I have two Sony headunits. They're pretty much bottom of the barrel $100 units that I bought just to replace to have a CD player and because my factory systems sucked pretty bad.
I'm having problems with one of the factory speakers. (Kind of muffled and distorts bad. 19 year old speakers)..so I decided to take out the unit today to see if any of my connections had went bad or something.
I've had this for around 3 years now, and in my other car, around 5 years...no problems. From what I could judge by looking through the slats, I saw some pretty decent quality components. Saw some good quality Japanese capacitors and overall, looked like they did a decent job, though it was no great inspection.
So what's the deal? Every car audio forum I look on, all you see is "SONY SUCKSS!!" everywhere...They can't possibly be that bad, or else I would have already had a dead headunit!
Any input?
I'm having problems with one of the factory speakers. (Kind of muffled and distorts bad. 19 year old speakers)..so I decided to take out the unit today to see if any of my connections had went bad or something.
I've had this for around 3 years now, and in my other car, around 5 years...no problems. From what I could judge by looking through the slats, I saw some pretty decent quality components. Saw some good quality Japanese capacitors and overall, looked like they did a decent job, though it was no great inspection.
So what's the deal? Every car audio forum I look on, all you see is "SONY SUCKSS!!" everywhere...They can't possibly be that bad, or else I would have already had a dead headunit!
Any input?
Sony got a bad reputation, especially for their CD player head units, a few years back and it's stuck for a lot of people. The CD players would generally last only about 1 month past the warranty period. The laser pickup would fail. The pickups were so poorly designed that the suspension for them would actually fail on the shelf. Most of the techs I knew quit working on them because the replacement pickups were often bad out of the box. I don't think that they have resolved this issue but I haven't had any experience with Sony products lately.
Other than that, their equipment is generally made to be used but not abused. Since most people abuse their equipment (always trying to get more from it), it doesn't always hold up. If it is used as it was designed to be used, it's no better or worse than anything else in its price range.
Other than that, their equipment is generally made to be used but not abused. Since most people abuse their equipment (always trying to get more from it), it doesn't always hold up. If it is used as it was designed to be used, it's no better or worse than anything else in its price range.
Sony generally doesn't sound as good or perform as well as almost any other well known brand at a similar price. I've never liked thier products, they remind me of Bose, a lot of marketing hype and little else. When I was a repair tech in a former life, we used to cringe every time we were stuck working on a Sony unit, they just suck all the way around.
Mike
Mike
Perry,
I see what you mean. I rarely ask too much of the unit. 1/4 or 1/2 the volume usually. I don't ask too much from it.
Nevertheless...I still don't think they're that bad, especially since they were like $90 on sale.
Michael,
Yeah I've never really seen any other Sonys so I guess I really don't know...
Like since when did they star to "suck" and is there current stuff still in that category?
I see what you mean. I rarely ask too much of the unit. 1/4 or 1/2 the volume usually. I don't ask too much from it.
Nevertheless...I still don't think they're that bad, especially since they were like $90 on sale.
Michael,
Yeah I've never really seen any other Sonys so I guess I really don't know...
Like since when did they star to "suck" and is there current stuff still in that category?
Since forever. Sony marches to thier own drummer, the way they design equipment is archaic at best. Several years ago, my Uncle wanted to replace an aging Magnavox CD player in his above average stereo setup, so he found what seemed to be a good deal on a mid-range Sony. I was there visiting when he asked me to have a listen to his new player. We listened to a couple of his discs and I was really underwhelmed with what I heard. Not wanting to seem insulting, I discretely asked if I could try some of my own music, something I was more familiar with. I put in Pink Floyd "Dark Side of The Moon" and couldn't beleive how ordinary and flat sounding it was. I think he must have sensed my disappointment, and asked what I thought. I was honest with him and said I didn't think it sounded very good and told him that maybe there was something wrong with it and should be returned for a replacement. That's when he told me he had already done that, and the replacement was just as bad as the original. So he took the Sony out, put the Magnavox back in, and it sounded much better. He eventually ended up with a Denon that I believe he is still using to this day. I can't comment on the current state of Sony products due to having them on my "won't even consider" list. Because of what I've seen how they build stuff, and how much dissapointment I've experienced in how they perform, I will never buy a Sony product.
Mike
Mike
I remember In the Mid 90's Sony was all the rage (I am a fan), there designs looked great, even by today's standards. None of there gear ever blew me away sound wise but they worked well and had decent features (car & home). They also had high'ish end design teams working on some very nice stuff.
Then it all went to ****. Big ugly buttons and gaudy plastic work suddenly covered everything, the sound went from average to poor in most products and I couldn't help but sense that the PR department had taken over the running of the company.
That was all about 15 years ago and every time I check out there new car audio gear in the shops it still looks and sounds distinctly average. The home gear I have heard has been mostly average also.
I did hear about 8 years ago that in a bid for production efficiency they had reduced there parts bin for developing/manufacturing products, from around 13,000,000 separate items, down to around 4,000,000. I cant promise these numbers are accurate but it was in the order of millions and the downsize ratio is about right from memory. My point here is that this company is a production giant. Cost is number one at this level of the game and managing/steering this type of company towards great sound could be a long way down the priority list.
I cant remember the last time I had a recommendation from a friend for a Sony unit, except for a TV, but even that was some time ago.
Cheers
Dean
Then it all went to ****. Big ugly buttons and gaudy plastic work suddenly covered everything, the sound went from average to poor in most products and I couldn't help but sense that the PR department had taken over the running of the company.
That was all about 15 years ago and every time I check out there new car audio gear in the shops it still looks and sounds distinctly average. The home gear I have heard has been mostly average also.
I did hear about 8 years ago that in a bid for production efficiency they had reduced there parts bin for developing/manufacturing products, from around 13,000,000 separate items, down to around 4,000,000. I cant promise these numbers are accurate but it was in the order of millions and the downsize ratio is about right from memory. My point here is that this company is a production giant. Cost is number one at this level of the game and managing/steering this type of company towards great sound could be a long way down the priority list.
I cant remember the last time I had a recommendation from a friend for a Sony unit, except for a TV, but even that was some time ago.
Cheers
Dean
Well, I really don't know much about SONY car audio ... but I do know about SONY the company and it's products. In that respect, I'm assuming that the car audio toes the company line (and from the comments so far, that seems reasonable to me).
SONY is a huge company ... people seem to intuitively know this, but at times it seems like even then they underestimate the scope of this giant. They OEM for so many companies it's not funny ... but OEM products are not designed exclusively by SONY. Right away there's a clue ... SONY is capable of good products, or more precisely, products that run the gamut from barely adequate to excellent ... but for their own stuff, they have a specific fingerprint you can find on all their stuff. The "company line", if you will.
And there is where SONY both annoys and rewards it's customers. SONY products are targeted ... they have a buyer profile of you (or someone else) that is reflected in the product itself. Some SONY gear is designed for serious buyers, but is priced accordingly. Most ordinary consumers never really encounter these products ... it's too rich for their blood.
Some other stuff is designed for semi-serous buyers ... again, it's never bargain priced, but at least it's attainable for ordinary mortals. These are the products I am asked most about, and I find SONY's choices somewhat lacking when it comes to features (too many useless ones, what we in the Audio Business used to call "bells and whistles", somewhat akin to the auto industry's "chrome and woodgrain" mentality) and not enough pure performance. Still, some of these products can be decent buys, but only in comparison to the "me too" competition, in contrast to the "actually get it" competition I tend to recommend to people I know who still ask me stuff from time to time.
Note: I was in the Audio Business years ago, not now.
The last group of SONY stuff, and from what I see the Car Audio generally falls here, is what they want to sell to brand-concious buyers who really don't have the time or inclination to really do any actual product evaluation. They walk into a store and buy something within the hour.
This stuff is built to a price first, and product quality falls where it may. It's "good enough" but absolutely no better. It's shiny and pretty and lights up and seems to work. Just don't push it, or you will come up against it's limits fairly quickly.
SONY is a strange, somewhat dysfunctional company. They own a movie studio and a record label but pretty much invented and aggressively sold the CD-R drive they OEM'ed to computer companies a decade and a half ago, eating their own lunch in the process. They do the same with higher-data optical drives and media, taking out the movie side the same way they attacked the label side five years earlier.
They do tons of basic research, and clearly have people who can hear (SACD, anyone?), but the majority of their stuff is built for and designed by the deaf; as if a Japanese husband of a Soccer Mom was building stuff for an American Soccer Mom to pick up in the store. They care more about the "message" (marketing) than the medium (the product), and deliberately modify the product to fit the message. There's where the problem lies, as consumers. You get less than you paid for if performance is the goal, but none of your audio or video-indifferent friends will criticize your choice, because they got the message and vaguely approve without really knowing why they feel that way.
It's not junk, but it's not the best value either. Too safe to be useful to enthusiasts, and more safe than the other brands they've never heard of to the ordinary unwashed consumer. If you buy SONY products you're thinking like a Soccer Mom. If you're a DIYAudio member, you should be looking elsewhere for your fix, where value to you is found in durability, suitability and sound quality, and is inherent in the product itself.
Two anecdotes:
I have a friend who one day tells me he's looking for a new Home Theatre receiver, and goes on to say his SONY "piece of ***) broke right out of warranty and he's never going to buy another SONY product again, not because it actually broke but mostly because of the hard-nosed indifference SONY had to his issue. But, he bought into the brand with his Playstation, a high quality product in most respects but also one that had some initial problems with reliability.
Back in the day I usually bought SONY Trinitron monitors and TV sets. They were the best in image quality. But why were they the best? Not because of durability, or manufacturing quality, but because of the patent on the Trinitron phosphor layout. Anyone could have built them, armed with the patent and towards the end, when it expired, others did and they were as good, often cheaper, and occasionally better. My last was a Korean clone and it was an outstanding monitor for graphics work, and cost 30% less than the SONY equivalent.
That, in a nutshell, is the story right there. Their stuff is mostly good, occasionally poor, rarely outstanding, and always top dollar (high margins from manufacture to retail, with dealer pressure to discount protected by SONY stores that sell everything at full MSRP) but in the end not good enough if you actually care about audio (or video).
SONY is a huge company ... people seem to intuitively know this, but at times it seems like even then they underestimate the scope of this giant. They OEM for so many companies it's not funny ... but OEM products are not designed exclusively by SONY. Right away there's a clue ... SONY is capable of good products, or more precisely, products that run the gamut from barely adequate to excellent ... but for their own stuff, they have a specific fingerprint you can find on all their stuff. The "company line", if you will.
And there is where SONY both annoys and rewards it's customers. SONY products are targeted ... they have a buyer profile of you (or someone else) that is reflected in the product itself. Some SONY gear is designed for serious buyers, but is priced accordingly. Most ordinary consumers never really encounter these products ... it's too rich for their blood.
Some other stuff is designed for semi-serous buyers ... again, it's never bargain priced, but at least it's attainable for ordinary mortals. These are the products I am asked most about, and I find SONY's choices somewhat lacking when it comes to features (too many useless ones, what we in the Audio Business used to call "bells and whistles", somewhat akin to the auto industry's "chrome and woodgrain" mentality) and not enough pure performance. Still, some of these products can be decent buys, but only in comparison to the "me too" competition, in contrast to the "actually get it" competition I tend to recommend to people I know who still ask me stuff from time to time.
Note: I was in the Audio Business years ago, not now.
The last group of SONY stuff, and from what I see the Car Audio generally falls here, is what they want to sell to brand-concious buyers who really don't have the time or inclination to really do any actual product evaluation. They walk into a store and buy something within the hour.
This stuff is built to a price first, and product quality falls where it may. It's "good enough" but absolutely no better. It's shiny and pretty and lights up and seems to work. Just don't push it, or you will come up against it's limits fairly quickly.
SONY is a strange, somewhat dysfunctional company. They own a movie studio and a record label but pretty much invented and aggressively sold the CD-R drive they OEM'ed to computer companies a decade and a half ago, eating their own lunch in the process. They do the same with higher-data optical drives and media, taking out the movie side the same way they attacked the label side five years earlier.
They do tons of basic research, and clearly have people who can hear (SACD, anyone?), but the majority of their stuff is built for and designed by the deaf; as if a Japanese husband of a Soccer Mom was building stuff for an American Soccer Mom to pick up in the store. They care more about the "message" (marketing) than the medium (the product), and deliberately modify the product to fit the message. There's where the problem lies, as consumers. You get less than you paid for if performance is the goal, but none of your audio or video-indifferent friends will criticize your choice, because they got the message and vaguely approve without really knowing why they feel that way.
It's not junk, but it's not the best value either. Too safe to be useful to enthusiasts, and more safe than the other brands they've never heard of to the ordinary unwashed consumer. If you buy SONY products you're thinking like a Soccer Mom. If you're a DIYAudio member, you should be looking elsewhere for your fix, where value to you is found in durability, suitability and sound quality, and is inherent in the product itself.
Two anecdotes:
I have a friend who one day tells me he's looking for a new Home Theatre receiver, and goes on to say his SONY "piece of ***) broke right out of warranty and he's never going to buy another SONY product again, not because it actually broke but mostly because of the hard-nosed indifference SONY had to his issue. But, he bought into the brand with his Playstation, a high quality product in most respects but also one that had some initial problems with reliability.
Back in the day I usually bought SONY Trinitron monitors and TV sets. They were the best in image quality. But why were they the best? Not because of durability, or manufacturing quality, but because of the patent on the Trinitron phosphor layout. Anyone could have built them, armed with the patent and towards the end, when it expired, others did and they were as good, often cheaper, and occasionally better. My last was a Korean clone and it was an outstanding monitor for graphics work, and cost 30% less than the SONY equivalent.
That, in a nutshell, is the story right there. Their stuff is mostly good, occasionally poor, rarely outstanding, and always top dollar (high margins from manufacture to retail, with dealer pressure to discount protected by SONY stores that sell everything at full MSRP) but in the end not good enough if you actually care about audio (or video).
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Strange. About 18 months ago, I bought a Sony head unit because it had the features I wanted at the price I wanted to pay. Sound quality seemed on par with other competing units and it's outlasted one car I sent for scrap and just been installed in another. No complaints whatsoever. It does the job.
Sure ... they're capable of good products; I just generally find them unremarkable. My comparison would be a Soundstream head unit that is now 23 years old, outlasted four vehicles, has an FM section (and the AM section; modern AM implementations even in good decks is just plain nasty) that outperforms almost anything you can buy today ... even the cassette player sounds great on Dolby C encoded tapes.
No aux in, but I whipped one up for iPod/etc input with it's own volume control. Right now it's in a Miata that is never locked and usually is left top down everywhere. Nobody ... not even Crackheads ... want to steal "a cassette deck", and it's a pull-out.
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well, my experience with sony- back in about 99, they were still doing okay, and before that they were great, i still have a 1985 cd walkman, and somewhat remember the products, even my first brand new head unit in 99 with the cool d-bass selector switch on the front sounded great, and had sony tape decks from my older sister before that, though they had a few issues. anywhoo, about the turn of the century, they went from being a decent quality competitive brand that i wouldn't mind owning to a completely affable line of crap you see everywhere, where you would find the same junk ratings, such as 1200watts, no longer being realistic, and not actually capapble of 300rms. now, this is just the market flooded mobile "implode" line of things, and the rest of the products were not raped as bad. they still continued making decent products here and there, such as the great sounding boom boxes, phones, and tv's. really, i have not seen anything around worth the metal salvage in the mobile audio area, which isn't surprising. with so many notoriously horrid products everywhere, i wouldn't expect someone serous enough to buy the top-teir mobile stuff, good, or not. i wouldn't gamble on it, and haven't seen any around...
I was a sony fan, and I had my experiences good and bad, but lately I think it leaves much to be desired and to make video game alone is worth ...
I knew the brand back in 88, the first thing I bought was a VHS video, which was average but it worked well ... then bought several car audio equipment, radio cassette, speakers, CD changer, (incidentally, the latter was very bad, it broke a month) amplifiers, sound rather basic, no excellence, but by then, I looked good! wrong I was! later, I kept buying ...., Trinitron TV (I have it no longer, but I know it still works), stereo, camcorder, playstation ... I surrounded myself with sony things I liked ...
Today, I still maintain, a BRAVIA TV, an HD camcorder and a playstation3, I know there are great devices, but for now continue to operate ...
I know that sony is a great brand, what I see is you want to work in all fields of electronics, without specializing in one or two at most.
The next time you switch devices will be another brand, for sure.
I knew the brand back in 88, the first thing I bought was a VHS video, which was average but it worked well ... then bought several car audio equipment, radio cassette, speakers, CD changer, (incidentally, the latter was very bad, it broke a month) amplifiers, sound rather basic, no excellence, but by then, I looked good! wrong I was! later, I kept buying ...., Trinitron TV (I have it no longer, but I know it still works), stereo, camcorder, playstation ... I surrounded myself with sony things I liked ...
Today, I still maintain, a BRAVIA TV, an HD camcorder and a playstation3, I know there are great devices, but for now continue to operate ...
I know that sony is a great brand, what I see is you want to work in all fields of electronics, without specializing in one or two at most.
The next time you switch devices will be another brand, for sure.
sony
I had a Sony am/fm cassette in 1978 that cost me about $250 C. It outperformed most units on the market then. In 1998 I bought a sony am/fm cd. It sucked large. Skipped like crazy. I just put a 2006 sony deck in my brother in laws car that he got for $45 from his workplace. ( the Sony warranty repair facility) It has tons of features and is teamed up with some Alpine 5.25's and JBL 6X9's and a vintage 12' Orion XTR sub. A pair of PPI PC250's run the sats and an Orion cs150.2 runs the sub. I think it sucks. Sounds "tinny" and no amount of adjustment can get rid of it. I'm using a new Pioneer BT6200 and Orion extreme amps with Bravox 5X7 Comps up front and co-axials in the rear and it is noticably superior. He's got a Cavalier and mine's in a Sunfire. I thought the Pioneer was low end until i heard this Sony. I usually use Alpine's.
I had a Sony am/fm cassette in 1978 that cost me about $250 C. It outperformed most units on the market then. In 1998 I bought a sony am/fm cd. It sucked large. Skipped like crazy. I just put a 2006 sony deck in my brother in laws car that he got for $45 from his workplace. ( the Sony warranty repair facility) It has tons of features and is teamed up with some Alpine 5.25's and JBL 6X9's and a vintage 12' Orion XTR sub. A pair of PPI PC250's run the sats and an Orion cs150.2 runs the sub. I think it sucks. Sounds "tinny" and no amount of adjustment can get rid of it. I'm using a new Pioneer BT6200 and Orion extreme amps with Bravox 5X7 Comps up front and co-axials in the rear and it is noticably superior. He's got a Cavalier and mine's in a Sunfire. I thought the Pioneer was low end until i heard this Sony. I usually use Alpine's.
Sony used to be decent,but now days it's all cheap crap.
The Xplode line of car audio doesn't impress me at all,especially the tacky looking headunits..
The one good thing is that it does exactly what it says on the box-Explodes.
Don't even get me started on the Sony DRM and other stuff - For that alone I will NEVER buy a Sony product again. A-holes.
The Xplode line of car audio doesn't impress me at all,especially the tacky looking headunits..
The one good thing is that it does exactly what it says on the box-Explodes.
Don't even get me started on the Sony DRM and other stuff - For that alone I will NEVER buy a Sony product again. A-holes.
i had mixed experiences with sony :
cd player mid line bought in 1995 , lasted till 2007 always worked fine till laser died , sound quality was good for the price.
minidisk , only lasted for 7 months then problem reading disks
portable cd player , after a year or so problems reading disks
car radio k7 player , always worked fine , great sound quality
sony deck 855 , best sony product i had , superb sound quality
cd player mid line bought in 1995 , lasted till 2007 always worked fine till laser died , sound quality was good for the price.
minidisk , only lasted for 7 months then problem reading disks
portable cd player , after a year or so problems reading disks
car radio k7 player , always worked fine , great sound quality
sony deck 855 , best sony product i had , superb sound quality
There was a high end HiFi store a couple blocks from where I work. Back in the 80's when CD's first came out that store carried a Sony car audio CD deck (no internal amps). It was one of the very few car CD players made at the time, and it was stupid expensive. I don't know if they ever sold any but when the store finally closed down I bought the display unit for about half price. That unit was built like a tank (yes I took it apart) and outlived 2 cars, one of which was destroyed by a high speed crash.
It finally started getting erratic and began to spit my Metallica disks back at me so I bought another Sony....What a POS. The first unit smoked after 3 days and the second lasted until the warantee expired. I replaced it with an Alpine which I still have.
I bought one of the original Sony CPD-1302 Multiscan computer monitors which I had to fix at least a dozen times in about 10 years. There was a Sony parts depot not far from here. The 5 watt resistors on the board that plugged on to the CRT neck fried one by one. So did the replacement parts. Sony started selling 7 watt and finally 10 watt TO-220 replacement resistors which fried too. Why? They all are good for about a watt without a heat sink. A small heatsink fixed the problem.
I got a $100 used 36 inch flat screen SONY CRT TV that had a great picture. We had it for about 5 years partly because it weighed 300+ pounds and I didn't want to move it. When analog TV was shut off, I finally went looking for a new TV. My wife liked the vivid colors of a Sony. Since she watches far more TV than me we got a $1000 Sony TV. It works good and Sony has some deal with CBS to send firmware updates to the TV over the air, so it stays up to date. No issues in 3 years.
I finally decided to get a second modern TV for part time duty as a computer monitor so I got a $300 LG from a Newegg black Friday sale. It does have a sharper picture than the Sony and both are tied to the same antenna.
I tend to agree that Sony has lost their edge in consumer electronics somewhere back at least 10 years ago. When you see their Xplode stuff at Walmart you know it is made to the lowest possible price point, Walmart demands it.
It finally started getting erratic and began to spit my Metallica disks back at me so I bought another Sony....What a POS. The first unit smoked after 3 days and the second lasted until the warantee expired. I replaced it with an Alpine which I still have.
I bought one of the original Sony CPD-1302 Multiscan computer monitors which I had to fix at least a dozen times in about 10 years. There was a Sony parts depot not far from here. The 5 watt resistors on the board that plugged on to the CRT neck fried one by one. So did the replacement parts. Sony started selling 7 watt and finally 10 watt TO-220 replacement resistors which fried too. Why? They all are good for about a watt without a heat sink. A small heatsink fixed the problem.
I got a $100 used 36 inch flat screen SONY CRT TV that had a great picture. We had it for about 5 years partly because it weighed 300+ pounds and I didn't want to move it. When analog TV was shut off, I finally went looking for a new TV. My wife liked the vivid colors of a Sony. Since she watches far more TV than me we got a $1000 Sony TV. It works good and Sony has some deal with CBS to send firmware updates to the TV over the air, so it stays up to date. No issues in 3 years.
I finally decided to get a second modern TV for part time duty as a computer monitor so I got a $300 LG from a Newegg black Friday sale. It does have a sharper picture than the Sony and both are tied to the same antenna.
I tend to agree that Sony has lost their edge in consumer electronics somewhere back at least 10 years ago. When you see their Xplode stuff at Walmart you know it is made to the lowest possible price point, Walmart demands it.
The first sony car decks were built pretty well, made in Japan, and they used double sided boards and lots of tiny sm components. As more people bought them they started being outsourced to china, etc, and using single sided boards with lots of jumpers and crappier laser pickups. They've always seemed to make the upper priced models better though, I would notice where the decks were built when installing them and the hard drive versions (for example) that I installed were mostly built in Japan. I think to this day it depends on the model you buy. I believe their amps are built fairly well and they've been using mosfet outputs for quite a while. Of course they look cheezy and always show the peak wattage for the young kids but if you use the dollar per watt equation you end up with a decent setup. They have innovated several features before other companies did as well. Has anyone noticed the protection feature built into some of the newer SONY decks that will turn off the channel with the bad speaker to protect the deck? The deck also tells you which speaker and what is wrong with it... not bad, IMO.
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