Huge disappointment in new car FM receivers

[CJVx]

It’s been a while since I had a “modern” car. My newest car up until this point was year 2007, therefore my experience with factory installed audio systems on late model cars was very limited.

That said, I just brought home a new Tesla 3, and what the hell, the FM is absolutely terrible. It sounds like they digitalized it. Why would you digitalize an analog broadcast? I also noticed this phenomena in my brother’s new suburu. Is this the direction new receivers are going? If so, one could only believe this is some effort to deter people from bothering with FM and deal directly with streaming sources. Which BTW, the factory equipped media server sounds better than the FM in this car. For some reason this is really bothering me. My FM at home to me sounds great, and it always sounded decent in my previous cars.

 

[noogies]

FM tuners are a good place for car manufacturers to cut corners because nobody (except for you, me and a few other oddballs on this site) gives a flying fig about FM reception anymore.

 

[Hyfi]

My loaded USB stick sounds way better than the FM or Sirius in my new Santa Fe.

 

[62caddy]

Terrestrial radio is still the most prevalent source for "wireless" listening. DXing capability in a 2007 Cadillac DTS I've been driving lately is at least as good as any home tuner I've ever had with excellent sound quality to boot.

Maybe the speakers in the OP's car are the weak point...

 

[noogies]

My loaded USB stick sounds way better than the FM or Sirius in my new Santa Fe.

See?

Maybe the speakers in the OP's car are the weak point...

Good point. How does other source material sound?

 

[Route 66]

Fortunately for me, my love of audio doesn't extend past the walls of my listening room.

With all the road, sirens and engine noises going on out there, I don't even bother trying to get my car stereo to sound good, but that's just me.

 

[CJVx]

Terrestrial radio is still the most prevalent source for "wireless" listening. DXing capability in a 2007 Cadillac DTS I've been driving lately is at least as good as any home tuner I've ever had with excellent sound quality to boot.

Maybe the speakers in the OP's car are the weak point...

It’s not the speakers or power, I am actually impressed with the thoughtful speaker arrangement and decent power provided. I can stream off my phone with its content or even YouTube, and also with the car’s included media server and all other sources sound better than the FM. The FM has that poor “bitrate” sounds with grainy highs and next to no imaging. My previous 2007 was a Comand APS equipped Mercedes and that FM was not bad at all, despite the possibility of something digital going on in there. I feel like these late model cars have some sort of pressure to phase out the public from listening to FM. Conspiracy? I wouldn’t be surprised.

 

[62caddy]

It’s not the speakers or power, I am actually impressed with the thoughtful speaker arrangement and decent power provided. I can stream off my phone with its content or even YouTube, and also with the car’s included media server and all other sources sound better than the FM. The FM has that poor “bitrate” sounds with grainy highs and next to no imaging. My previous 2007 was a Comand APS equipped Mercedes and that FM was not bad at all, despite the possibility of something digital going on in there. I feel like these late model cars have some sort of pressure to phase out the public from listening to FM. Conspiracy? I wouldn’t be surprised.

Whether that particular tuner may is either defective or was sub-par to begin with I cannot say.

Regardless, I doubt it's representative of any general trend towards inferior car radio design.

 

[Hyfi]

It’s not the speakers or power, I am actually impressed with the thoughtful speaker arrangement and decent power provided. I can stream off my phone with its content or even YouTube, and also with the car’s included media server and all other sources sound better than the FM. The FM has that poor “bitrate” sounds with grainy highs and next to no imaging. My previous 2007 was a Comand APS equipped Mercedes and that FM was not bad at all, despite the possibility of something digital going on in there. I feel like these late model cars have some sort of pressure to phase out the public from listening to FM. Conspiracy? I wouldn’t be surprised.

My Hyudai had a buried setting in the audio settings that doubled the sound quality when set to some surround setting as opposed to the factory default. Took me 2 weeks to find it.

 

[rcs16]

(except for you, me and a few other oddballs on this site) gives a flying fig about FM reception anymore.

I feel like these late model cars have some sort of pressure to phase out the public from listening to FM.

What a load of crap imo
Bottom line, Tesla 3 has a crap or faulty or is set wrong as said above, radio and be done with your assumptions.

 

[noogies]

What a load of crap imo
Bottom line, Tesla 3 has a crap or faulty or is set wrong as said above, radio and be done with your assumptions.

Don't be shy, tell us how you really feel. If you can find the words.

 

[hjames]

Hey, go tell TESLA how you really feel -=
getting a CRAP radio in a car these days is unacceptable!

 

[damacman]

It’s been a while since I had a “modern” car. My newest car up until this point was year 2007, therefore my experience with factory installed audio systems on late model cars was very limited.

That said, I just brought home a new Tesla 3, and what the hell, the FM is absolutely terrible. It sounds like they digitalized it. Why would you digitalize an analog broadcast? I also noticed this phenomena in my brother’s new suburu. Is this the direction new receivers are going? If so, one could only believe this is some effort to deter people from bothering with FM and deal directly with streaming sources. Which BTW, the factory equipped media server sounds better than the FM in this car. For some reason this is really bothering me. My FM at home to me sounds great, and it always sounded decent in my previous cars.

Hmmm ... https://www.soundandvision.com/content/why-tesla-killing-am-radio

 

[vwestlife]

That said, I just brought home a new Tesla 3, and what the hell, the FM is absolutely terrible. It sounds like they digitalized it. Why would you digitalize an analog broadcast? I also noticed this phenomena in my brother’s new suburu.

What you're probably hearing is HD Radio. In the USA, many FM (and some AM) stations transmit a low-bitrate digital audio stream in addition to their analog signal. Many newer car radios support it. If you listen carefully when you tune in a station transmitting it, after a few seconds you can hear the audio transition from analog to digital.

Sometimes, if you're really lucky, either you won't notice the difference, or the digital stream might actually sound slightly better than the analog FM audio. But usually the audio quality gets worse, with noticeable digital compression artifacts, because most FM stations using HD Radio transmit multiple audio streams (HD1, HD2, etc.), so the amount of bitrate allocated to each stream gets reduced -- usually 48 kbps or less.

And if you live or drive in a fringe signal area, you may get annoying constant transitions back and forth between analog and digital reception of the station. Because of this, there is usually an option buried in the radio's setup menu to disable HD Radio and revert to analog-only reception.

This video confirms that Tesla vehicles have HD Radio. Supposedly it can be disabled, but a quick web search didn't bring up any specific instructions on how to do that.