz
Internediate frequency: FM CCIR -1,956.5 to -487.3 khz and +500.0 to +2,095.4 khz
Usable sensitivity 7 dBf
Selectivity 75 dB at 400 khz
Signal to noise ratio 73 dB
Seperation 50dB at 1 khz
Frequncy response 20 - 15,000 Hz
AM
Tuning Range 530 khz to 1,710 khz
Sensitivity 26 uV
Audio power output 17 watts RMS x 4 at 4
Ohms <1% THD+N
SN Ratio 80 dBA
I won't cover the CD player as that isn't important in this case.
This radio fetures a remote control lol I just think it's silly.
One of the neat features of this radio is Storing (stations) Automatically in BTM mode by pressing MODE to change to the desired band FM 1 FM 2 FM 3 or AM 1 AM 2 then press menu and rotate the dial to the General setting,press the dial then rotate the dial again to select BTM. The radio silently scans the am or fm band and stores the strongest radio stations into the presets.
Just pressing one of the presets will reveal the stations in your area.
Using RDS (Radio Data System) Press PTY while in FM Mode, rotate the dial until the screen shows the type of music or programming you want to listen to, example. Rock, Country, Talk, News etc. Then press the dial and the radio will search for RDS imformation transmitted by FM radio stations that include their program type in the RDS Data.
Also the RDS allows you to set the clock by receiving RDS from a local station so that hopefully your clock will be accurate as long as the station clock is correct.
A few things the receiver won't do that I think would make it really shine.
1. The tuning is a bit difficult, you can't tune in increments without some difficulty.
In other words, tuning in steps is a double tap on the seek buttons.
So if you like to tune the radio in steps like 88.1, 88.3,88.5 it will take some careful tapping of the seek button and must continue to tap the button until you find a station you specifically want to hear.
If you press and hold seek, the tuner mutes and seeks out the strongest stations in the area.
There is no DX/Local function, i really wish there was.
My next post , I will cover the overall performance of the tuner section on both AM and FM.
Barry of Blue Bucket Radio.