Radio Cd Tape Player

From 3arf

Whether you are buying a new or used vehicle or you are buying it for yourself or for your driving age child, you will want a radio. A radio is nearly a necessity, slowly inching away from its one time "option" status. Look around; most cars have a radio of some kind. Today, car radios can be so much more though.

There are so many options for car sound systems today; AM/FM, Cassette player, CD player, auto tune, seek and scan, some even come with a recording ability. The list continues from my short collection but it just goes to say that you will have a lot to select from when it comes that time.

If you are buying a used car, you are pretty much stuck with what comes with the vehicle. Just try to make certain there is at least a radio in the car. Without one from the factory you will have a very hard time installing your custom sound system. Not that it is impossible but there are many other considerations; where to put it, will I have to cut the dashboard, antenna location and so on. So, the first important challenge, as far as radios go, for a used car, is to make certain there is one in it when you purchase it.

When you buy new you have an entire collection of options at your disposal. However, the more the options the higher the cost, so beware. New, fully optioned, car sound systems can easily run into the thousands of dollars. There are some things you absolutely need to include in a car radio though;

1) AM/FM: Just for reference, because we won't get into it in this article, AM stands for "Amplitude Modulation" and FM stands for "Frequency Modulation." Briefly, AM transmissions are dramatically affected by static and weather conditions whereas FM transmissions are not. For our purpose we just want to make certain the new car has at least an AM/FM radio.

2) Cassette Player: Although cassettes are rapidly being replaced with CDs, a cassette player is still an economical replacement for CDs. The up side of including a cassette player is that it is cheaper than the CD player. Personally, I believe storage and protection is better with the cassette as well. If you plan on keeping the vehicle for any length of time you may want to forego the cassette player for a more current CD player though.

3) CD Player: CDs are certainly the foremost mode of playing previously recorded music today. They are virtually indestructible, compact and readily available. The one drawback with CDs is that if your particular sound system includes an option for recording, you may find it difficult with a CD. The recording facet of CDs has just not matured into a simple, user-friendly operation yet. With a cassette you simply push record, the broadcast gets transmitted to the tape and you play it back. CDs, not so much. There are several other operations you must go through before you will be able to play back your CD.

4) Auto Tune, Scan, Seek: Many options, like auto tune, scan, seek and so on are so common place today that they too have basically become standard equipment on all but the very bottom of the line sound systems. Typically you will not have to request them specifically. One thing to look for on a radio with scan/seek though, is that you still have the option to manually tune. It can get very frustrating when the scan/seek feature repeatedly skips your station of choice when you know it will come in. The signal may not be good enough for your scan/seek system to recognize and pick up but it is probably good enough for your amateur ears.

Buying a new or used vehicle can be complicated enough. When it comes to your radio try to simplify things. Look for AM/FM with Cassette or CD on the stock radio. The other things are either already on the unit or are easily considered later when you want to update with your customized sound system.

Related Articles

Retrieved from "https://3arf.org/en/index.php?title=Radio_Cd_Tape_Player&oldid=12120"