In Car mp3

[Paddy]

I got it from here.
I bought it in the shop about a year ago.

[uberlad]

Cool - I'll give them a once over.

[Kooldino]

Don't buy Sony audio Equipment. There stuff looks nice, but is inferior.

Fortunately, my car came with an MP3 player (Kenwood Z828). Not the greatest thing in the world, but it works, and has very good sound quality.

[uberlad]

Now you see, that's exactly the kind of thing I've read. Can you point me to any kind of test that shows this? Is this a bizarre prejudice that happened five years ago and people still haven't got over?

I'm not planning on running it through an amp, and I don't plan on changing my speakers unless the default ones are really nasty, and I'm primarily gonna be running mp3's and radio.

I can get a pioneer or a panasonic for about the same price - can anyone come forward as saying they're good?

Let's face it - I am utterly clueless in car audio and just need someone to come up with a firm 'do this because of this'.

Uberlad

[Wombat]

Bizarre prejudice? No, it really is true. Sony used to have a pretty decent name, and a couple levels of product lines. Generally, once a product line earns a good reputation, they start cheaping out on it, using inferior components while charging superior prices. Also, Sony just charges a lot for the brand name. $500 worth of Sony stuff is nowhere near as good as $500 worth of Denon, Onkyo, or just about any other manufacturer.

[uberlad]

This may well be true, but I am rather stuck for choice in the sub £200 mp3 car stereo market. All the other players either lack ID3 tag reading, have no removable face plate, or for some other cheap style-based reason I don't want them.

I am at least glad to hear that the Sony opinion is widespread (at least it's confirmation) but if a model is cheap to start with then surely they can only improve it?

What I need is about a thousand hardware sites reviewing these things - I can always get at least an idea of which way the wind is blowing with PC hardware.......

Uberlad