aux input noise

[roverman]

Switch to auxiliary - loud feedback noise. Switch to FM or AM and back to Auxiliary and the noise goes down but not away. This happens even when I don't even have my ipod plugged in yet. The feedback noise also goes up when I turn the volume up. The dealership says they know about the problem but that there is NOTHING that they can do about it!!
Does everyone have this noise? Is there a way to defeat it?

The feedback isn't just a hum, it's a more mechanical sound, like if you took the sound of a cassette tape (from the old days) trying to eject and speeded it up.

 

[jmrivera]

Sounds like a ground loop issue...

I think if you ground your stereo directly to the battery, it should go away... Shouldn't be too hard, you'll just have to find a good place to get the cable trough the firewall... Use a good size gauge (at least 12 gauge, OFC)...

Jonathan

 

[roverman]

Thanks, I will suggest that to the dealer on Monday. I'm just amazed that their response was "yeah we know it's a problem and can't do anything" attitude. Basically, that I have to live with their broken product.

 

[cdodkin]

I get the 'cassette tape' noise, but only when there's nothing plugged in to my AUX cable (a mini jack to mini jack Monster Cable).

When I plug my iPhone in, noise goes away, and audio through AUX sounds great.

 

[roverman]

The dealer said it was a bad jack, it's on order. Hopefully they are right, it doesn't seem like it. When I would switch stereo on and off, i could get the noise to go from left to right speaker...doesn't really seem like just a bad jack would do that. I'll report back.

 

[gtc]

Having done a few car stereo installs, it definitely sounds like a ground loop issue. Given that you get the noise when not using the jack, I can't imagine it would be a bad jack, unless the grounding point runs through the jack (I can see some engineer thinking that this would be an effecient use of cabling).

Does the noise happen to increase/decrease with RPM or engine load?

 

[roverman]

No, the car doesn't even have to be running. It's just not consistent. Sometimes it does it when I pull the plug out, sometimes when I put the plug in. Sometimes when the IPOD is plugged in and I shut the car off while the IPOD is still running it'll do it.

 

[roverman]

Update, 2 months later they finally figured it out. The newer LR3s have a power line with heavier insulation. Running that from the Jack seems to have done the trick.

 

[Bluebird]

Warranty? TSB? Mine does that to.

 

[roverman]

Warranty I believe. Yeah, let them know what it is because they called in everyone to fix it and it still took them 3 visits. It says "open case with techline.nec to re-wire aux socket to radio with shielded wire per techline instruction" on the work order. Can't imagine what that would have cost had it been out of warranty. Sounds great now though.