[Costa]

I've been having trouble with my radio reception (mainly FM) and I've taken the car in numerous times... They can't find anything wrong, but say it could be the window tint which is metallic based.

Just wondering, for anyone out there with Logic7, how does your FM radio sound ? Do you get excessive static?

The radio antenna is integrated into the rear window so it's easy to see how the tint will interfere if it has metallic particles in it (reflections that interfere with reception. The kicker is that they've removed the tint from the rear window and it hasn't made a huge difference. One of the technicians tried to tell me the higher fidelity of Logic7 enhances imperfections in the radio signal, but that sounds like BS to me - Logic7 should be better, not worse than a normal sound system.

Any opinions, expert or otherwise are welcome. All I know is that after listening to a crystal clear CD it's pretty hard to go back to listening to normal radio.

[canesr1]

I know with nav. the metallic window tint interferes with the signal and messes up the nav.
I had to get "ceramic" tint. It looks the same as metallic tint and I haven't had a problem yet(6months)!

[Master Deep]

downside is ceramic tints are expensive. But they do cut out heat very well.

[drwtsn32]

How would tint mess with NAV? The GPS antenna is in the sharkfin.

I was worried about radio reception when I got my car tinted, because an older car of mine lost all AM reception abilities after getting tinted. However, I have not experienced anything like that with my BMW or MB. Both have metallic tint. (Diamond Marquis I believe.)

Everything works great: AM, FM, SAT radio, NAV, Bluetooth, Comfort Access.

[gloster]

Even with ceramic tint, there is a lot of controversy on the forums over which ones (if any) cause inteference. Search for "tint" and you'll find plenty; including a very useful poll thread. Bottom line general feeling is that ceramics are still not perfect, but Pinnacle F1 seems to cause the fewest (or no) problems.

[azbmw]

I've read a lot of threads on tints when researching my options. Becasue I live in a desert went with Huper Optik Drei ceramic tint and have no problems. The majority of tint places don't use ceramic tint on the rear windows. They use a high quality matching tint. For this reason going with ceramic may not solve your problem.

In comparison to all the people who have tints the ones reporting problems are a very small percentage. There are so many people with tints and no problems it makes me wonder if you have a defective part unrelated to the tint. You mentioned almost no change with the tint removed. This could be a defective radio, antenna connection wire or antenna.

Has the tech tried unhooking the antenna from the radio to see if there is a difference? If the rear window antenna or the wire that connects the antenna to the radio is defective then unhooking those parts should make little or no difference in the quality. If one of these is defective then you know what to replace. Its doesn't sound like the techs have done all they can do to isolate the problem.

[PAKMAN]

?

[Costa]

I've had the tint off my back window for a week or two and I haven't really noticed any difference. in my opinion the reception is pretty crappy - you can really notice it during conversations or when the radio announcer(s) are talking.

From speaking to the techs, and after going for a short drive with one of them, they tried to tell me I can only notice the imperfections because it's such a hi-fidelity system. This sounds a bit backwards to me because surely the whole point of a hi-fidelity system is to filter out the crap and to give you good reception - not to amplify the shit (?) The other thing they said which may be causing the problems are the radio signal strength, and the radio swapping between vertical/horizontal aerials to select the strongest signal (it's called signal diversity).

I find all this quite odd. The radio in my wife's C180K sounds much cleaner, even though it's just your basic radio system.

BMW are unwilling to swap and change parts, because no errors are being reported by the car - that's pretty damn weak in my opinion, because having developed self diagnostics for electronics myself, I know that they are not exhaustive, and only tend to report critical failures.

Not happy Jan :sad0147:

[dinkoh]

Originally Posted by Costa

I've had the tint off my back window for a week or two and I haven't really noticed any difference. in my opinion the reception is pretty crappy - you can really notice it during conversations or when the radio announcer(s) are talking.

From speaking to the techs, and after going for a short drive with one of them, they tried to tell me I can only notice the imperfections because it's such a hi-fidelity system. This sounds a bit backwards to me because surely the whole point of a hi-fidelity system is to filter out the crap and to give you good reception - not to amplify the shit (?) The other thing they said which may be causing the problems are the radio signal strength, and the radio swapping between vertical/horizontal aerials to select the strongest signal (it's called signal diversity).

I find all this quite odd. The radio in my wife's C180K sounds much cleaner, even though it's just your basic radio system.

I "think" it may have to do with external antennas? My old integra has an external antenna, which gets much better reception than my 335i. My 335i has sorry-ass reception. It's a POS.