LinkBack URL
About LinkBacks
Reply With QuoteUntil this is integrated with a front end like Centrafuse, Road Runner or StreetDeck there is going to be some button clicking required to use the radio.Originally Posted by kb9kst
I follow what your saying now. I checked and the FM Radio was not checked so I did so and it displayed it. It showed as muted. I unmuted it, and STILL NO AUDIO.
Ok did some more playing. I had to go into the recording controls as well, enable the FM radio and make that the selected input. Now I am listening to tunes.
Is this supposed to be how the radio is setup?
Jason
Until this is integrated with a front end like Centrafuse, Road Runner or StreetDeck there is going to be some button clicking required to use the radio.
Well I have spent some time playing around with the GURU. This is my first time at trying a built in car radio/computer. I have always had a seperate laptop mounted but for space reasons I wanted an all in one unit. I am not looking to do CD/DVD playing etc. The car stereo is just fine for me along with mobile computer power.
The vehicle is a 2007 Chrysler Sebring Limited which has a built in "amplifier" for the facory Boston speakers. I have no complaints about the factory stereo audio quality. The first thing I discovered about trying to install the GURU is that Chrysler apparently doesnt have true double din sizing for the trim to access the stereo. An aftermarket double din kit made the GURU too wide to fit the trim opening and the GURU was too tall for my dash opening. So for now I have mounted it sitting back in the dash. No depth issues for attaching USB etc in the back of the GURU.
Maybe I missed something as far as the wiring for power goes but I have found that I needed to wire power a little different that the photo shown in the store. The power button is set to hibernate in the power options of Windows. I have the "Power" plug black wire going to ground as the picture shows. The yellow ACC wire is actually hot (+12V) and the "B/U" wire (which I thought stood for back up) actually is the switched B+ (accessory) and will put the unit in and out of hibernate.
Now for the built in AM/FM radio. What can I say, um it sucks!! The radio doesn't start back up when coming out of hibernate. You have to start the radio application even if you had the stereo going when the unit went into hibernate. I suppose I could just set the GURU to power off and on with the accessory wire which I may choose to do SHOULD I KEEP the GURU installed. The stereo will start up when the computer is started from a fresh boot.
Now for the audio quality of the built in radio. WOW is it bad!!! I say that when I am not even a music enthusiast like many of you on here are. I first hooked up the internally amplified speaker wires. I can hear a constant humming/whine in the back ground ONLY when the built in stereo is activated. The Windows OS sounds are superb. The volume control takes too big of steps if you ask me for the stereo. I have played with the audio sliders and you get very little volume control of the stereo audio. With FM radio input and output maxed you can get fairly loud audio out of the built in amp but you go from zero volume to loud in just one step. No soft music with those settings and if you lower the FM radio sliders then you get no top end volume.
Since my vehicle has a built in amplifier I tried hooking up the the 5.1 surround sound connector. I am using a PAC C2R-CHY3 wiring kit and since my car has the built in amplifier the inputs into the Amp are only left and right channel so I am limited to hooking up only the front right/left outputs (the same was true of the GURU amplified outputs). This factory AMP does put out sound to all the speakers though. The audio I got was amplified some but I have no top end audio at all. And yes, the background whine/humming is still present only in the built in radio audio. VERY disappointed.
I am now left with the decision of am I going to use the GURU or not. I am leaning towards it going on the work bench and staying there.
Jason
Two things here:
1. FM radio noise and poor reception - Lots of cars have diversity antennas. What does this mean? Well I am not an electrical engineer but the gist of this is that they don't work well with after market radios. From my understanding, they are designed to dramatically improve performance on factory radios as well as lower multi path distortion. Aftermarket FM radios work great in our scion with a single antenna. They work horribly in our Highlander that has multiple antennas. We found this out the painful way while doing HD radio testing. This can be fixed by adding a standard antenna to the car. There might be some other type of combining aftermarket solution that I don't know about as well.
2. The volume is VERY sensitive. This was annoying at first but here are several things we have done to work around this problem until front end software is developed.
My main advice here - Play around with the sliders - From memory, I believe the volume knob on the device controls the master volume. Fool around with the wav and FM levels. Set them as low as possible and use your master volume for controlling the radio. If your FM and WAV volume are all the way at the top you are going to have very little "master range" when using your knob.
Other FM noise - When not using the FM radio in our test car, we always mute the FM radio input in windows otherwise that audio source is always playing.
All of these volume and noise issues should be able to be fixed by using the sliders and using the FM Mute function in the control panel. Hopefully in the future these will be seamlessly controlled by a front end package like Centrafuse, StreetDeck, Roadrunner or plugins made by their developers.
It is possible we made a type there on the accessory vs. power. we will double check that.
Regarding the FM radio noise....The vehicle has a single antenna that has a powered amplifier for the antenna. The noise is there regardless of whether or not I have the antenna amplifier powered or not and regardless of whether or not I have the antenna plugged into the radio. The noise is a radio problem.
I can mute the radio audio and I get rid of the noise. The computer audio is crisp and clear.
Jason
i was looking at getting a pioneer AVIC Z3 for my 07 Xrunner, when i ran across this little beauty, in what ways would it be better or worse than the Z3 as far as audio quality/ versatility and GPS??? cause other wise i was just gonna get a regular carputer and try to integrate every thing... im new please help.
Here is a link to the audio noise I get with the built in am/fm radio. I recorded this on the bench and it is the same when installed in the vehicle. The recording is when from when the GURU comes out of hibernate. If I mute the FM radio input in the sound controls the noise goes away. It is coming from the radio. Doesn't matter if I am tuned to a functioning station or not. Also doesn't matter if it is a fresh boot or coming out of hibernate.
http://s94.photobucket.com/albums/l1...radionoise.flv
I have ordered a DEI HD radio tuner along with Mitch's cable. I will give that a try and see if I get the same noise. I doubt I will.
Jason
I can't see your video. Did you use a trial video converter?
What is the make and model of your car? I am curious to lookup your antenna type.
That should be a good test.
I have not tested the Z3, but I have been very happy with the audio quality from the guru. kb9kst has been very unhappy with his FM audio quality but we haven't been able to replicate that here and it could be related to antenna or installation issues. The answer to this should come with more troubleshooting.
I think most people buying this unit will be focusing on the versatility of having a PC in their car and will be using digital media formats like mp3s, Video files, Podcsts, ect.
As far as your GPS is concerned - For the most part, A GPS is a GPS. They all pinpoint your position within a few feet. The secret sauce in navigation which some people genericly refer to as "GPS" can be broken down into 3 main areas:
- UI or User Interface software
- Navigation data (the location, speed, and details about the roads and POIS (points of interest))
- Navigation routing engine that uses the above data
The biggest difference with a PC in your car vs. an after market device like the avic is that you can quickly switch navigation vendors, ui vendors, or routing vendors to suite your specific needs or desires.
It is also very cheap to do map upgrades as they become available. I always talk about garmin's features but brand new map data with online connected features like gas prices and weather is only 50$. Garmin Link
The UI leaves a bit to be desired with destination entry on the garmin but that is always being tweaked by hackers and developers on the forum. . There are also tons of Front end UI programs that forum members have made.
A lot of people do that just to get started on a budget. It takes more time and a bit more space in your car. If you have an unlimited space and unlimited time budget, build your own car PC. It will give you a lot more control over your final feature set and save a few dollars.
Checkout the newbie section:
http://www.mp3car.com/vbulletin/newbie/
Checkout this sticki:
http://www.mp3car.com/vbulletin/newb...ere-start.html
Here is another link:
http://www.mp3car.com/index.php/Gett...uting-101.html
Posting Permissions
Bookmarks