A good CD radio at a good price – if you shop around!
Sony have an enviable reputation for delivering high quality, good looking electrical goods, if a little pricey.
They also have a reputation, of allowing older models to be sold off with ‘deep discounting’.
The Sony CDX-F500C is ... Read review
Car Radio - Panel Release, Panel/Quick Release - with CD Player, With CD-Player - without CD-Changer, With changer control - with MP3 Playback, With MP3 Player - 208 Watt
Advantages: Excellent specification, looks cool Disadvantages: ergonomically a disaster area!
...shop around!
Sony have an enviable reputation for delivering high quality, good looking electrical goods, if a little pricey.
They also have a reputation, of allowing older models to be sold off with ‘deep discounting’.
The Sony CDX-F500C is no exception, whether or not this is a ‘current’ model. Or one shortly to go out of production, I couldn’t say, but being able to buy one at half normal retail price ... ...box with elephant ears’ the Sony equivalent didn’t offer exactly the same mounting points.
It was half past three, the weather was closing in, and the boss was already complaining that I had a thousand and one other jobs which were, in her opinion, far more important and wanted done.
A trip to Halfords for an adapter kit (if such an item existed) was out of the question!
A good CD radio at a good price – if you shop around!
Sony have an enviable reputation for delivering high quality, good looking electrical goods, if a little pricey.
They also have a reputation, of allowing older models to be sold off with ‘deep discounting’.
The Sony CDX-F500C is no exception, whether or not this is a ‘current’ model. Or one shortly to go out of production, I couldn’t say, but being able to buy one at half normal retail price would lead me to think this was the case.
I had been looking to replace my Original Equipment cassette radio in my old Proton* car for around six months or so.
I had noticed this particular model (or one very similar to it) and had decided that the guide price of £140 was a little beyond my means, it was therefore a welcome surprise to see Argos* were offering this model at £69.95 in their 2005 January sale.
It took me a couple of minutes online to find a store locally which had one in stock – clearly a lot of other people had had similar ideas and most of the five stores within a twenty mile radius had sold out, but using the ‘reserve for collection’ feature I booked one at 1am at a nearby store.
I collected it the following morning entirely without hassle, and none of the nonsense of requiring fingerprints for credit card transactions which I went into in great depth in a previous review.
I got the radio home and set about fitting it myself.
A few minutes into the job and I had ‘sprung’ my old radio from the enclosure like a pro, I took the new radio out the packing and attempted to connect it to the existing plugs, and was pleasantly surprised to find that the wiring loom was entirely compatible, and yes – within a few seconds I was listening to the radio.
‘Piece of cake’ I thought to myself, ‘this should be an absolute doddle’ and told the wife she could put the kettle on.
If only.
The great thing about car radios recently is that they conform to a DIN standard – take a radio out, put a radio in, the connectors should all be the same, it’s pretty much an open and shut case.
Or at least that’s the way it should be!
The trouble is, that whilst the radios themselves are pretty much built to a standard size, and the cables are indeed pretty much the same, just as with PCs, there is a degree of what one can only describe as ‘interpretation’ when it comes to the actual fixing methods, and making the unit fit in the ‘hole’ left by the old radio.
Both the old and new players came with an outer mounting frame.
The only trouble is that the Proton Blaupunkt radio’s mount resembled a ‘post box with elephant ears’ the Sony equivalent didn’t offer exactly the same mounting points.
It was half past three, the weather was closing in, and the boss was already complaining that I had a thousand and one other jobs which were, in her opinion, far more important and wanted done.
A trip to Halfords for an adapter kit (if such an item existed) was out of the question!
So – it was with a bit of lateral thinking, a hammer and an arc welder that I set about fabricating my own ‘lugs’ out of a couple of mirror clips which were lying about my bench (the photographs show the progress of this job)
After an hour or so of welding, hammering and a good deal of swearing, the enclosure was mounted, and I was attempting to shoe-horn the radio into the slot
– OK so my welding rods were a little heavy, and I certainly wouldn’t win any prizes for the aesthetic qualities of the joins, but it seemed to do the job (with the aid of a couple of spacer washers)
Finally, the radio was in place, and I set about trying to make it work.
I’m a great believer in the old adage ‘form follows function’ – however the designers of the detachable front panel have thrown this idea aside in preference of the doctrine of ‘style is everything’.
The sleek grey slab consists of a row of identically shaped and coloured buttons with tiny initials etched on their surface, none of which have any particular significance to a novice user like me.
It was only after consulting the manual (why is it blokes always do this as a last resort?) that I started to make sense of this!
There isn’t a big knob marked ‘ON/Volume’, but a tiny little button marked ‘function’, the volume comprises of an ‘up/down’ pair of switches – both are located on the left hand side of the control panel – obviously more suited to a Left Hand Drive car!
– OK so I’m probably exaggerating the degree of complexity of these controls, but the last thing I want to be doing whilst fighting my way along Ferry Road is to take my eyes off the street to try and find the correct button to press! – doubtless I’ll get used to it, but I don’t suppose this unit will win any prizes for ergonomics!
The specifications of the radio CD-player are pretty impressive, and found the unit was perfectly capable of breathing new life into a somewhat lacklustre set of speakers in my car (more’s the pity – I’d rather fancied fitting new ones, but that’s a project I’ll have to tackle later!)
I managed to tune in my favourite FM radio stations with relative ease, the RDS tuning can be set up to search through the wavebands and identify the sorts of stations by broadcasting style, although being impatient I just fiddled about and got my ‘usuals’.
RDS is a fantastic system which picks up a digital signal broadcast inaudibly with a standard FM signal. The most obvious benefit is that it allows you to ‘see’ the station name displayed on the radio screen, it also allows local traffic announcements on different stations to be picked up and interrupt your existing programme.
Having used such a radio for the past six or so years I wouldn’t thank you for a ‘standard’ one in it’s place!
A graphic equaliser (OK a three-band tone control, but let’s not split hairs) allows various preset profiles to be selected (Jazz, Voice, Rock etc).
Being something of a farty, I tend to favour the sound as the audio engineer intended, so tend to set mine ‘flat’ – I would only use this function if the speakers were excessively wanting in a particular spectrum of the audio range.
To use the CD player, the front panel is flipped down to reveal a motorised ‘slot’ – the thinking is presumably that you probably don’t want to change CD that often, and it saves having to accommodate the slot where the display is!
I guess I’ll get used to that.
At the back of the radio there’s ample connectivity for external amplifiers, preamps, sub-bass units and I believe a connector for a CD-stacker (I mean how lazy do you have to be to keep your CD’s in an electronic ‘lunch box’ in the boot?) Anyhow – that’s bound to appeal to some folks, just not me!
The unit contains a 4x50w peak (OK - so probably nearer 25w RMS) amplifier, which is plenty loud for me, and probably a bit too heavy for the internal speakers of my car, but as this is only twice as loud as a 5w amplifier, it’s very unlikely I’ll have it cranked up that far – ever!
On the whole, I’m very pleased with the radio, the CD player is more than adequate, allowing ‘commercial’ as well as CD-R disks to be used.
This particular unit doesn’t support MP3, but I can live without that – if I was really that bothered, I’d probably just connect a headphone jack somewhere in the dashboard and feed the amplifier directly from an MP3 player!
My standard test of ‘Glenn Gould JS Bach Goldberg Variations’* on the CD revealed the background grunts and squeaks aplenty – so it gets ‘five thumbs up’ on my rating!
The facia is mostly black and Perspex, with details in ‘gunmetal’ silver. The display is moderately restrained with a minimum of distracting graphics, and the overall effect is quite ‘grown up’ if a little plasticky.
The facia, of course, is removable, so if the local ‘chavs’ decide to rip it out the next time I park in a multi-story car park, I will have the satisfaction they’ll only get half the price for the radio!
Evidently there’s a remote control unit available for this radio – I’ve seen it advertised on Ebay for £18, but as the car is one of the few places ‘Dad gets to listen to Dad’s music’
For the record, Sony's specifiactions have been added to the end of the article
The full manual is available to download form Sony ; http://pdf.crse.com/manuals/3262300111.pdf
In summary – an exceptionally good radio available at outstandingly low prices if you shop about.
(sure seal connectors) Speaker impedance 4 8 ohms Maximum power output 50 W x 4 (at 4 ohms)
General Outputs Audio output terminals (rear/sub switchable) Power aerial relay control terminal Power amplifier control terminal Inputs Telephone ATT control terminal Remote controller input terminal BUS control input terminal BUS audio input terminal Aerial input terminal Tone controls Low: ±10 dB at 60 Hz (XPLOD) Mid: ~ 10 dB at 1 kHz (XPLOD) High: ~10 dB at 10 kHz (XPLOD) Power requirements 12 V DC car battery (negative earth) Dimensions Approx. 178 x 50 x 181 mm (w/hld) Mounting dimensions Approx. 182 x 53 x 161 mm (wlh/d) Mass Approx. 1. 2 kg Supplied accessories Parts for installation and connections (1 set) Front panel case (1) Optional accessories Card remote commander RX1 Xl14 Rotary commander RM X4S BUS cable (supplied with an RCA pin cord) RC 61 (1 m), RC 62 (2m) Optional equipment CD changer (10 discs) CDX 757MX CD changer (6 discs) CDX T70MX, CDX T69 MD changer (6 discs) MDX 66XLP Source selector XA C30 AUX IN Selector XA 300 Note
This unit cannot be connected to a digital preamplifier or an equalizer which is Sony BUS system compatible.
Design and specifications are subject to change without notice. ***************************************************** POSTSCRIPT ***************************************************** ‘The mother in law’ bought one of these from Argos as well, when she heard I’d got one, and asked me to fit it to her Vauxhall
This was rather more straightforward than my previous experience – once I’d figured out how to ‘pull’ the old radio.
This time the mounting ‘Sleeve’ fitted without adapting it, although there was rather less room behind the dashboard to pack the cables back in – I ended up having to remove another panel so I could draw the cables clear as I inserted the radio.
The aerial connector was a little hard to fit, although I found it easier to connect it after the radio was in place – I’m waiting to see if it stays in place long-term, and have warned the in-laws about this. If it DOES fall out I’ll stick it in place with my glue gun!
The OEM radio showed the RDS station name on an LCD screen mounted at the top of the dashboard, this feature wasn’t supported by the SONY radio, but as this is now shown on the front panel of the radio – didn’t matter.
There are buttons mounted on the steering wheel, which I take to be for controlling the radio - they don't work on the SONY radio, but from what I can gather, they didn't work with the original radio either.
I was slightly disappointed to note that when the ignition key was removed, the radio didn’t ‘bleep’ at me like it when the removable panel was left in place, as it does on my Proton,
When I went back to the car twenty minutes after I had finished up, all the settings had been ‘forgotten’ and the clock had reset itself to zero.
The clock isn’t really a problem, as you can get the radio to set itself from the RDS signal, forgetting the stations could be a bit of a pain.
I presume the amnesia may be down to one of a couple of things;
Either there’s a ‘memory backup’ battery which also supplies power for the warning bleep, and after using the radio for an hour or so, it’ll hold sufficient charge to avoid forgetting everything,
Or the power connectors are somehow different, and I’ll have to adapt the wiring at some later date
– anyhow, I'll look at this in a couple of weeks if it hasn't sorted itself out by then!
If anyone’s especially interested I’ll place a further update when I find out.
To summarise my postscript; Installation kit didn’t need to be ‘adapted’, but was compromised by being a bit of a fiddle to get everything behind the dashboard.
Electrically, the radio may require a little more work to get it to ‘remember’ settings.
No face off feature, Radio code can only be entered using remote, battery life on remote is rubbish and some features can only be accessed using this remote. (*)
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