From: dlou@ECE.UCSD.EDU (Dennis Lou)
Newsgroups: rec.audio.car
Subject: Review of the Sony XR-U330
Date: 17 Aug 92 06:38:45 GMT
Organization: University of California, San Diego

A few people have been asking about the Sony XR-U series of head units
with CD changer controls and detachable faceplate.  I just bought a
XR-U330 Thursday, installed it and went on a 3 day trip to the
mountains then to a friend's wedding in L.A. so I thought I'd post a
review on it.

I bought the unit from Executive (a NY mail order house) for around
$260.  Local dealers are asking around $350.  I chose the U330 mainly
for its features. I chose it over the U220 main for the 
cassette music search and Dolby.  The key off cassette head release
was also a determining factor.  I didn't buy the U550 mainly for
financial reasons (additional features just weren't worth it to me).

I have the unit installed in a first generation Honda Accord with only
the front two speakers connected.  The speakers are the old Blaupunkt
QL-5470 5.25 inch 2 way speakers rated at 70 watts peak, 35
continuous.

The unit performed quite well.  It pumps out 20 watts peak (11 watts
RMS)  to each of the four corners (100 watts total) and it's pretty
clean when pushed to the max.  With only the front two speakers connected,
it was not quite loud enough for my tastes.  The addition of a pair of
6x9's in the back may help improve the situation.  One thing I noticed
both in my car and in the showroom was that the digital volume setting
had to be set at least 60% in order to get any useful volume out of it,
even when hooked to an external amp.  The loudness swith is just a tad
overboosted.  It also has a wire you can connect to your car phone for
automatic muting.  It also has separate power antenna and remote amp
leads.

The tuner does a very good job of pulling in the stations.  The tuner
doesn't quite perform as well as Pioneer's SuperTuner system, but
it's as good as or better than the other stuff in this price range.
(I noticed Pioneer has really good tuners but really bad amp sections)
It has 18 FM station (organized in 3 groups of 6) and 6 AM station
memory.  Frequency response is rated at 30-15Khz.

I don't have the ears of an audiophile, but the tape section sounds
very good to me.  It has settings for metal, Dolby-B and AMS.
Frequency response is rated at 30-18Khz with SNR of 58-66 dB
(depending on Dolby settings) and a wow and flutter of .13%

This unit has a wealth of features.  It's got 4 way pre-amp outputs so
you can run external amps and still use the fader.  The Uni-Link is a
really neat feature.  Since I don't have a CD changer, the custom file
memory (basically an 8 character display you can associate with discs
or radio stations) is more a novelty than useful.  I'm sure it comes
in handy if you have a CD changer, but the people I've shown this unit
to have not noticed this feature until I've pointed out that the display
is showing radio station call letters rather than frequency.
An additional feature of the UniLink bus is that you can chain up to
10 CD changers together.

The higher end models (550, 770) have electronic transport mechanisms
and allow 9 track AMS (i.e. hit the seek button 5 times and it will
skip 5 songs).  They also have 2 color illumination (switch between
green and amber), 20+10 station memory, and Dolby B/C.  The highest
end model includes a different cassette head, dual antenna inputs (it
automatically switches to the stronger one) and TV tuner controls.

With the key off cassette head release and the FM/AM/TAPE/CD/OFF
switch array, I found a hidden feature: tape pause.  If you are playing
a tape and you want to talk to one of your passengers, you can hit
the MUTE button or you can hit the OFF switch and hit the TAPE switch
when you are done.

This is the first time I've had a cassette/receiver with anti-theft
features.  It takes a little bit of getting used to having to remove
the face plate every time you leave the car.  I have a fake faceplate
I use whenever I leave the car for long periods of time.  Right now it
looks as if no radio is installed, but I plan to change this so that
it looks like something ancient is installed.  The unit comes with a
hard case for the faceplate and is about equivalent to carring a
eyeglasses case (it's roughly the same size and weight of one).
The base unit has a plastic border around the spot where the faceplate
goes, but the instructions say you can cut this off if you want to
mount it so that the front is flush with the mounting surface when the
faceplate is removed.

The buttons are large, responsive and provide good tactile feedback.  It
also beeps softly every time you hit a button.  It also beeps in a
different tone when you use a function which requires you to hold the
button down for 2 seconds.

This brings me to the weakest point of this unit: the user interface.
If it wasn't for such a lousy user interface, I would consider this
the perfect head unit (at least for my application).  It is just plain
hard to use this thing.  Some examples of poor design:

1> In order to manually tune a station, you have to hold down the
preset scan button for two seconds and then the frequency will change.
After than , then you can hit the preset scan button again to 
incrementally change the frequency.  Be sure you don't pause for more
than two seconds or else the preset scan button will change its mode
back to preset scan!  Imagine trying to do this while driving.

2> The loudness switch is also an FM sensitivity switch.  Hit the
button once to change it from 'distant' to 'local'.  Hit it again to
change from stereo to mono.  Hit it again to go back to 'distant' and
stereo.  Press it down to turn on or off the loudness setting.  Again,
very difficult to do while driving.

3> The FF/REW buttons are merely spring loaded pushrods that extend
into the base unit (remember, this is a detachable faceplate system
where the entire faceplate is removable).  This means that when you
press a FF/REW button, it immediately pops back out even though it is
fast forwarding or rewinding.  This in itself wouldn't be too bad
except...

4> When the tape is fast forwarding or rewinding the direction
indicator blinks at about 1-2 Hz.  When you are driving and take a
quick glance at the display, you have about 1 second or less to look
at it.  Not enough to tell if it is blinking.  All the while the 8
character display says 'TAPE'.  It would have been nice if it said REW
or FF (or NEXT and PREV if you are doing an AMS search) and provided
some indication of progress like a dashed line going around in a
circle.

5> The volume control is electronic.  I don't think this is indigenous
to Sony, but I would rather have a nice volume control knob rather
than a plus and minus key.  These plus and minus keys also adjust the
8 character display, bass and treble settings, fader and balance
controls, etc.  When I am setting the 8 character display and I want
to change the volume, I have to hold the 'LIST' button down for two
seconds, then I can change the volume.  When I am driving and I want
to change the volume, I accidently hit the 'SEL' button right in the
middle of the +/- keys and now I am adjusting the bass setting.  Ugh,
four more hits of the SEL button and then I can change volume.

The poor user interace turned out to be a big factor on my trip to the
mountains: want to turn on loudness... hold the loudness button down
for 2 seconds... uh oh, got to down shift for this corner... darn, I
put the tuner in local mode... okay, hit the 3 more times to put it
back in stereo/distant mode... up shift exiting the corner... wait,
how many times did I hit the button again?... okay, I have a straight
section of road now... try to hold this button down for 2 seconds...

I figure I am too busy to deal with the radio so I ask my passenger to
manually change the station:

"Hit the plus button"

"Which one?  There are three"

"The one that says preset scan.  Hold it down"

"oops, I let go of it and now I am at the wrong end of the frequency
band"

"Hit the 4 button, then hold down preset scan, then press preset scan
5 times"

and so on.  It's a real pain because not only are you not able to deal
with it, your passenger can't either (unless he/she is very
experienced).

Other features I would have liked to see on it are:

- Automatic tuner call when ff/rewinding a tape.  It doesn't seem that
much of a big deal to add it on .  The higher end models 
have it.  It may be another hidden feature; I haven't tried
putting a tape in, hitting the FM button, then pressing a ff/rew
button.

- The clock is not displayed when power is not applied to it (i.e. the
key is in the OFF position rather than ACC).  I understand that you
are supposed to take the faceplate off when you leave the car, but
what if you have a passenger waiting for you and you took the keys?
It would be nice for him/her to look at the clock.

All in all, I am quite happy with the unit.  I am sure that I will get
eventually used to the user interface, but then again, there is a chance
I may never.  However, one shouldn't be required to take months to
learn a user interface.  There is no excuse for not designing it right
in the first place.
--
Dennis Lou             || "But Yossarian, what if everyone thought that way?"
dlou@ucsd.edu          || "Then I'd be crazy to think any other way!"
[backbone]!ucsd!dlou   |+====================================================
dlou@ucsd.BITNET       |Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak went to my high school.