I purchased the 2005 RL in Jan 05' and now have 19K miles. At first 5K oil change, they said there was a recall on the XM radio due to something about real time traffic updates so they replaced it. When I got in the car and listened to XM radio it didn't sound the same. The snare drum/syllable(spelling?)/treble type sounds were distorted and sounded static like. I brought the car back in and complained about it and they replace the XM radio again and it went away.

I recently had the XM radio replaced again to fix the delay issue (mine had it and my car was within the VIN's for the issue). Well, I picked the car up again (remember I've been driving around with the one that was working well for months) and again the quality of sound degraded. Delay issue is gone. I gave the acura service folks my whole explaination again. The techs listened to the radio and said it sounded fine compared to FM (duh) and didn't notice what I was talking about but they went ahead and replaced the XM radio again. I picked the car up and the sound quality is still the same so replacing it didn't fix it this time.

Any ideas what could be causing it? I did check the radio ID to ensure they had swapped them out. Could it be something other then the radio component? I need to schedule to bring it in again and want them to listen to it with same settings (base, treble ...etc.) on another RL on same song at same time so they can hear the difference.


Thanks,
Chris

 

The RL has numerous quality settings for the sound available in the nav display. They're outlined in the manual. (They go far beyond the usual treble and bass available in most cars.) Perhaps these settings were changed or reset other than to your liking. Before comparing sound after a dealer fix or replacement, I'd be certain that you compare with the settings set similarly in both instances. I'd also suggest listening to the same channels on XM, since the quality varies wildly, depending on the channel selected. (Sometimes, it varies from day to day since XM has recently increased its channel capacity.)

 

Thanks. I checked all the settings and they are the same. And yes, I always compare to same station. It is very strange this has happened to me twice and both times directly after they replaced the XM radio. I checked out a DVD audio today and it sounded great, so I know it probably isn't something with the stereo system itself ... seems localized to XM.


I'm also curious. I thought I had heard that the radio ID on XM radios in the RL will have the letters "RL" in the radio ID that gets displayed when you are on channel 1. I noticed with my newly replaced radio, it doesn't have RL in the ID. Does anyone know if in fact the ID should always have "RL" in it?

Thanks,
Chris

 

The CD, DVD Audio and iPod sound better than XM on my 05 RL. I would guess it is the station on XM not your equipment. Channel 71, Watercolors, always seems to sound far superior to say Channel 46, Top Tracks.

Kris