Hi there!

I hope you guys can help me out a bit here... I think I got everything right, but then again my empeg behaves kinda strange....

My car is a Golf GTI mk4 from 2001, so natually I bought a ISO converter since the red and yellow wire are swapped on VW's... So far so good...

I then cut the Orange wire, and splice the amplifier remote on connector to it... and this works OK, it turns on when I turn the key, and off when I turn off the ignition...
The I cut the blue wire (Antenna) and splice it with the blue wire from my Tuner module, and the antenna amplifier aswell... Great.. now it seams to work OK... BUT when I turn the ignition off, the Empeg and the Tuner modules doesn't turn off... Now I know that you can set the empeg to remain powered on for some time after the ignition has been turned off, but I think I remember it should do a smooth flash with the diode.. which it doesn't.. it just blanks the display, stops playing music, but the diode stays lit.. no fading or anything.. and it stays like this forever..

Have I done something wrong here ?

Also I have some problems with noise from the engine, but I think I will tackle the above problem first... They may be related...

I have my amplifier in the booth, and the positive wire going in the left side of the car from the battery to the amplifier, and the nagative going from the apmlifier to groud, a big bolt in the chasie...
The cables for the front/rear and left/right are running in the right side of the car, along with the cables going back from the amplifier to the speaker ISO connector within the dash..

I'm asking for a bit of help here, as I have been working on this problem for two weeks now, and I'm getting tires of all the cables hanging around while driving :-(....

I have been playing my empeg connected to my home apmlifier, and here it works OK...

If needed I could take some pictures of specific areas of the installation...

Kind regards,
Heino Walther

First off, The amp remote wire from the empeg is to turn your amplifier on, not to tell the empeg when to turn on. Discconect it from the "switched" power. If you're using another head unit, just tape off the amp remote wire and don't worry about it.

Seccondly, it sounds like you've still got your constant and switched power wires mixed up. Try switching them around and see what happens, or put a meter on them and observe what's going on.

Thirdly, spend some time familiarizing yourself with the FAQ. It's great reading, and it gets better the seccond and third time through.

Matthew

Um, yeah, you've wired it wrong.

Blue wire from empeg needs to connect to the blue wire on your amplifier in the boot. You might have to run this wire yourself, rather than using a wire on the harness.

Blue wire from tuner module needs to connect to the antenna power amplifier or antenna raise/lower motor on your car's wiring harness.

Orange wire from empeg needs to connect to the ignition-switched power from you car's harness.

Yellow wire from empeg needs to connect to constant power from your car's harness.

The reason you're havnig trouble is becaue you did the wrong things with the orange and blue wires.

Hi Guys!

Thanks for the input! I found the problem, a blown fuse... turns out that if you swap some cables it is possible to get power to the empeg even with the fuse blown...

Now I bought the unit used, so I do not know if this happened while I was fideling with it or is was so when I recieved it... sadly I didn't test it before now...

But my problems aren't over just yet.. I now got everything up and running! Empeg, Amplifier, Tuner and AreialAmp. and it all turns off nicely..

My main problem now is engine noise comming though from the apmlifier (I think) if I pause the music it's a high pitched tone following the revs as I drive along... quite anoying..

Now I'm far from an expert in this, but there are some knobs on my amplifier, like gain and other stuff... is there any chance that noise like this could be caused by "over amplifieng" the signal ? Could I focus on adjusting the amp. or should I focus elsewhere ?


Another "minor" problem is that the "backlight" doesn't seam to work with the cars lights.. here in Denmark all cars must use driving lights while driving, even during daytime, so all cars have their lights turned on as default...
I noticed the white wire which should detect the dash lights (which follows the driving lights), this is connected to the ilumination wire in the ISO connector, or that is, if VW hasn't moved that arround aswell ?
In other words, I would like the backlight to be turned on at all times.. can this be done in the config.ini file maybe ?

Thans again for the help!

/Heino

Yes, absolutely, start with trying to correctly adjust the amp gain. There is a description of how to do that here.

The high pitched whine you hear is the result of a ground loop. You might be able to reduce it to the point of not being bothersome simply by adjusting your amplifier.

Here's a question: When you turn up your empeg absolutely as loud as you can stand it, so loud you couldn't imagine listening to it any louder, what is the number on the dial?

If it's not 0.0 db, then you definitely need to adjust your amplifier, the gain is set too high.

The volume range on the empeg should top out at the loudest you'd ever want to play it.

Regarding the night illumination wire, I don't know how the dashboard illumination sensing wire functions on a car with daytime running lights.

If your car has its dashboard lights on all the time, then I would assume that the empeg would think they were on all the time. Just set the empeg to be 100 percent with both the lights on and off.

The only way the empeg can tell if you want its display dimmed is through your car's illumination wire. If that illumination wire is lit all the time, there's no magic way for the empeg to tell the difference between night and day. It doesn't have a photosensor. Although I suppose if you were really cool you could rig up your own trick with a handmade photosensor system.

Hm. It seems to me that a car sold in a country where DRMs are required would have some kind of solution for this already built-in. I wonder how it works.

Oh, and regarding the fuse. Fuses blow for a reason, and it's possible it blew because you had it wired up wrong. Make sure you've got it wired up correctly before you assume that replacing the fuse solved the problem. Also, here is the FAQ entry on the various reasons your player might not turn off. And yes, a blown fuse is one of the possible reasons. It's just that whole connect-blue-to-orange thing you posted earlier sounded completely wrong.

http://riocar.org/modules.php?op=modload...mp;faqent=86#86

http://riocar.org/modules.php?op=modload...;faqent=163#163

http://riocar.org/modules.php?op=modload...;faqent=204#204

Ground loops can be nearly(?) impossible to solve. Start with the FAQ's sugestions and report back.

Matthew

You are right, the empeg does not go in steps like your mirror does.

The empeg's display dimmer is either off or on, and it decides which based on whether there is voltage on the illumination-sense wire or not. It's either dimmed, or not dimmed. You can adjust the brightness level for either state, but nothing in between.

So, whatever your car supplies on the illumination wire, that's all the empeg's got to go on.

My car with DRL (if I understand this correctly) still has a headlight switch with settings of "off", "parking", and "on". Both "off" and "on" illuminate the headlights, but only "on" lights the dashboard. ("Parking" lights the dash, cuts the headlights, and turns on some orange lights around the car.)

With my trusty headlight sense wire, "on" also engages the dimmer for my empeg. Just as expected.