Hi all, first post here. I just bought an '02 Protege ES. I decided not to get the factory 6 CD changer because I thought at $500 it was overpriced. Now I know I can get an aftermarket head unit and changer for that price, but the thing is I really like the way the stock unit looks.

I'm thinking about getting one of these add on CD changers that run through an FM station. I've never listened to one before so I don't know what they sound like. Can some of you audio pro's here tell me how good these sound? I'm not really picky about sound quality, but I don't want to do it if it will sound like total crap.

Thanks!

 

In my last car I added a Kenwood unit with an FM modulator so that it would work with the Sony HU that I had at the time. It lasted about 4 months before I got an HU that could control and work with the changer directly. My big annoyance with the FM system was that it was lacking in the high frequency performance as well as the fact that it also had a high frequency whine to it all the time. Once I moved away from the FM aspect of it I loved the changer.

One of the reasons that the high frequency performance is not so great is a product of the way that FM audio is modulated, there is a need to add emphasis to the highs in order to be able to demodulate them cleanly at the end. This playing around leads to some degradation when compared to CD quality audio. When the car was moving the road noise masked pretty much all effects of it, but it was when I was at a stop that it drove me nuts.

In the end it was the high requency whine that finally drove me to change. If you are not really critical about little things like that then it should be a fine way to go. Personally I would get the changer for the stock HU or upgrade the whole system.