Swapping OEM JBL Headunits 2010 to 2013 Premium

Well i know one thing is the newer units had HD tuners and our older cars don't have an HD antenna, so if you wanted the HD to work you'd need to grab an antenna too.

 

There's a lot I still don't know, but you should see I've been gradually adding info on the other thread where you raised the question as I figure things out.

I can't answer definitively about the HD until I'm far enough along to try it out, but I think the situation is sort of like this: yes, the facelift added HD decoding in the headunit. Yes, the facelift also added a second FM antenna on the right quarter window glass. I think those two changes are somewhat independent. The two-antenna ("diversity") configuration should improve FM reception overall, at least in dense places where you drive past buildings and obstructions that affect one antenna or the other but less often both at the same time. And improving overall FM reception should also improve the range at which you can effectively receive HD. But I would expect that even if you don't bother installing the window antenna and preamp, you'll still get HD AM and FM whenever the signal is picked up well enough by the original single antenna.

-Chap

 

Very true, however my previous car was an Audi TDI with a diversity antenna. I installed one of the cheap head units from china which didn't support diversity and was just the single antenna, my reception degraded substantionally without diversity compared to my stock head unit. So yes, you can still get an HD radio signal, it won't be much better than normal FM unless you get a diversity setup.

 

I guess the thing about HD (ideally, like any digital signal) is it will be uniformly great whenever it is strong enough to decode. Where it isn't, it will fall back and be no better than your analog reception (because it is your analog reception).

And it'll be really annoying if you are right at the edge of strong enough and it keeps flipping in and out (at which point you'll probably use the on-screen setting to force analog only).

-Chap