PeterPan

Here's a question for audio experts, one which I'm embarrassed about as I've done lot of work using and even building audio equipment too. I recently put my original pioneer sound (head unit) system back in my car. This system has 4 speaker outputs for front, rear, left and right. All the outputs have two wires, so if there are any electrically 'common" connections you can't tell by looking. All the wires from the audio output plug are color coded. To help avoid errors each channel has a pair with a color for the + side of its speaker, and the same color with a black stripe for the - side.

Since this system had been in the car in the past, I thought it would be easy because of the color coding on the existing connector plug and the existing speaker wires. So I did a basic sound check before assembling it all, and all the speakers seemed to be working. But after listening to for a while, I realized the stereo has a very strange sound. All parts of the music where the stereo separation is obvious seem to be at normal volume and seems correctly separated, left and right.  But any sound that is intended to come mainly from just one channel is exceptionally loud! Also, music elements like the vocals which should be in the center are subdued and hard to hear.  This is true even with the doors open, so I don't think its a matter of accidentally wiring the speakers out of phase. But I do think I may have made a wiring error. The front left channel wires are white and white-black, while the right channel wires are gray and gray-black.  I do remember noticing that the difference between the white and gray wires was not as obvious as I'd like but i thought I got it right. But if I somehow did mix up two of the front left/right speaker wires, could this cause the cancellation of center audio, and over emphasis of the stereo separated sounds I've described?

I'm asking because I'm not really sure. The sound system does have balance as well as front/back fader controls, and when I tried setting the audio completely left or right, the sound is indeed directed to just that side.  Would that still be true if mis-wired the speakers as I described? Or could it be an actual internal defect inside the head unit (like a couple of speaker connections becoming internally shorted maybe?). Unfortunately as with many cars, taking it all out to recheck all the wiring is going to be a pain to do. So I figured I'd ask whether my theory even seems plausible, or if not what else am I failing to consider.

On 10/20/2022 at 2:28 AM, Seant said:

Anybody have any ideas?

Would you mind sharing a link where I can get updated firmware for that AVIC-F7010BT ?  My unit is from 2009, and I can't find anything for it on the pioneer site. Thanks if you can.

I found a link online giving instructions for updating firmware on my AVIC-F7010BT receiver, but there is no such firmware on the pioneerelectronics.com site that I can find. I had replaced the screen on this unit years ago and I'd like to re-install it in my 2009 SCION XD (long story). But before I do I'd like to install any available updates for it. Sadly Pioneer is useless. I contacted them through a web form asking this question, and I got back a response from "productsupport@pioneerservice.com", asking me to call for assistance. But there is no phone number, certainly not on pioneerelectronics.com, and the url referenced in the email (pioneerservice.com) seems to be an "under construction" site.

Anyway, just hoping someone here might know where to get any usable firmware updates for my system. I've never updated it before. I don't expect any navigation maps to be that much better, but I think there might be some needed improvements to use bluetooth. And I think it makes sense to attempt updates while it's is out of the car. Thanks for any help.

I had modified the wire harnesses to do the GPS bypass (mute wire and such) so the installer wouldn't have to worry about liability. (The install was free, so why not let them do the major work, right?). Anyway, it took a while to test everything but when I finally got around to the USB (The unit allows a choice of I-POD or a USB cable)I found that USB memory sticks don't work. I brought it back to the installer at my local Best-Buy, and I did note that after he wiggled the USB cable, a USB memory stick now at least lights up when plugged in. Still won't play music, but at least there's 5 volts. So they pulled a new unit of the shelf and bench tested it, of course with the new cable and everything. It worked fine, USB and all. I was out of time so I have an appointment in two days to have him swap out the entire unit, USB cable and all (Of course I'll let him use my existing power supply and audio cabling, so the bypass stays intact).

Personally I think the wiggle test means it might just be a bad cable. BUT... besides that, since the bypass actually includes forcing something called "factory permissive mode" to ground, I have to wonder if maybe there's more to the story. Does anyone think its possible I that the bypass could be the culprit? Maybe Factory permissive mode is also used to load a firmware upgrade from a USB stick? Anyway, if anyone has done the bypass and has the USB option, I'd really appreciate knowing if both work. No sense going through a whole product replacement just to end up with the same result. Thanks in advance.

I just installed my x930 a couple days ago and this radio list is annoying as hell. Hopefully they fix it..

Does anyone know Pioneers track record of listening to customer requests for upgrades? Do they ever release new firmware versions? Is there a process for requesting them?

I also wish I could change that. As of right now that is one of my biggest peeves of the unit. That and the ultra picky USB port I am having trouble with.

OH well that's interesting! Mine was installed just weeks ago, and I made an appointment to go back for the USB! I was thinking the installer just forgot to link up the adapter behind the dash, especially as the mem-sticks I'm using work in an older pioneer I have! So from what you're saying I might get there Monday only to find it is truly defective.

With the FM station presets, the preset name will slowly cycle between the station frequency, followed by broken up pieces of th current song name or name of the show. That's not so bad in itself until you realize that when you look at one of the lists of presets (FM1, FM2, FM3), what you see is the last word that happened to be displayed last time it was selected. So, for example, you might see...

P1 The

P2 Someone

P3 Fresh

P5 87.7

P6 The bone.

Am I the only one that thinks this is pretty dumb and useless? Its nice to see song and other information scrolled or cycled when the preset is selected. But when you look at a list of presets, it would be much more useful to just see the frequency, then seeing the last word that randomly was displayed. Is there a way to alter or disable this feature? If not, does anyone know enough about Pioneer to have a feel for whether they care about or listen to customer feature requests? I mean, once in the past I asked for a feature to allow saved GPS locations to be saved to an SD card and accessed on another Pioneer, and instead of "that's a good idea, we'll consider implementing it", all I got back was "its not possible to do that". (Duh... I KNOW its not, but sorry.. I digress!)