Holy crap Batman! Seriously? Are you kidding me? Is it really that complicated? Yes…yes, it is.
Long gone are the days of choosing a stereo that has a tape deck or CD player and pretty good AM/FM and shoving it into the dash. For those who don’t know it, I had to get mine replaced because my Clarion got fried. “How did you do that Tammy?” you may be wondering. It wasn’t my fault. It was a combo of older technology in the stereo and modern technology in my phone. The guy at Clarion said that the older models have been having the same problem. These modern stereos do firmware updates from time to time and it just so happened that mine did one the day it died. There is some file name in an iPhone game that is the same as an updater file for the Clarion. So it downloaded the file unbeknownst to me and when I started the car it tried to execute this file making it fry the circuitry. All I knew was the stereo was on, but it did nothing. It was even on when the car was off which means it was draining my battery. Luckily I had Simon disconnect it as a possible fix (which didn’t work), but at least it completely died at that point and no more battery draining.
So that began the search for a replacement. Man! Trying to find a stereo that has bluetooth, is iPhone compatible, and has no fancy video or navigation systems was tough. I found one at Future Shop only to learn that my car didn’t exist in their installation books (they had up to 2005 and 2010 onwards, my model is Euro one, not a “purely” North American one). ??!! Simon had no problems getting my Clarion installed. So onwards to an actual car audio place. It turned out they had another stereo that met my needs for $40 more and it has a nice big display. So I got it installed today. Unfortunately all is still not 100%. I can play the radio and use my phone through it, but I can’t use the music library on my phone…yet. A certain cable is needed and they were on reorder. Kenwood ran out and so all distributors ran out. It should be back in stock on Feb. 9th. I have my name down for one and I’ll have to go back to get it installed. *sigh* At least there will be no charge to do the install.
Here’s a pic of the new stereo.
As I was saying during the process, there is very little financial incentive in the aftermarket car audio industry. Even as recently as ’99, when we bought the Impreza, the audio systems that came with new cars were ready to be ripped out. In fact, we did: we picked up the Subaru and drove immediately to Sound Advice and got a new stereo.
These days, the stock audio in cars is pretty amazing. In seven years, the only thing I have done to the Mazda’s sound is adding an iPod adapter.
So that leaves the market to older cars (i.e. people who don’t spend a lot on their cars anyways) and they have $99 CD decks for those people. The other end is the audio enthusiast, who might not stop at just audio, and add DVD players, external amplifiers, subwoofers, etc. And there are $1000 head units for them. We were stuck in the middle, looking for quality without going crazy. 🙂
I’ll point out the additional evidence for good stereos in new cars: I’ve rented a Kia, a Dodge, a Ford and a Chevy in the past 18 months and each of their stereos was as good as I could wish. Sure, audiophiles might disagree, but they were good enough to keep. Of all of them, the only one that I would avoid (i.e. not buy the car) was the Ford, because it had Microsoft Sync. Yeah, I’m sure that will age well.