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Review on PAC AAI-HD3 14-Pin Auxiliary Input for Honda/Acura 2003-2012 - Satellite or CD Changer Integration by Brent Gurney

Revainrating 5 out of 5

Very happy with this '04 Acura TL so far!

Just installed today so just a first impression. Time will tell, but so far it's doing exactly what I wanted. As others have noted, if you don't want to keep your stereo's standard features like XM or CD, you can simply connect the cable provided by PAC to the back of your stereo and NOT connect your car's original 14-pin data line. I unplugged the XM connector from the back of my radio and just left it hidden and just hooked up a PAC instead. With no intention of using the XM, my whole interest was to have an option for an AUX jack that I could then connect a Bluetooth adapter to. The PAC box in combination with the basic Aukey AUX Bluetooth adapter works great, after testing the system for 30 minutes with several driving tests, turn off the car, start it again and see how reliably everything works. The PAC works almost instantly, when I press the XM button on the head unit my bluetooth music starts playing immediately without the PAC having to connect or anything else. At least in the configuration I'm using it in, it works great! FOR THOSE WHO ARE LOOKING FOR A PLACE FOR THE BOX: Specially for the 3rd Gen Acura TL, there is a place to place the PAC box on the side of the main unit and storage boxes. I should have photographed the box on site, but the picture with the arrow indicates the location I have in mind. Once everything was connected, I was able to hide the wiring harness fairly easily (in the case of the Acura TL, I tucked the extra wiring harness neatly into the gap between two storage boxes). The PAC box is then positioned nicely to the side and then, when everything is reassembled, covered by the center console trim. So far, to compare other options, I have used several devices in combination to connect Bluetooth to my device. older device: - The simplest option was a Bluetooth FM transmitter, which does the job but drops the volume a bit and the overall sound quality suffers. Good for telephoning, but the quality of the music "hisses" whenever there is a strong "ssss" in the text. So I just connected my phone to this unit for phone calls and used the GROM device to play music - the GROM device that the previous owner had worked fine for music. if it worked. The sound quality was excellent and it had the bonus of working with the radio controls of the car's stereo. In many ways the device is similar to the PAC, but I found the GROM device to be overly complex. It would often not "turn on" successfully and would periodically disconnect during use, and sometimes it would just lock up the car radio until the car restarted (wouldn't connect properly and wouldn't let me switch back to the normal radio) . . And even when it worked, the transition to it was very slow. I only used it for music as I didn't believe it could reliably answer a call.

Pros
  • Plug and play installation
Cons
  • Upgradeable