I have an intermittent tuner problem developing. Sometimes when I insert my empeg and it turns on the tuner during the boot phase and then leaves it on permentantly, even when in MP3 mode.

When it does it the tuner isn't tuned into a station, it just plays static.

Removing and reinserting the empeg normally fixes it, though sometimes it takes a couple of goes. It only happens once or twice a week.

Is it likely to be a wiring problem or something else ?

Mmm... could you define "leaves it on permentantly" for us?

As in, even in mp3 mode one hears the radio instead ????


????

Yes, but only static from the radio, it doesn't tune to a station when it does it.

Could you, perhaps, elaborate some more on all of this?

I'm sure it seems very straightforward to you, but I'm still unclear as to what you are trying to describe to us.

Thus far, it sounds like you only ever hear static from your empeg, regardless of the audio source chosen (MP3, AUX, FM, AM). Right?

In which case, something's gone awry with the DSP mixer in the empeg itself. I don't see this having anything to do with the tuner.

Cheers

Sorry, Mark I realise I am not being clear. Let me try again...

I turn the empeg on, somewhere during to boot phase (probably, but not definitely at the point that it enables the tuner) you hear what sounds like and un-tuned FM radio. I assume that this sound is the tuner, but not tuned to a station.

The empeg then boots into MP3 player mode. You can play MP3s and everything behaves normally, you can hear the MP3s playing.

At the same time however, mixed with the MP3 audio, you can still hear the un-tuned FM radio. If you switch to tuner mode the MP3 stops and you can still here the un-tuned FM.

If you switch back to MP3 the un-tuned FM radio is still audible. The volume of the un-tuned radio sounds pretty much the sound it would if I switched to the radio normally and un-tuned it.

I don't know whether you can tune the radio when it is in this state, I have always pulled and reinserted at that point. I'll have more of a play next time it happens.

This is a factory tuner, if that makes any difference. No extension lead was used when installing.

Okay, that's better, thanks.

And how does the player behave with no tuner attached; in the home/office, for example?

It has never behaved this way when out of the car, I have only ever heard the un-tuned radio sound when it has been connected to the tuner in the car.

Conveniently it happened again this morning, so I took a few minutes to look at the problem some more.

First, the noise itself. It appears to be made up of two components, one is a very clean, even and constant static. The second component is electronics noise from within the empeg, you can here the CPU chirping away and you can hear a burst of noise when the disk is spun up and read.

The level of noise doesn't vary with the volume control.

It is present in the background when both the tuner and MP3 player are active. It doesn't change at all when you change radio stations.

The noise goes away when the player is in sleep mode (i.e. plugged in but turned off). The noise can't be muted using the tuner mute.

The noise starts before the "radio module enabled" message during boot.

Rebooting using Hijack doesn't make the noise go away. If you force the player into AC mode and reboot the noise is quieter, but still there, in AC mode.

Mmmm... I think the tuner is always powered on when the player is not in standby (uses the amp remote line(?)), so there's no simple way to try turning it on/off from software, apart from perhaps hacking Hijack to set the FM-Mute function in the low-level programming.

Not much more to be done unless the tuner is removed from the vehicle and examined on a testbed.

Cheers

One thing to try, which might help isolate things further, would be to simply unplug the tuner in the car, and see if the noise persists or not -- give it a few days.

Cheers