[evil_attorney]

I remeber reading in the owner's manual about the radio having the new auto volume control that increases or decreses volume based on the noise level in the cabin. Mine doesn't seem to do this now, and I can't find an option to turn this on. Am I wrong? Is this feature not included on the package 9's?

 

[petteri]

This feature was removed from the Prius at the last minute. So nobody has it.
Perhaps one day a software update to the audio CPU will be released.

Peter
Miami, FL USA

 

[V8Cobrakid]

I don't see why they disables it. Most standard auto volume contols work off the MPH anyways. Very simple for the prius to do.

 

[Daniel]

I don't see why they disables it. Most standard auto volume contols work off the MPH anyways. Very simple for the prius to do.

The last thing I want my car doing is deciding for me how loud I want the radio. Some things computers do best (like governing the relationship between and among the ICE and the two MGs) but other things are best done manually (like setting the volume).

 

[windsurfdog]

daniel,
This feature wouldn't be "deciding for me how loud I want the radio" but would merely be tweeking the volume that is set to adjust for ambient noise based upon speed of the vehicle.....great option, IMHO.....duh.....

 

[moocatdog]

daniel,
This feature wouldn't be "deciding for me how loud I want the radio" but would merely be tweeking the volume that is set to adjust for ambient noise based upon speed of the vehicle...

I agree. The driver sets the level, the car just maintains that level as you speed up or slow down. As handy as the steering wheel buttons are, I would like to have this feature.
Drive happy,
Moo

 

[Prius Maximus]

I always wondered why it didn't seem to work. So now my question is: why is there a setting to turn on a non-existent option? And how many other settings are there that don't do anything?

 

[ephrumsirc]

My guess is that since the microphone is not enabled unless you are doing Voice recognition (a joke) or talking on the phone, that the system wasn't "listening" for noise. In fact, it really couldn't because if you have your music cranked, it couldn't tell if the loud noise was because of road noise or because of your music. (Unless you had a super smart computer that actually digitized your audio from the source and compared the background noise it was listening to with the audio source, filtered that out, and ... definitely not a "cheap" automobile solution.)

So ruling out a smart car "listening" to the noise in the cab, the only other option is what folks have eluded to with the MPH or RPM of the engine. In a normal car, these would make sense since the engine speed is a large contributor of noise. While we do hear an increase in road noise as we speed up, I'm not sure it's always uniform. Try this (I will): just have your radio off and go on a highway and speed on up and cruise making sure the car is putting a load on the ICE. Then try to find a flat or slightly downhill section and just coast at the same speed so the ICE turns off (or slows down). Is the noise in the cabin predictable? How about if I'm crawling up a mountain hill at 20 MPH but the engine is doing a billion RPM to keep me moving? So if the car decides the volume based off of RPM, then it won't turn up enough when the road noise at a high speed is the problem. And if it only ties to MPH, then when I'm crawling up the hill, the radio won't be loud enough to drown out the screaming engine...

My guess is the folks at Toyota found out that their volume adjust algorithm just couldn't take into account all the different factors that would contribute to inside noise, and that they couldn't reliably adjust the volume to make it appear uniform no matter what.

Me - I just crank it up and deal with it when I come to the stop lights. Never really had a self adjusting volume, so not missing much. My thumb is getting pretty good on the Vol. Up/Dn button. What I sure would like is a "Mute" button on the steering wheel for when I want to have instant silence! (Any suggestions... I could hit the Voice Recognition button (package #9), but that is temporary.)