I'm not one to intentionally exaggerate too much on something, but I think these may be the worst radios I've ever seen in my life (and I go back to the 70's). I can only refer to the six CD changer variety as I have no experience with the single-CD units.

My Quest is on at least it's fourth - if not fifth - radio. I'm trying to figure out exactly why they are so lousy. It's not the BOSE amp or the speakers - that stuff has no issues (I don't see any references online to that part of it anywhere either). Obviously, this is a once-off design where they got creative and separated the controls from the head unit - I think they got too cute for their own good. Orrrr...they rushed the design into production without fully testing the radios (I'd guess the latter as 2004's were the first year design Quests made in the Mississippi plant where Nissan teams from Japan had to come in and fix the mess).

In speaking with the repair guys, here's what they said:

1. The internal mechanisms that handle the CD's were cheap and had a miserable failure rate. This contributed to the "eat my CD" issues and "can't eject" issues. I've had three of them do this.
2. They - as do I - wonder if there isn't a slight "software" issue here as well. I now have the issue - on a freshly repaired unit - where I have had to unplug the battery (twice already) to stop the unit from doing the "beep three times" thing whenever I try to use the CD player. When it does this, I hit the "CD" button and it beeps three times. I hit the eject and load buttons - same thing. I pull the battery and wait 5 min and plug it in..all OK. I'm trying to recreate this and document it. So far, I can't tie it to a particular sequence.
3. Over-complexity: If you look at all the wiring and connections in this set-up (for a first and second year production run), it's almost inevitable that there are going to be issues. There are the connections down to the DVD player under the seat...back to the rear controls (upper)...down to the control unit in the front.. etc., etc.
4. Many had the static problem and general sound failure issue, but they didn't elaborate on that one.

Anyway, they are what they are and there is no easy way to replace them. You can kluge a small radio in the front (see YouTube), but it looks pretty ugly. Crutchfield recommends.."nothing". Serious. There is no replacement. Soooo, I'll keep looking into this one issue I have now to see if there is anything obvious out of curiosity. I would almost recommend that if you have a CD player and it fails, just abandon it and don't mess with it. Use an external source for your music plugged into the radio (as it doesn't fail much) or use the DVD player under the seat (I did that for 9 months).

Update: So far in one week I have not been able to recreate the three-beep issue on my 6-disk changer. It appears to be working fine after I got it back from repairs. Kinda nice having a functional CD player again - I was tired of using the DVD player..

I have had zero issues with my 6 disc changer. dead when I got it bought a new unit off ebay flawless since. HOWEVER I now realize I "NEVER" change the CD's literally never. I can burn 80+ minute CD's (carryover from the pre dvd days when we needed a weee bit more time for VCD's) so I burned a custom set of my favorite music on 6 disc and just "loaded that" if I want anything else bluetooth and done.

so I might not experience those issues. I hope it does not fail. while not terribly expensive not crazy cheap either.