The radio with the BOSE system is particularly awful compared with the pretty dull sounding CD player.

Why would this be? I know FM isn't quite up to CD standards, but the difference here is extreme. How did they get it to sound so bad?

 

I agree, I have the stock radio (non blows) and the radio sounds absolutly shitty.

 

Clarion CD player-stereo sounds great for a stock stereo CD. Radio will and always will suck.

JMS in TX

 

your comparing Analog to Digital. where Digital wins all the time. For examples, don't your new Digital cell phone sound better than you old Analog one? Doesn't DVD look better than VHS on a HDTV than the old projection TV?

Digital doesn't degrade with copy or distant. FM/AM radio require you to pick up analog wave signals beaming in the air. but the signal is only good if you are in range of the Station. So stuff like air, pollution, trees, solar flares, etc.. gums up the signal, so when it hits your radio it sounds the way it does.
CD is digital media. the song is convert to 1's and 0's (like those old LP where on notch makes a different sound) and a combo of 1's and 0's make a certain sound once the hardward decodes it. But unlike the LP which gets worn, the 1's and 0's never changes. So a Fresh copy from the studio remains fresh. nothing to gum up the signals. but you do get your dreaded cd skips if the 1's and 0's are missed.
If you are a big radio fan, get XM radio. It receives DIGITAL signals broadcast from satallites. 1's and 0's beamed right to your radio, CD quality. See Silver Bullit II, radio don't always have to sux

hope that nerdy response clears it up for ya

 

yea, i understand A vs D. but... this difference is Huge. Huge! It's like listening to the radio over the phone. It's like it's in a box, compared to the CD, and the CD isn't good!

Normal radios don't sound like that. Why are we blessed with really terrible radio performance?

 

Plus radio stations use a lot of dynamic compression in their sound EQ which mushes together the soft parts and the loud parts. Ever listen to a song you know well on the radio, that has like some really hard-hitting part coming up, then it gets there and it's like totally a let-down? Dynamic compression. The big boom you expected has been muted down just like the quiet parts have been slightly amplified.

Unless they explicitely add it (which isn't common), CD players don't have dynamic compression, so you get the full range of the volume, from the delicate quiet parts to the hard-hitting booms.

 

Well could be different factors, like crappy radio, em interferences, bad signals, etc..

Plus the staging is different too, normal radio has one output or direct. your car has front and back. try fading the sound to the front speakers. Also the sound is bouncing all over the place inside the car. SO you're right when you said its like its in a box. Same reason your cd don't sound as good as in a regular cd player.

 

What can ya say? The Blose system is flat out crap. Replace the whole thing.

 

The radio- well, the signal strength matters, the antenna gain matters, the quality of the connections matters, the quality of the components matters, adjacent stations can interfere depending on how well their transmitter(s) is/are controlling the center frequency and sideband emissions, and the radio itself may be crap (good possibility)- just not pulling out the carrier properly- this should not be a problem, but if the PLL is not tracking well or some other electronics are misaligned or out of specification, then the radio will not decode the signal properly, and the R+L, R-L signals will be screwed up, and the FM sound will be substandard. AM is always substandard due to the compressed frequency range of the transmitted sound.

The speakers are a second critical component- this is an opinion, based on being around, building electronics, loudspeakers, etc for about 35 years...
Bose and other companies that use tiny speakers, compromise everything in their designs- mostly to fool people's ears.... I find that the compromises used by Bose designers- use a dinky speaker and make it move a long way (distortion) to try to move air even though it is no longer coupled to the air mass, makes the sound unlistenable- some people call it "crisp"- to me it is tinny and unbalanced.
Loudspeakers roll off in their ability to produce sound at a wavelength below approximately 1/4 of the effective diameter of the speaker. Below this point, the speakers decouple from the room air and begin to put less energy into the air, hence getting "quieter"- thus, the Bose drivers decouple from the air and flap below relatively high frequencies (like 1kHz).
They do a lot of tricks to make the cabinets resonate at certain frequencies, and then equalize the signal like crazy around the resonances to try to make sound "OK", but this causes hopelessly inefficient operation- older Bose speakers take an enormous amount of power, yet still sound relatively quiet.
On the other hand, a real loudspeaker, such as a Klipschorn, is much less compromised, and uses acoustical transformers (exponential horn approximations) to couple to the air mass efficiently- this makes the speaker more than 50 times more efficient than the typical speaker (although it is a bit large...).
So, I would chuck the Bose speakers, and the Bose radio for an aftermarket unit. I have had Pioneer, Kenwood, Alpine (not impressed especially for the money), Clarion, Sony, Blaupunkt (also not impressed for the money), some were good, some were bad. The best CD changer I have had is the 12 disk Pioneer- some units had problems with the mechanism, but it has been great for 4 years.
So, try something new and better....