super20g

Hey guys,

I picked up a 06 TSX w/ Navi and the radio reception is pretty poor.

Has anyone else noticed a problem with this?

The stations I am familiar with come in, but they are scratchy and cut out at times. I do not have problems with the same stations in my other cars.

Anyone have any ideas?

nj2pa2nc

I keep it on xm or play c.d's because of the poor radio reception

LukeaTron

This is a somewhat common complaint, especially from people who are not near large cities. It's because the antenna is printed on the top of the rear window (looks just like the defroster lines). It just doesn't get the gain that a traditional antenna does. I don't know if there is anything that can be done to improve it.

LuvMyTSX

Yup, I hardly listen to the radio. Thank God for the 6 disc CD changer.

super20g

I am in Louisville, KY... A fairly large city where most of our radio stations come from.

Dang, that sucks, maybe I will plumb in some sort of auxilery antenna.

Anyone else is welcome to speak up about their mods and what they think a dealer would say if we visited one under warrenty?

MMsTSX

well my radio reception is perfectly clear.
speaking of AM/FM of course.
is there any tints on the windows?

LukeaTron

It's only a problem if you're out away from the broadcast antennas. I don't have a problem at all the few times I do listen to the radio (when Penguins games are on mostly) but I can see downtown from my house. I do notice that it gets staticky pretty quickly when I go down into a valley.

nj2pa2nc

If I am in certain areas (near NY or Philly stations) the radio reception is good. I travel a lot so I have to keep changing the stations if I use fm. That is why xm works for me.

LukeaTron

I think that's the main reason why Acura felt they could justifiably reduce the AM/FM reception in favor of aesthetics (not having an antenna poking out a conspicuous angle from the car). It's a bit of a shame that terrestrial based digital radio isn't catching on more. Analog radio will be all but non-existent 10 years from now.

CallmeNam

I got Sirius!

super20g

No tint on the windows. I guess it is not horrible in town, but it gets annoying pretty quickly. That's a shame that a new car has worst reception than a 20 yr old car, 10 yr old car, etc....

Too bad the XM antenna couldnt double for a FM/AM antenna?

LukeaTron

Definitely not. The XM antenna is designed to pull a very high frequency signal being broadcast from space (i.e. straight up). An AM/FM antenna pulls a relatively low frequency signal being broadcast from the horizon. Neither is any good at all at picking up the signal from the other.

LuvMyTSX

It doesn't seem to matter how close I am to a city, actually. I live less than 60 minutes from both NYC and Philly, yet my radio reception is still not great. Yes, my back 3 windows are tinted, but the reception was the same before they were tinted. It's the built-in antenna that's the culprit. Cars I had in the past with antennas on the trunk had better reception. Like it was mentioned, it's for aesthetics.

LukeaTron

I think your problem is an overabundance of stations being picked. I think the tuner is having issues picking the signal from the noise. I suspect the antenna is working just fine in your case. Too well it could be said.

litesout

I live in Orlando and have no issues with mine. I pick up all the locals just fine and even some of the more distant stations from Tampa, Melbourne, Daytona. It's not quite as good as my last car with a pillar mounted antenna and an aftermarket deck, but better than my roommates Camry (by far) and a lot of other vehicles I'm in regularly.

super20g

litesout, is the swithcblade key mod as big of a pita as it used to be?

conig

iTrader: (1)

they used to have a nicer one i had in a car a couple years ago but i could pick up stations in central fl/ga from nt fla when i had something similiar.

http://www.jcwhitney.com/autoparts/P...up?Ntt=antenna

AMuze

What you are experiencing is called poor weak signal performance, or a poor mono usable sensitivity level. Having an in glass antenna is not a problem in todays market, they tend to work well enough to satisfy most situations. Problems with in glass antennas usually arise for AM listeners. They are not as good as a whip antenna due to the differences in the ground plane, but work well enough if engineered correctly.
"Plumbing" in a aux antenna is not an easy task, as you will need to properly match the impedance of the system and deal with any preamp that may be present.
Measuring the weak signal performance once the tuner is installed in a vehicle is not easy, and it is not likely that a service tech will be able to perform this task. Even if they were properly trained to make the measurements, it would be almost impossible to do this in the service bays they have.
It is doubtful that your tuner is having a hard time with too many stations as someone mentioned, this would be possible in Europe where the stations are spaced 100KHz apart as opposed to our 200KHz spacing. At 200KHz spacing it's easy to make a well performing tuner. And if you were having trouble with detecting the actual from the noise floor, this would again be due to poor weak signal performance. Or as some people call it "DXing"
How to fix this is not so easy, as it will either be the way Acura designed the system, or you will have a hard time getting the dealership to understand that there is a problem. Start by finding a route that is consistently poor at a certain distance from the transmitter, then take note of at what point the performance gets to a level that is acceptable. If the tuner has RDS make sure you disable any feature that is called AF switching. This is a feature that will hunt for a station that is broadcasting the same content, and then switch to it if the signal is of better quality (very popular in europe and slightly used in the boston area). Disable all RDS functionality to keep the problem simple. Repeat this test in a different car to see how your system compares. Once you have some real data you will be able to take the tech on a test drive, they will hear it for themselves, and be able to give you a better answer of the performance expectation of that system.
In short it could be a bad antenna connection, a bad preamp, or just the way Acura decided to design the system. They are extremely conscious of cost and trade-offs they can make in the car and still keep costumers.

hope this is helpful,
--Amuze

kingkong222

my radio works just fine. The reception is quite clear.

conig

iTrader: (1)

kepp in mind area, mines find in the city but between here and atlanta/pensacola/jacksonville there literally nothing for towns. thats when it happens the most it does not happen to any other of our cars either(one antenae in glass). I will be ordering that booster above sometime after christmas just for giggles when i had one before I could listen to my favorite rock station 300miles away.

whats am??? lol

R.Tosh

This is kind of off topic but my Sirius radio is scratchy no matter what station I have it on. I know I can hook up the Aux-out on the Sirius receiver, but what do I connect that to? I've tried connecting it to my USASpec iPod module and the 'fuzzyness' goes away but then there is a high pitch whine that goes with the cars RPM. I have an 04 TSX non-nav. and without XM of course. I've tried searching google, but this is TSX specific.

AMuze

It sounds like you have a bad integration of your satellite receiver into your car audio system. Scratchy is kind of a loose term, can you be more specific? Does it always do it, can you wiggle the connection cables and hear differences in the distortion? Do you have the output level of the satellite reveiver maxed out and are possible clipping the audio somewhere down stream?
It's normal to hear engine whine like you do out of the AUX port. There is no filtering being done on that line and the car is emitting a lot of broadband noise.
Do a few experiments and see what happens.

--Amuze

tdottsx

i have crappy reception from my am/fm as well. i just dont listen to the radio anymore.

R.Tosh

The Sirius reception is scratchy the same as if you drove under large power lines.

Also I've noticed the Radio's EQ Gain to be way lower than my iPod or a CD. What I mean is the iPod at volume 15 is the same as the radio at volume 32 (with scratchy/fuzzy reception). The interference in the radio does mostly go away when I turn it down to 15 or so, but then I can barely hear the radio.
btw there is no volume adjustment on the Sirius radio for FM frequency volume. Only for Line-Out.

AMuze

R Tosh.

We need to seperate the issues you are posting, as they are now becoming convoluted.

1) It's strange the type of distortion that you are describing in XM. XM is digital modulation and pretty immune to power line interference due to the additional encoding that is done at the transmitter side. AM on the other hand, is very sensitive to power lines and the changes in received amplitude they cause.

2) What you are describing is not radio EQ; rather, it is what we call system level matching. It is standard for a car audio system to be adjusted so that the CD is considered to be the reference level (i.e. 0dB), then the FM is adjusted about -6dB below that. This comes from a lot of psychoacoustics that audio manufactures have done. It allows a more seamless transitions form source to source. One has to be careful though when doing the FM level match, as the type of source material is important. FM works on a concept of frequency deviation, the more the transmitter deviates from it's center frequency the stronger the received signal will sound. This is why POP and Rock stations always use compression before they transmit their signal, so they can get the loudest signal at your radio. Understand that the strength of the received signal does not necessarily equal a loud detected content through your speakers.

3) If the distortion in the radio goes away, for both FM and XM based on the volume setting, then one has to think that there is a problem with clipping in the audio chain. Do you know what clipping sounds like? If not, search on line for some examples of what clipped audio sounds like, it has a very unique sound, almost like a tearing sound. If you can demonstrate to your service tech that your audio system is not performing correctly and actually have done the leg work to say why (and have a way to show how to make it come and go), you have a good chance of getting it fixed. Remember, it is always in your best interest to design an experiment that will demonstrate the problem, and then illustrate how to make it go away. This allows the tech to be able to reproduce it and then determine if it is the way that Acura designed the system.

--AMuze

matvey

I used to own an 04 TSX, and recently upgraded to an 07 TSX. Radio reception went way down. Not sure what has changed, but the 07 radio is much worse.

MBA

AMuze

what do you mean by reception? stops on less stations during a seek, gets less stations overall, has more distortion on weaker signals?

R.Tosh

I was listening to my Sirius today and it wasn't bad at all. The reception seems to come and go. I dont have XM or the XM button in my car. Its a 2004. I'm just listening on 107.5 FM.
The Sirius is just quiet I guess. Its as if I had my iPod on an FM transmitter, and the iPod volume was only 1/4. I can turn up the deck as loud as I want, but it wont be very loud and I will get alot of fuzz/hiss from the radio.

Maybe I'm just used to listening to my iPod with the USASpec module. A Direct Line-In.

Is there a way to change the dB on the deck?

LukeaTron

Your problem is that FM transmitter in your Sirius radio is too weak. It has nothing to do with the car.