Stereo & Electronics - Aftermarket stereo radio station reception sucks

Are all aftermarket head unit's internal antenna modulators really that crappy? All of the head units I've had get incredibly bad radio reception compared the stock head unit. It's the same with other peoples stereos as well. How is this? You pay 4-500 for an aftermarket stereo that kicks ass in every area except for radio reception. Just doesn't make sense to me how the stock POS radio gets that much better reception. Anyone else have this experience?

Yeah I know what you mean. I think the reason behind it is because of the fact that the CD medium has pretty much reached the limits of the human ear. I'm sure they have the technology to make something that produces better sound quality on paper, but CD's already do such a good job that I don't think any improvement over them would be audible. So because of that, I think CD's are pretty much "it." The aftermarket companies know that if they want to keep selling CD players, they're going to have to keep the idea in the public's mind that CD's are the best of the best strong, so they purposely make the radio tuners in their head unit's sound crappy enough that even the lowest level CD player still sounds good in comparison to it. I think the reason factory radios sound better than aftermarket ones is because the car manufacturers don't want to take the risk of potentially losing a sale on a car simply because the stereo sounded like crap.

Just my .02

Aren't there some with good recpetion. I think Eclipse had alot of info on their radio reception technology on their website. More than just "this headunit has the great SSiR-EXA advanced tuner"...what the fuck is it anyway.

You can definitely find stereos with good FM reception, no doubt, but they're usually found in the higher end stereos, which means they're gonna cost more and be fewer and far between. But they're out there.

i have a newer alpine which was like 450$ and i havnt had any problems with radion reception. i actually get better reception

I do have a high quality head unit. I have a two year old version of the Alpine 9853 which costs $500. I don't think I should be getting shitty radio reception. I didn't buy a friggin $99 panasonic head unit.

i have the same problem. i bought a alpine so that i can use the ipod adapter. and my fm sucks ass. i dont even listen to it anymore. i did some research and i dont know if its true. they say you have to rewire the speakers to the radio, bypass the amp.
i dont know how ture it is. im thinking of going back to stock radio

what i was told is this: for the head unit to be at 100% u have to replace all the stock speakers and run 12 gauge wire from the head unit back. this is because the stock bose/monsoon system has amps on all their speakers. its also hooked to a stock internal amp for the stock cd player. i replaced all of my wiring and my speakers and i have no trouble. i also had mine done by pros in champaign IL, and they told me the same thing.

compared to my cds.. the FM blows a huge one on my 3 week old Alpine IVA-D310.. but it's def. way better than the OEM stuff [ Monsoon ] :cheers:

Plus, since I only listen to AM [news + weather - which, btw, they never get right lol] and rarely to FM [ morning shows KTU and Z100 ] so it's not a huge deal... But, nonetheless, I do agree.. the radio reception should be much superior to stockers..

Another angle to consider is satellite radio. It wouldn't surprise me in the least if the head honchos at XM and Sirius got together with the head honchos at Alpine, Clarion, etc. to shake hands and decide to watch eachother's backs. I'm thinking it would probably go something like this: XM tells Alpine that they need them to lower the FM reception quality in their head units so that XM becomes the only option to getting good quality radio and therefore sells more subscriptions, and Alpine gets to make special XM adapters that fit only their head units so that they can get a piece of the "exclusivity" that comes with producing a head unit capable of linking up with this service, and thus selling more head units. The Japs know that Americans take their entertainment seriously, so they make it a point to stick it in our asses every chance they get.

i see alot of alpine customers complaining maybe thats the problem? never had problems with clarion, pioneer or my jvc.

what i was told is this: for the head unit to be at 100% u have to replace all the stock speakers and run 12 gauge wire from the head unit back. this is because the stock bose/monsoon system has amps on all their speakers. its also hooked to a stock internal amp for the stock cd player. i replaced all of my wiring and my speakers and i have no trouble. i also had mine done by pros in champaign IL, and they told me the same thing.
Well, what you were told is not accurate.

First, replacing speakers/wiring/amps will have absolutely nothing to do with the sound quality of FM radio (after all, the CDs play through the same speakers/wires/amp).

Second, the Bose system had separate amps on each speaker and pre-amp output from the head unit. However, the Monsoon system has a single amp that takes speaker level input from the stock HU (and I do mean stock - it's the same as any other Delco HU except for the Monsoon label). There is nothing wrong with this setup except that the amp has a lot of distortion at higher volume levels and this tends to cause the speakers to fail over time. At more moderate volume, the Monsoon system will sound as good as any OEM sound system available.

I'm glad you're happy with the way your system was redone (and in the end that's all that matters) but the installer sold you a bill of goods to make some extra profit.