marnold
April 8th, 2011, 08:01 AM
Yep, it's New Car Stereo day! In a previous thread I talked about an FM transmitter for our new (to us) car. Unfortunately we noticed a couple if weird things with the factory stereo so we decided to bite the bullet and get a new one, despite the fact that the installation was almost twice as much as the stereo itself.
It's a Pioneer DEH-7300BT (http://www.pioneerelectronics.com/PUSA/Car/CD-Receivers/DEH-7300BT). We got that one because it has built-in Bluetooth so I can use my HTC Desire hands-free. It really sounds good, especially with the compressed audio "tweaks" it does. My only complaint is that when you are playing off a USB stick, it plays the songs in the order they were saved to it (a common problem, evidently). Thankfully someone wrote a program (http://fatsort.berlios.de/) that will rewrite the file allocation table to put everything in the right order. You can drive for a long time with 8G worth of MP3s. The hands-free stuff sounds pretty good too. He installed the mic by the rear view mirror so it picks me up clearly and is as far away from the front speakers in the doors as possible.
The button layout makes navigating the CD or USB stick as easy as possible with the space available. I also had looked at an Alpine stereo, but I couldn't figure it out. The Pioneer made sense almost immediately. The reviews online for this one are very favorable. A cool feature is that if you take the USB stick out when you leave the car, it will pick up where it left off next time you put the stick back in. The only thing that might be an issue is that it doesn't dim when the lights go on.
Had a couple of interesting things happen after it was installed. I went to the nearby guitar shoppe right after. I then noticed that my fuel gauge was pointing the wrong direction. After a call to a mechanic, briefly disconnecting the battery took care of it. The battery in my car is "conveniently" located under the back seat. I then went off to another guitar store and to do a couple more errands when I hear this strange chirping in my back seat. I pulled over to discover that when he disconnected the battery, the installer left his phone on the shelf by the back window.
Here's Crutchfield's control video of it:
jF83QMhAlSg
It's a Pioneer DEH-7300BT (http://www.pioneerelectronics.com/PUSA/Car/CD-Receivers/DEH-7300BT). We got that one because it has built-in Bluetooth so I can use my HTC Desire hands-free. It really sounds good, especially with the compressed audio "tweaks" it does. My only complaint is that when you are playing off a USB stick, it plays the songs in the order they were saved to it (a common problem, evidently). Thankfully someone wrote a program (http://fatsort.berlios.de/) that will rewrite the file allocation table to put everything in the right order. You can drive for a long time with 8G worth of MP3s. The hands-free stuff sounds pretty good too. He installed the mic by the rear view mirror so it picks me up clearly and is as far away from the front speakers in the doors as possible.
The button layout makes navigating the CD or USB stick as easy as possible with the space available. I also had looked at an Alpine stereo, but I couldn't figure it out. The Pioneer made sense almost immediately. The reviews online for this one are very favorable. A cool feature is that if you take the USB stick out when you leave the car, it will pick up where it left off next time you put the stick back in. The only thing that might be an issue is that it doesn't dim when the lights go on.
Had a couple of interesting things happen after it was installed. I went to the nearby guitar shoppe right after. I then noticed that my fuel gauge was pointing the wrong direction. After a call to a mechanic, briefly disconnecting the battery took care of it. The battery in my car is "conveniently" located under the back seat. I then went off to another guitar store and to do a couple more errands when I hear this strange chirping in my back seat. I pulled over to discover that when he disconnected the battery, the installer left his phone on the shelf by the back window.
Here's Crutchfield's control video of it:
jF83QMhAlSg