hi all, and merry christmas!

After a whole year with my nice PCA radio module, I'm getting crazy looking how my favourite FM RDS stations go away every time I drive near to a gsm scrambler or poor reception areas...
I still don't know how to fix this problem, the tuner changes the station thinking that there's a stronger RDS signal, but it is ALWAYS incorrect. And the AF "on / off" switch doesn't change the tuner's feelings...
when I use the other car (with a Seat aura RadioCD) it keeps the station nicely and doesn't change, if it does, it tune a stronger station (of the same broadcaster, of course)
I'm running v2.00 final, and I think it's a known bug but, is there any way to solve it? I spend all my job's travel every morning changing the memory station up and down to retune the original frequency. And it always change it just in the most important part of the morning news!! ;-)
Well, in fact I'd preffer to have it not working (no RDS AF at all) than the other important miss, the seek function.

Please help me, I'm going crazy!!

Miguel.

hi again

sorry for being so insistent...
I've been reading some posts and I've found more people with my problem... I'll try to explain it better.

I live in Madrid (Spain) and near all FM stations have a good RDS AF functionality, you can cross the country and your FM tuner will retune itself to the local frequency of your favourite station. For example, you're listening to RNE3 and you have it recorded in slot 1. Every decent FM RDS tuner will get 93.2 in Madrid, 95.8 in northern Madrid, and will change the freq. to the strongest alternative one every time the signal is poor. If you travel with the tuner off, when you arrive and recall slot 1 (RNE3), the tuner should know it has to retune to the alternative local frequency, given by the broadcaster via RDS.

The fact is that Empeg RDS code doesn't do that, and changes the frequency with no sense, even 5 or 6 times per minute in worst cases. Sometimes it detects it has tuned a wrong station and comes back to the original freq, some times not.
Usually it changes to the same alternative station, (wrong one, of course) depending on where you are and the strenght of the signal. The alt. freq. it tunes to, is not in the list of alternative frequencies the station gives. Most of the times it stucks in a wrong (and poor) station and you have to select the next memory slot up and down again to have the original freq.
I've always thought that it was a bad implemented AF function, but I cannot switch it off. Maybe it has nothing to do with it...
The rest of RDS tuners I have do that work perfectly.
I'm be able to record some traces if someone have an idea about how to get rid of this. :-)

Thanks again,

Miguel.

ok folks, I guess most of you live in America, so you don't have to deal with RDS... but, any of you have experienced similar problems?
Please help me, I'm beginning to think about buying a second unit only to play decent FM... a pity having PCATS module

cheers,

MIguel

I live in the US and have found the RDS to be totally crap on v2.0 final, it tends to switch my Public Radio to an unrelated oldies station repeatedly in a 2 mile section of my commute. Setting the RDS on or off via the interface has absolutely zero effect on the auto switching (it just removes the text display from the screen). I've never known if this is the fault of the RDS the stations put out or just an empeg quirk. When I have RDS set on I also very often get garbled text output. Sorry I don't have better news. Perhaps someone else can comment and point up what I'm missing?

-Zeke

I've just purchased a used Original Tuner (thanks to this board!) and am having a similar RDS/AF problem with 94.5FM in Boston. The station jumps to 107.9 after about 10 seconds.

Disabling AF via the 2.0 final software has no effect. I was hoping Hijack might help with this, and I noticed these two entries in the Hijack change log:

v337-v338 Cosmetic changes to the RDS/AF disable code.
v336-v337 Removed CONFIG_IRCOMM=y from car2 config; added "Tuner AF Blocking" to menu.

But it looks like these Hijack menu options aren't in the current versions of Hijack. Anyone know what happened to them? I'll try v338 later this week to see if it helps but this thread "Hijack v337 and RDS/AF Issues" doesn't make me very hopeful.

Was anyone able to get RDS disabled? Can we clip a wire on the connector to the tuner module and kill it?

-Steve

Quote:
Can we clip a wire on the connector to the tuner module and kill it?

Yes, you will definitely kill it if you do that

FYI. his response means DONT DO THAT

Hah, good thing I didn't ask how to stop my brakes from squeaking!

I'd assumed that the RDS information didn't travel on its own wire but thought it couldn't hurt to ask.

But it is frustrating to drop $200 on a tuner only to find out that certain stations can randomly change. The other bug that is getting on my nerves is the lack of seek function in 2.0 Final.

Could the RDS/AF problem be put in the tuner section of the FAQ? The original poster has it worse than I do (only one station is affected for me) but if I'd read this in the FAQ beforehand I might have thought twice about risking the $200 on a component with a known bug...

<Crank mode off>

Hopefully the code will be reinstated in Hijack?

-Steve

The $200 component (the tuner module) is NOT the one with the bug. The bug is in the free v2.00 software upgrade you have for your Empeg/Rio Car player. You could always bump it back to the s/w version that came with it originally, and the problem may go away. Or use v2-beta13. Or write a quick hack for hijack to blot out all of the RDS data (if possible).

Cheers

But there is a seek function (or at least what I would call seek): press and hold (> 0.5 sec) on either the Fast Forward or Rewind on the RIO remote, and it will seek up, or down, to the next radio station.

The reason it jumps off frequency is due to the station list available over RDS to the player being re-populated incorrectly. It is a genuine bug in 2.0 final.

PS. Squeaky brakes either mean the pads have dust behind them (remove, air dust, clean the pad backs and then apply high temperature grease to the back of the pad backplates before re-inserting) or that they are worn down to the backing plates (you are about to die).

Then you are not holding the button in long enough: I have 2.0F on my test machine, connected to a factory tuner on the bench in front of me. It has just tuned up from 88.3MHz to 92.7, followed by 101.7, all with remote presses. All are strong channels, and NO, there are no presets stored - I have to use this rig for tuner build tests.

What am I doing wrong?

Nope. I can hold the >> button 'till the cows come home, and all it does is advance the frequency by 0.4 each time. Perhaps you're in a saturated area, Rob, where *any* change of freq gives a new station.

EDIT: wait, that's v3-alpha8 on that player.

My other player has v2.01 on it, and holding down >> has NO EFFECT whatsoever. I suppose I'll try v2-final again to see what that does now

EDIT2: Same deal with v2-final -- holding down >> has NO EFFECT whatsoever. With the Kenwood remote (instead of Rio Remote), holding down >> appears to do something, but it's not SEEK -- instead it just stops on its own sometimes, and other times stops when I let go, whether on a station or not.

Or maybe it's related to RDS. Perhaps it only works to seek for the next RDS station or something.

2.0 beta 13 fixed the RDS/AF problem!

The scan/seek feature is also working now. (That part we already knew.)

-Steve

FAQed as promised.

Hi all again,

Well, thanks all for your interest, tonight I'll try to roll back to 2b13 and try. Madrid has about 40 FM RDS stations so is a good city to test it ;-)
I hope to post good news tomorrow.

cheers,

Miguel.

Ok, It's done.

Last night I rolled back my Empeg to 2b13. I updated Hijack to 417 too. Didn't remember how nervous I feel during the "booting" time...

so I plugged it into the sled and... Works!! FM stations are now stable, for the first time!! It shows right RDS data too. I only have a test to do, driving through various stations of the same broadcast. Maybe next week.

It may be a personal feeling, but I think this firmware version sounds worse than 2.00 final does. FM seems to have a not so wide stereo than before. It sounds more 'compact', 'closed'... (don't know how to describe it!) After playing a little with Eq, I felt satisfied but not convinced... It seems to need more 'power' in the eq. curve to sound as rich as before. (my car has original loudspeakers, which sounds fairly good with a 75x4 amp).
So, my question is, Does anybody know if there is a change in sound process between 2b13 and 2.00 final?
Quite sure It is an autosuggesing matter...

Thanks a lot,

Miguel.