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 knob is made with an un-reinforced hollow plastic tube inside the knob. 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 knob: 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 knob 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-ass 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