Finally – we have a picture of the installed digital radio (DAB) antenna that came with the AVH-X3500. As you can see it’s not too big and blends in well. You MUST install the DAB antenna to get the radio and the antenna MUST be placed on a window that has not been tinted by additional film. The antenna is powered? and needs to be grounded for it work properly. We have not had any digital radio reception problems in our drives what so ever. It won’t work in underground car parks though as per any radio or TV.
The sound enhancement features of the Pioneer AVH-X500 is quite impressive for a mid-range car sound system. These most important of these is the ‘Sound Retriever’ or ‘S.Rtrv’ function. This is a function that restores some of the missing sound from the most common compressed music file formats namely, MP3/WMA/ACC including CDs. The function is automatic but you can adjust it up to 2 levels. The icon to change the settings is on the front menu on the lower right. As a result the music noticeably richer than the original file form!
Of course the sound aficionados may disagree with all the enhancement options but the result is better than the normal or expected hence much appreciated. Normal folks will love the improvement.
The Equaliser it the next most important thing as car acoustic are really bad. The equaliser is 7 bands and 5 preset and 2 custom ones you can use. It works well in-conjunction with the other functions I’ve described below. Plus if you connect the optional microphone you can let the system adjust the sound to match your cars acoustics. The AVH-X3500 series also has a built in cross over for those who have a separate subwoofer. There are also various line level inputs/outputs that you can also adjust. Finally, the oldest and most useful is the Loudness function which makes the stereo system sound fuller at lower volumes. Again very useful in any car with all the weird speaker placements available.
I have also attached some screen shots for the main screen for you to check out:
