Car radio quality?

Question

This is about the car radio reception. For months I drove brand new AVIS cars in the USA and the 99.5 FM WCRB sounded as if a home theater is playing it. No noise, no disturbance. Clean and pure classical music. My friend now bought a VW Passat 2005 and I bought a Honda Civic 1999. FM radio reception for 99.5 WCRB and 89.7 WGBH are noisy. Why is this the case????? I really do not understand..

when I set the player for the LOCAL SEEK - it does play a few channels without any hissing noise. So I am sure some of them work just fine. The comparison here is between my car and all those rental cars which caught the most important channels clean too.

I fixed in an after - market SONY MP3 player with FM radio.

Answer 1

If there are no outside factors (new buildings constructed, new trees planted, signal from station is weaker, etc) then the problem is most likely that these cars have either lower quality radios or lower quality antennas. Or it could be both.

Answer 2

Where is your factory antenna located?

If it's built into the rear window glass, there is probably an antenna amplifier in the vehicle that needs to be activated. This is done by connecting the power antenna wire in the harness to the power antenna output on the new deck. Installers often overlook this step on vehicles with in-glass antennas.