Richard Steinfeld

In my prior post regarding the Hyundai #H935 stereo in my 2000
Sonata, I stated that this radio doesn't have Dolby compensation
for the tape. I was wrong. The radio does indeed have a Dolby
switch; it's the leftmost button. I couldn't see the logo. I have
a really hard time reading the labels on the buttons -- they're
gray on black -- and I couldn't see it. Awful human design. I'm
still trying to understand why there are two each of the fast
forward and rewind buttons.

The tape section adjusts automatically, too, for tape type. I put
in a Type II ("Chromium Dioxide" equivalent) cassette. The player
showed the word "Metal" on the display. Although it showed the
wrong tape material, it's no problem because the playback
equalization for these two tape types is the same, and playback
is all we're doing in a car stereo.

The loudness **** is made with an un-reinforced hollow plastic
tube inside the ****. Sure enough, the tube broke when I pushed
on it at an angle rather than straight inward. This is
ultra-stupid engineering, but the hollow plastic tube gambit is
very common in Oriental electronic products, in one place or
another. I was able to repair the ****: I fixed the broken tube
with "super" glue, then reinforced it by filling the hollow
surround with epoxy -- putting in the plastic that the
manufacturer should have used in the first place. Their cost for
making the **** properly would have been an additional .0001 of a
cent US; my cost for the epoxy: about 35 cents.

My other complaint was that when I cleaned the CD loading slot
with my usual cleaner: isopropyl alcohol, paint came off. I wish
that when wise-*** manufacturers paint and label their plastic,
that they would refrain from using materials that dissolve in
ordinary alcohol. It's always seemed dumb to me that the mfrs
paint the plastic -- why not just mold in the color? -- then
people could clean the stuff. Du-uuh.

Evaluation so far of this Hyundai stereo:
- Radio performance in urban-area reception: average on FM and
AM. Fringe performance: ordinary (mediocre).
- Power: adequate -- should be OK for anyone except antisocial
types.
- Distortion in these modes: acceptable in a car.
- Human design: wretched -- the tactility stinks -- I have to
take my eyes off the road to work this thing because almost all
the controls feel the same. The oval pushbuttons don't have the
distinctiveness that round or square ones do, and worse, these
buttons are slanted. This stupidity is common in many car stereos
nowadays -- I've seen radios that are far worse. This kind of
deco design is actually a safety hazard because the driver must
look directly at the radio in order to do the most basic
operations (do designers have any brains?).

The CD slot is designed to damage CDs by scraping them as they're
inserted and removed -- nothing unusual for car stereos.
Mass-market sound products have no respect for the user's
recordings.

Overall, the radio is OK. We don't need audiophile performance in
a car -- in a car, you can't hear quality over the road noise.
It's certainly good enough.

Richard