I had a car audio shop move my Rio and amp from my old car to my new WRX wagon. The problem is that now, unless the volume is set very quiet, the audio cuts out every few seconds.

The first thing they tried to do is sell me a new head unit (with free installation!), which annoyed me quite a bit. I was able to prove to them that the head unit wasn't the problem by putting it on AC power and plugging it directly into the amp. It sounded great and there were no problems. When I got home I also put my spare head unit into the car and had the same problems with it cutting out. So I assume the problem lies somewhere between the sled and the amp,

I couldn't stick around to pursue it with them, so I'll be going back tomorrow. I'm no expert, so could somebody give me some ideas as to what the problem could be and what I should be insisting that they check?

Many thanks in advance,
Bill

You might want to check for a loose signal wire on the sled connector. The older sleds had problems where the wires could be pulled out.

You might want to try your AC experiment again, but plug the RCA jacks in at the point where your sled connects to the wiring going to your amp. This would eliminate the wire run as a source of the problem, and you would then know it was in the sled.

It could also be the amplifier itself, or the power wiring that runs to the amplifier.

You say that it plays fine with the volume quiet. That tells me that it's a power thing (turn the volume up, then more power is needed). Does the amplifier have a power indicator LED or a limit/protect indicator LED? See if those turn on and off when the audio cuts out.

Does the empeg show any strange behavior when the audio cuts out? For example, does the empeg screen go blank or show the battery icon on the screen?

If not, then I'd definitely consider that there is either a loose wire, a faulty amplifier, or a wiring problem with the power lines that run to the amplifier.

Well, they fixed the problem. The store manager this morning was much more accomodating then the guy I talked to last night. The installer who actually troubleshot it wasn't there yet when I dropped off my car and was gone by the time I picked it up. So, I didn't really find out exactly what was wrong. I'm pretty sure they just reconnected everything and it was fine.

Thanks to both of you for your responses. It was helpful to me to go in there with some good information and basically be able to tell them what they need to check. The guy who called me the first day basically gave me two options: take it as is or buy a new head unit. I found that pretty rude. Luckily I had my power cord with me and could prove on the spot that it wasn't the head unit.

Thanks again! The couple of weeks in the new car without the empeg was a real let-down. I've grown pretty accustomed to being able to listen to any song that happens to pop in my head. Now all I need to do is put 400 more miles on the WRX to get through the break-in period and I'm all set!

Bill

Call and find out what the issue was. It might help others in the future.