Hey Guys
I guess I'm not having any good luck with the mic placement, can anyone suggest a good location? I had my Garmin mic high up in the driver side a pillar but can hardly use it when the car is moving. I now have have the x920BT mic in the radio bezel and still cannot use it when the car is moving. Also, is there a problem with me just exposing the end of the mic versus having the entire "stick" out? Lastly, can anyone suggest a better "plug and play" mic? Thanks!
Those side 'vents' are used for noise canceling and generally if you uncover them the voice will sound better on the other end of the line with less background noise picked up. Lots of times you can get away with just exposing the front portion of the mic but with this unit.. it just doesn't seem to matter either way.
I just installed an X920BT and I too am having a nightmare of a time with the hands free BT in this unit. I went to great lengths to mount the mic in the factory location under a spot in the overhead console and it was completely unusable. I then tore it apart and relocated it to just above the rear view mirror pointed directly at me. Still sounds awful. I get nothing but complaints from people on the other end of the phone. I have searched for a menu option to adjust the mic and I have found nothing. As bad as it is I doubt adjustments would help but it would be nice to at least be able to try. Between this and the navigation I've decided I'm done with Pioneer. This is an awful deck and I don't care if I did get a good deal on it... a turd is a turd. I'll pay more for a usable unit because this is worthless to me.
I really enjoy this unit besides the only gripe with the Bluetooth mic, which is apparently crap. It has to be the Mic since it's understanding of my voice commands is also crap.
My next trial would be an Alpine unit since Garmin BT is not any better. Maybe they should avoid supplying the chinese made mic.
I really enjoy this unit besides the only gripe with the Bluetooth mic, which is apparently crap. It has to be the Mic since it's understanding of my voice commands is also crap.
My next trial would be an Alpine unit since Garmin BT is not any better. Maybe they should avoid supplying the chinese made mic.
Garmin BT? I don't know what you mean. Garmin is navigation software and it's DRASTICALLY better than the Pioneer nav. Not even in the same ballpark. If you mean the Kenwood BT then you mean Parrot since that's who does the BT software for Kenwood and it's still leagues better than the lame software Pioneer uses for their BT in this system. I won't blame the mic because a mic is a mic these days. Sure you can get better but even the worst of microphones should still function. This one does not. Even if it were as simple as a mic change then it's still the fault of Pioneer for selecting this mic as their OEM accessory to include after full testing. Either way... Fail goes to Pioneer.
I meant Kenwood, their BT/Mic are not any better.
I meant Kenwood, their BT/Mic are not any better.
I fully disagree. I have had several Kenwood units and I never once had a problem with calling via hands free mic with them.
You must be lucky, unfortunately not the case for me.
You must be lucky, unfortunately not the case for me.
Actually, I would say you are the exception to the rule.
Probably.
Having experimented with the microphone by calling an answering machine in my house
I have come to the following conclusions:
1.) The microphone actually is very good at picking up low volume voice. What I've
found is that if I talk TOO LOUD - the voice gets garbeled.
2.) I'm convinced that some software engineer decided that it would be ok to couple
the microphone input level and the sound output level. The microphone seems to
work better when the system audio output (as determined by the + and - buttons in
the voice call status with the telephone hook) is set to low. Turn up the volume, the
voice at the other side (as heard on my answering machine) starts to break up.
So my recommendation is to turn the volume down and speak softly.
Its a little un-natural because I want to play the incoming voice at a higher volume
and its difficult to remember to speak softly. If I start getting louder, the caller on
the other side always starts saying "you are breaking up"
They really need to give you a microphone input level meter and let you set that independent
of the volume playback.
I think this would be relatively easy to fix - and I'm hoping it will be fixed soon.
I opened a trouble ticket with Pioneer regarding the inability to use the alphabet dial next to the
full list of artists... as someone with a 100+ artists on his ipod - its gettig to be a big problem that I can't
do "P" first then select "Pink Floyd" from the P artits. Scrolling through EVERY artists to get to someone in the
middle of the alphabet is a pain.
I think the problem is sort of caused by the Ipod. The pioneer does NOT like it if there are artists that yuo told it to use the last name instead of the first. I think if you leave every artists as sorted by first name, the Pioneer doesn't get confused. But I'm sorry, I prefer to see Eric Clapton filed under "C", not "E"...
My kid seems to think his artists should all be sorted by first name (which is how I know the Pioneer doesnt get confused = because his ipod never has my problem).
That being said the Pioneer STILL should be able to use the alphabet wheel correctly since I think thats something Pioneer did on their own - not Apple.
totally agree with you on the alphabet wheel. at 80 mph, the last thing I want to do is play 'wheel of fortune'. It's to me a real safety failure. they need to re- tool this with a solid bar of letters and an arrow to get to the second bank of letters. there is a lot of free real estate on that screen.
My microphone is above the windshield aimed at the "cock pit". It seems to work ok, although my cousin says i sound slightly muffled. The overall phone call volume does seem a bit low.
Apologize if this is off topic, but Is there not a way to just scroll through cover art to select an album?
My microphone is above the windshield aimed at the "cock pit". It seems to work ok, although my cousin says i sound slightly muffled. The overall phone call volume does seem a bit low.Apologize if this is off topic, but Is there not a way to just scroll through cover art to select an album?
Cover art? Nope. Kenwood does that in their flagship model, but when I played with it last it mostly choked. The last thing I want to be doing is "scrolling" while driving - way to distracting. Much easier to either speak the artist, or just have an alphabet listing. Scrolling for the passenger would be far easier. And, it looks groovy
I visited an installer down here in SoCal the other day - their take on aftermarket microphone placement is the upper-left corner of the windshield, pointing into the cabin. Their reasoning was that the mirror can cause the sound to bounce around a bit, which is where mine is now (doh) as it is hidden the most there.
I'm gonna experiment with their concept and I'll let you know the results
I used to have an AVIC-N3 and a separate parrot, that parrot sounded MUCH better than the one built into the X920BT. Everyone tells me that they hear way too much background noise and I'm too muffled. I'm going to buy an adapter and try connecting my old parrot mic to see how it sounds and will report back. I'm guessing the problem is a cheap mic with no noise cancellation.
I think the closer the mic is to your face the better it works. I have mine where the moonroof and headliner meet.
I tried talking into it directly today, and even a few inches away but it didn't make a difference. It picks up way too much background noise to the point its unusable when I'm driving more than 30 mph.
I used to have an AVIC-N3 and a separate parrot, that parrot sounded MUCH better than the one built into the X920BT. Everyone tells me that they hear way too much background noise and I'm too muffled. I'm going to buy an adapter and try connecting my old parrot mic to see how it sounds and will report back. I'm guessing the problem is a cheap mic with no noise cancellation.
The included mic DOES have noise canceling. That's what those 'gills' are on the sides. The vocoder is in the front facing part and the rear slots are for the noise canceling. Now if the head unit doesn't have the software to deal with what the mic is sending it then that's once again a Pioneer issue, not a mic issue.
I used to have an AVIC-N3 and a separate parrot, that parrot sounded MUCH better than the one built into the X920BT. Everyone tells me that they hear way too much background noise and I'm too muffled. I'm going to buy an adapter and try connecting my old parrot mic to see how it sounds and will report back. I'm guessing the problem is a cheap mic with no noise cancellation.
The included mic DOES have noise canceling. That's what those 'gills' are on the sides. The vocoder is in the front facing part and the rear slots are for the noise canceling. Now if the head unit doesn't have the software to deal with what the mic is sending it then that's once again a Pioneer issue, not a mic issue.
I know that the mic looks like it has noise cancelling, and maybe it even does, but it seems like it's executed poorly. As I said, I'm going to connect my old mic to the unit to see if its any better. This will tell us whether its the mic's quality or the unit's. I've purchased low quality noise cancellation headsets for cellphones and just because they have the 'gills' doesn't mean they have effective noise cancellation.