jinsei888

iTrader: (14)

you have to be stopped to adjust nav...so lame, pioneer is crap

JimRHIT

iTrader: (6)

name a factory Nav other than Acura that allows this.

It's for your own safety

16psibrick

iTrader: (10)

it seems there hasnt been a pioneer nav that cant be by passed yet so you can adjust while riving but jim is right htough, its the industry standard practice.

yes the ******* is wonderful, i just hope you arent as unhappy with it as the pioneer, but if you are, there are medical procedures and online products for that

tecni

iTrader: (28)

I can actually control all my functions on the unit because I found that if you remove the mute cable and connect it into the empty hole on the molex plug and ground that wire... THe unit it tricked into thinking you're at a dead stop.


you seem to be very knowledgeable on the topic. Which one of the above mentioned procedures worked best for you?

Hey, if I can drop the rating down another half percent it will make me that much happier.

Cannysage

iTrader: (29)

I've looked into the eclipse (can't remember which model avn 5435 or 5495). The interface and the way you nav around your controls panels was azz, but it's features and other stuff is the best in its class, imo. pioneer, kenwood and alphine was better in terms of intuitive control. Having to stop to watch DVD is pretty ghey (I like listening to director comments etc). I'm a audio noob and not sure if there's a bypass for the stop-and-watch dvd deal.

Paul350Z

iTrader: (1)

I'm terribly sorry but can't find where I've compared the Pioneer with the Alpine or Eclipise units.

Gee, I guess my judgement is being challenged ... should I scan my EE degree and SBE certifications and post them here for you?

I starting installing car stereos in twenty-eight years ago 1978 and that was my profession for three years where I did custom car stereo installations. I probably did close to 1800 installations (200 days a year, three years, three installations) but in fairness some were just head-end replacements and a set of speakers. Others were complete systems from the antenna on out with mulitiple amplifiers, equalizers, and several pairs of speakers.

Back then there wasn't nearly the quality of equipment we now enjoy. My first car stereo was a Concord head-end connected to a pair of Zappco L150's driving a mixture of Pioneer 8" round woofers and Jensen midranges. I don't think Concord is around any more but they were very high end and concidered by many to be one of the best. Zapco is still around, the L150 was one of their very first amplifiers and back in 1978 was worth about $1200 each which would be a hell of a bunch more in today's dollars. Pioneer was the first to come out with 8" round car speakers - before that we were taking home speakers and getting very limited life spans out of them.

After working at AutoComm for those three years while going to college I joined the US Navy for 23 years as a broadcast radio and television engineer and was the US Navy's highest ranking television engineer and worked at the DoD level command for a number of years prior to my retirement less than two years ago. I've been certified as a Professional Broadcast Engineer and Audio Engineer by the SBE ... but I don't work for Pioneer . I have repaired every thing in an air chain from microphones to AM, FM, and television transmitters. I have designed complete radio studios from the ratios of the walls and ceilings, the accoustic treatments, to the sound processing of the system to the microphone to router. I've been out of town the last week at the National Association of Broadcasters meeting (where I have presented in the past) or I would have replied to your guesses of who I am earlier. I am now working as a project engineer designing all aspects of digital television broadcast systems.

None of which makes my observations of the Pioneer units wrong or your subjective evaluations of it or me correct.

SPL? Hardly.

I practice safe sound and since this is the first of my couple thousand posts here you've ever read I can see your misunderstanding. I have assisted a few guys working for me in taking first place in some SPL drag races but that doesn't trip my trigger. My hearing isn't as good as it once was but I do routinely go to an audiologist and I have remarkably good hearing. Once you've stood 100 feet away from an F-4 Phantom or F-14 Tomcat in afterburner, even with double hearing protection, your hearing ain't gonna' be what it was. I spend 9 years aboard aircraft carriers exposed to amazing levels of sound pressure - they can acually bring nose bleeds to the sensitive - so tossing $2000 more at my car stero doesn't make sense anymore if it ever did. Owning a home I am able to toss money at a home theater and seperate recording room (studio ) where a couple of thousand dollars can deliver a whole bunch more performance than in a car. I get *****ed at here for posting cautions and warning about avoiding exposure to excessive sound levels for anything less than the defense of the nation.

I challenge you to start your car and then to compare the quality of it to any sound system that you possibly can jam into it at any price level you can possibly afford to one that I'll buy for $3000 and put in my living room. The sound quality of a automotive based system is limited by the cabin volume, the limited mounting locations for speakers, the power available from a 12 volt battery, and the dynamic range limits caused by those 300 plus noisy ponies under the hood let alone the sound of the tires across the pavement at speed. I took some RTA measurements of the car a few weeks ago which I posted here. What I should do is turn the car on and record the engine noise and then take the car onto the highway and do a third measurement.

Note the hearing protection there - safe sound!

Note the dip at 80 Hz where the mid-base crosses over to the pair of sub-woofers. A bit of adjustment fixed that. The SPL level is a pretty respectful 105 dB but is no where near the limits of the system. The OHSA would be happy with me sitting in this level of SP for my 4 mile ride to work but I wouldn't - hence the sound protection (Mickey Mouse ears). Overall not a bad un-adjusted/corrected response from a car interior. I'd be having kittens if my HT system was doing anything 1/20th as poor as this!

You've mis-guessed and I do in fact have two eight inch speakers in my car and four in my home theater! The home theater also gets an assist from $3200 worth of SV Sound PB-12 Ultra sub-woofers with 12" drivers! Good golly Miss Molly, I better have SV Sounds engineers work on their design as it only gets down to 16 Hz while putting out sub-audible amounts of distortion ... and gathering rave reviews from professional reviewers while using "a single 12" woofer"!

I do in fact have 75 square feet of fat mat in my car. I bought 100 sq.ft. and ended up stopping about half-way through the second roll as I had covered everything I could get to in the trunk, sides, all four wheel-wells inside and out and double and tripple layers in some places. My home theater room is still under going an up date but my early acoustic analysis is good. My music performance and recording studio is very well done thanks. I use TrueRTA and a calibrated lab mic to to measurements rather than making subjective conclusions.

I've got a cap wedged into the system IIRC - a three farad IIRC.

I do know that a gold plated turd is still a turd.

For my references I enjoy the thinking and designs of Alton Everest (The Master Handbook of Acoustics) but I've also read Robert Runstien (Modern Recording Techniques), Phillip Giddins (Audio Systems Design and Installation), Don and Carolyn Davis (Sound System Engineering), and the good old NAB Engineering Handbook editions that are published every few years. I haven't had any recent classes in audio engineering but do have an occassional class from the current thinkers like Orban and Dolby. In fairness my formal education is a bit aging but most of the acoustic science was done in the early part of the last century way before any of us were born and not much new has happened in the last fifty years marketing be damned! The improvements in the reproduction equipment has been amazing and we're finally able to get higher end source material without resulting to half-speed virgin vinyl pressings

Some times you get what you pay for and other times not.

The Pioneer ($1300 AVIC-N2) cost about half of an Alpine head-end/navigation system ($900 CVA-1006 & $1600 NVE-N872A) ... sort of like comparing the cheapest available "sports car" like the 350Z against the Porsche 911 and then saying the Nissan blows. I've e-mailed Alpine asking them who does their database but I'd guess it's the same people that do the Garmin and Pioneer units. The extra $1200 that the Alpine cost over the Pioneer will buy a butt-ton of updates to the disks. Just like the extra $40,000 the Porsche costs over the Nissan will buy a bunch of turbo's and bolt ons. I don't think Alpine is doing their own processor chips on the navigation processor either but I really doubt that they'll bust that out either.

My Garmin iQue was dead nutz equal to my StreetPilot III before I gave it away and my EarthMate only benifits are a better search ability but that's the software of the program not the under laying data set.

(more)

Paul350Z

iTrader: (1)

(cont.)

In 1976 I was looking to buy a Pioneer 9191 cassette deck for the home. I rode my bike down to the local high-end home stereo place and asked for a demo. The salesman, Mr. Wexler, taught me a lesson that day. I had read all the reviews and the specs on it and it's nearest competition - the Akai GX-710D deck and had picked the Pioneer based on other people's opinions. Wrong. The salesman would sell me either unit but only after I had a listen to each deck using the same brand of tape recording the same source. The Akai sounded far better than the Pioneer and 29 years later that Akai is still working fine along side two Nakamichi's that have joined it. The lesson is that more expensive doesn't mean better nor worse and what someone's subject opinion of something doesn't mean jack either. The reason that so many manufactures are sucessful in any industry is that we all have different needs.

Because my wants, needs, and desires are different doesn't mean they blow (or suck) - it means they're different. (duhh) If you'd like to insult my budget on my Pioneer unit have at it as I have other things more important to me in life to spend my time and energy on!



PS: I'll help you find the guy that put the gun to your head to force you to buy that Cvic!

MSOsr

iTrader: (5)

I have the Pioneer Avic-9D and it works perfectly. Plays DVDs to beat the band, also.

I could have spent more, but I didn't have to.

tecni

iTrader: (28)

Did I say I got forced into buying it??? As far as I'm concerned I don't need to be forced into anything in order to complain about it. I bought it and I don't like it PERIOD. Some people settle for less and I'm sorry to hear that you're one of them.

Go ahead and take your axe... I'll be happier paying the extra buck for the M16 or perhaps even a Heckler and Koch Hmmmmm



Oh and paul... a couple thousand posts since 05?? Holy crap batman, you need to get out more.

abyss

wow getting personal. Take your beating like a man instead of the childish insults against someone who posted facts against an opinion...

blowncob

iTrader: (3)

just installed my avic n3 in my 05 roadster and this thing is a sweet unit!! the navi is extremley accurate and has lots of cool littel extras on it. only paid $1300 bucks installed.

does anyone how to do the lighting trick to where you can make your aftermarker cd player match the orange interior lights of car, heard this can be done but i cant find out anything? any help would be great.