I got my tuner kit and have built it, ad it does seem to be working, my car's radio ariel sucks however
A couple of issues with it tho.
1) Now that I have the tuner attached, I get the battery warning light when the empeg is brought out of standby, Remove the tuner and no battery light.
If this just a hijeck fix ? (Im not up to date)
2) The tuner defaults to AM when I switch to it with a kenwood steering wheel remote.
Can I get it to default to the FM ban, set 1 for example? How ? The static plays havoc with the speakers, especailly as the tuner tends to be louder than the mp3's.

Can I get it to default to the FM ban, set 1 for example? How ? The static plays havoc with the speakers, especailly as the tuner tends to be louder than the mp3's.

Not sure about the default...but you can adjust all the relative volumes with hijack, which will help with the speaker/static issue. Consider yourself FAQed about that. Look for the volume_boost_XX parameters.

The tuner shouldn't cause the battery icon to appear. Have you checked the voltage of your battery and the wiring?
It sounds like the tuner is causing the empeg to draw a little more power and it's causing enough of a voltage drop to trigger the low battery icon. It's not something that Hijack fixes anyway.

hi all there

Yesterday I fixed the tuner to my León.
For first time I saw the battery icon appearing at boot up. Strange, since until yesterday I had a Pioneer 50x4w that din't give up al full volume... power cables are new and much bigger than Rio ones. I guess it has something to do with internal stuff rather than installation...

More: well, I felt disappointed with recepcion. Original radio (Seat Aura) had an exceptional reception. Pioneer didn't tune as goog as the original one, but still good. Tuner kit looses trebles and stereo signal constantly, like an old analogic walkman would do in movement. RDS signal blinks and the broadcast is not constant. But, surprisingly, the 'power bar' is always full, even when near no station is recived ¿?
What's the difference between this tuner and a PLL sinthesized one? I didn't remember my last loosy car tuner...

At least, I can hear news and traffic when driving to work :-(

Cheers:

Miguel

Sanity check: I assume your car has the same antenna as most of the cars in the VAG (Seat/Volkswagen/Audi...) group. It is an amplified antenna, and needs 12V fed down the antenna wire from the HU to the amplifier by the antenna base - do you have the appropriate adapter?

/Michael

Thanks genixia, I will some day get around to having all the features on my empeg. I've tried installing the preinit code before but it never worked out right...
This isnt a major problem as it does disappear after a short time.
The wiring to the empeg is fine, it shares the power lead to the cigarette lighter socket, and I have run a 250W invertor from there previously.
It's definately the presence of the tuner which is making the light appear

Reception sucks on mine too, but I put that down to the really crappy stock aerial on the car. Im still planning to replace this with an amplified unit which uses the heated rear window for it's reception.

planning to replace this with an amplified unit which uses the heated rear window for it's reception.

Bad move in my experience, I moved to a Blaupunkt amplified stalk aerial from the heated rear window of my Range Rover, because it didn't work too well, but it didn't work too well on the original spec. hu. Small chance it was a fault in the rear screen set up, but I don't think so.

My experiences have been slightly different to yours I guess...
I had this sytem in a Ford Sierra. That car had the best radio reception that Ive ever owned! Guess where Im getting the amplified unit from

My tuner from pca shows the same effect as your one. The power bar is always much above the actual receipt. Even if I tune to a frequency where no station is broadcasting, I have at least two or three bars. And even if there is bad receipt of a station the power bar is full.
Could this be a hardware problem? (I don't think so, as I have double checked the assembly.)

For testing I (re)installed the orginal empeg tuner this afternoon. With this one I don't have this behaviour. I think the power bar corresonds to the actual receipt quality.
The overall receipt quality of both tuner are equal.

Has no one else this behaviour? Could it be that the pca tuner is more sensitively? Can this behaviour be changed in the player or withhin the hijack software?

The problem is that the sound output (bass, treble) seems to depends on the receipt quality.

the signal strength on my pca tuner is usually very accurate. Full strength on the bars corresponds with a strong signal, no aerial or not tuning to anything leaves me with no bars on the display.

As for the bass/treble attenuation, that's a function of the player, it attenuates the bass and treble according to signal strength, I think you can disable it with a config.ini setting something like fm_bassboost or something like that (anyone?)

Yeah, if your strength bars don't correspond to actual signal strength, I would first suspect a problem in the wiring between the tuner and the sled similar to what's described here.

But as soon as I connect the original empeg tuner the behavour is as expected. (Same wiring, just plug in the other tuner)
Another indication might be the volume:
For the pca tuner I have to use the setting volume_boost_FM=3 for the orginal empeg tuner I have to use volume_boost_FM=6.

Right, I'm referring to the wiring and pinouts on the PCA tuner connector that you assembled in the kit. Getting the right wire to the right pin is important, and a mistake there could cause the behavior you're citing, as was proved by the mis-wiring of the extension cables.

I have the same problems that are listed below and I just put mine together about two days ago.... I get pretty much full power listed on stations that I do get no matter if the reception is good or crappy. If I don't get a station at all, sometimes I still have full bars and sometimes they drop down. I noticed that even if I tune to a nearby station, the bass and treble drop about every 3 - 5 seconds. The RDS flashes in and out on certain stations and NEVER stays on for more than one second... I am 99% sure I wired it correctle according to PCAs instructions. Are you saying that the wiring in the sled wiring harness is incorrect or that we wired the turner harnesses incorrectly??? I am confused which to be checking... It's obviously not the blue or black wire that isn't wired right It must be one of the other ones you are talking about...
------------------------------------------------------------------------
"More: well, I felt disappointed with recepcion. Original radio (Seat Aura) had an exceptional reception. Pioneer didn't tune as goog as the original one, but still good. Tuner kit looses trebles and stereo signal constantly, like an old analogic walkman would do in movement. RDS signal blinks and the broadcast is not constant. But, surprisingly, the 'power bar' is always full, even when near no station is recived ¿? "

Are you saying that the wiring in the sled wiring harness is incorrect or that we wired the turner harnesses incorrectly?

Either, or both. Or an internal error in where the wires got soldered to the PCB. Use this as your checking guide.

Well, some things that I'm noticing from poking around...

I have noticed that the PCATS tuner has no "Pin 7" or "Pin 3". I can see from the link you sent me that there is no "Pin 3" required. It does look like there is a Purple "Pin 7". There are no instructions in the PCATS manual for a "Pin 7".

I don't see any wires that are crossed or anything. If I need to try reversing two wires to see if it "helps", I would try reversing the "Level" and "Signal" pins 1&2 right? It would seem that 5&6 are Rx and Tx, so I would assume it can't be that. And it obviously can't be the voltage wires...

I did notice today that when I hooked up a "Euro Style" antenna, the problem with the power bars being at 100% went away, but my reception went to hell... I had to switch back to my original antenna (which according to Dodge and two stereo shops does not have an amplifier).

Let me just ask some people here... If you tune to a station with nothing but static, do you get 2-3 bars of signal strength. If you are listening to a station with a full set of bars, does your high end frequency keep turning on and off? I have some stations that show a full strenght and I can't hear anything. I have some stations that show full strengh and just fade in and out...

Also, does anyone have a problem where the RDS indicator wont ever stay on? I have too many variables to figure out what is going on, and no "known good tuner to compare it to"... Is this common behavior of all tuners, all PCATS tuners, or just a few PCATS tuners.

I suppose tomorrow, for the hell of it, I will try switching the Pink and Grey wires "Level and Signal" to see if that has any effect on the odd reception characteristics.

Why couldn't the damn thing just work? This is pissing me off...

The two extra wires for expansion and were never used. It's normal to not have them.

Well, I tried swapping the wires. That made the problem a thousand times worse. All the wires are hooked up right... I am thinking the problem may have somthing to do with my dodge antenna. Is it possible it's too powerful or the wrong impedance or resistance or somthing like that. It would seem that my "power bars" are about "three bars too powerul". When I get no receptioon at all, I still have two to three bars. When I have a clear station and all the bars are full, it sounds great, but if I lose just one of the bars, the station is impossible to hear. Very strange problems, and I'm not sure it will ever get fixed. I don't see any of the people that posted to this topic listing a solution to the problem (so I guess no one ever found a solution??). That makes be very sad...

MPELAZ summed it up very will when he said :

"Tuner kit looses trebles and stereo signal constantly, like an old analogic walkman would do in movement. RDS signal blinks and the broadcast is not constant. But, surprisingly, the 'power bar' is always full, even when near no station is recived ¿?
"

I don't see anyone posting that they every figured out why this is happening, but I don't have any other tuner module to compare it to... I wonder if they all do it, or if only the kits do it or what...

Also Alex 25 said the following:
"My tuner from pca shows the same effect as your one. The power bar is always much above the actual receipt. Even if I tune to a frequency where no station is broadcasting, I have at least two or three bars. And even if there is bad receipt of a station the power bar is full.
Could this be a hardware problem? (I don't think so, as I have double checked the assembly.)

For testing I (re)installed the orginal empeg tuner this afternoon. With this one I don't have this behaviour. I think the power bar corresonds to the actual receipt quality.
The overall receipt quality of both tuner are equal.
"
It strikes me as odd that we are all having the same problems of three bars with no signal at all. That we all experiance full bars with no signal at all (only on some stations). It is also very odd that when you do get a good station, sometimes if the station fades out, the power bars remail 100% full and sometimes they dip down.

I know the tuner module isn't supposed to work like this, and it isn't the wiring. I doubt it's the compnonents I soldered in because I spent 7 hours soldering and rechecking everything before I fired it up. I even took everything apart and checked all the wiring and all my sled wiring (because Tony suggested it may be the wiring). That wasn't the problem either, but I'd like to thank Tony for offering me help I'll take all the help I can get on this issue...

I suppose I will build up my second kit and see if this one suffers from the same problems as the first. If it does, I suppose I sent $400+ on two items that may not be compatible with my truck/antenna...

Im really not sure what other problem it might be?? Maybe a setting in the config.ini file? Someone mentioned in another thread that they though you could turn off the feature that mutes out the high end frequencies when the reception goes down... I don't know how it decides when to do that because my bars never leave 100% but the station keeps muting and unmuting the high frequencies. Does anyone know if you can turn that feature off or not??? I also noticed someone saying something about setting FM boost on an original tuner model to 6 and setting their tuner kit to 3. Why would they be different, and how do you know what to set them too???

I must confess to being rather puzzled by these reports. The tuner in my car (when I had an empeg installed, newish car at the moment, haven't had time to fit one, etc) didn't exhibit the behaviour you describe. I have talked to a number of people I've supplied with tuners, and they all work fine as well. There was one I got back from a guy in germany that had been having similar problems, but I was unable to duplicate the results even after much fiddling and testing.

The best explanation I have so far managed to come up with was suggested by a friend of mine who has considerable experience in the radio industry. He said it might be an issue with RDS in some way, quite possibly due to overenthusiastic auto-retuning. Apparently he had seen similar behaviour in some car radios where the receiver happened to be more or less equidistant between two FM transmitters from the same station, and kept switching between them looking for the strongest signal. If the pre-emphasis on the transmitter was slightly different on each, you would get an apparent change in high-frequency response, and sometimes bass.

He also suggested if it was rapidly switching between stereo and mono reception for similar reasons the result would be quite like that described. I'm not sure that the empeg RDS software exhibits this behaviour or not, but if it does it may be a partial explanation.

As to why some people seem to get a strongish signal in the absence of a tuned station, I really don't know. Again, possibly it's a software issue with particular types of antenna producing distorted or overloaded signals, but this only a guess. I haven't been able to produce the fault here at all. The things either work correctly or don't work at all in my experience.

Can I suggest that if you are getting this behaviour, you try unplugging the antenna completely when tuned to a local station? If it happens to be a very strong one, you should be able to receive it reasonably well with no antenna at all, or just a few inches of wire stuck into the antenna socket. If this works, it might be worth trying an inline attenuator between the car antenna and the tuner. The modules are extremely sensitive, and it's barely possible they're being overloaded by a local, very high-output transmitter.

pca

As my tuner (and empeg) is currently homeless (changing car) I thought I'd hook it all up on my desk....

In my car I used to get ok'ish performance from the tuner, but like you the rds signal would turn on/off quite frequently causing the sound to temporarily drop out, despite the signal strength being full. I put this down to the aerial, and since reinstalling the stock head unit in my car, I can confirm that the aerial isn't great

...Because of the connector on the tuner module won't plug into any aerials I have indoors, I got a longish piece of electrical cable and used that as a whip antenna, with a bit of careful placing I'm able to get perfect reception on the stations that I've got preset in on the empeg, however, with this "aerial" no matter what frequncy I set, I always get full signal strengh, and unplugging the aerial causes the signal strength to disappear....

So I'm pretty much convinced now that I and what you are describing is a aerial fault of some kind....

Anyway, I was bored so I thought I'd try some things!

Adrian

I just made some more experimentes with my (not used) pca tuner module. It's one with the reception problem. All this have been done on my desk and not in the car:

- If I completly remove the positive antenna connector directly on the soldering point I have no reception at all. 0 out of 7 bars. No sound. (There is one station with a very strong reception. Tuned to this station I have 2 out of 7 bars. Sound is clear)

- As soon as I connect a short wire (in my case a screwdriver) to the antenna soldering point I have 7 out of 7 bars. Same behaviour for all frequencies, even if no station is broadcasting on that frequency. On a used frequency sound is ok, else I hear noise. (Same if I put a finger on the soldering point instead of the screwdriver)

pca, should I send the tuner back to you to have a look at it? At the moment I can't use it and I'm happy with the orginal tuner modul I also have. But in future I plan to sell one of them.

Should I make some other tests?

Hi! I'm that "guy from germany" ;-) pca has mentioned. I found out that most of the problems went away after downgrading to 2.0 Beta 13. All you guys having problems with "walkman-like-reception" try that out!!!
cheers,
thorsten

Yes, removing the antenna whip lead from my truck on a strong station gives me 3 bars and very good reception (but still leaving the antenna jack plugged into the tuner jack). Putting the whip part of the antenna back onto my truck rails the bars back up to 100% and the signal high frequency fades in and out.

How many dB do you recommend I attenuate the antenna?

As I recall, every three dB drops me half the total signal. Will this had an adverse effect on my reception, or will it just "chill out the jumping around" of the station lock? Why would someone recommend dropping back to beta 13? Is there a change in the config file or something?

I still have two questions that no one has answered...perhaps someone can help me out...

1. Is there a way to "switch off" the players tendency to drop the high frequency when it notices a signal change?

2. I noticed someone mention FM_Boost settings in the players config.ini file, is this something I have to set? One person was saying they had to set it to =6 with a stock module and =3 with a PCATS module...

Hi again.

Well, i haven't had time to disassemble the sled and tuner from my car to do some tests, but I'd want to do just a few comments:

First time I tried the kit, in my desktop, the reception was near perfect with a 1 meter cable plugged into antenna connector. All stations sonded ok, but the reception bar seemed to be higher than sound quality... (it could be a personal feeling). If I moved the antenna cable, the reception felt down, but I supposed it was due to my crappy home-made cable antenna.
When I fixed it into the car, at the first listen, the reception was good too, until I begun to drive. The trebles went in and out, as the reception was good or not. It has nothing to do with RDS AT function, since AT station changes are very perceptible (sound quality and level changes, a 'chop' noise and a jump in the song). Even with no-rds signals, the treble fade is constant when moving. Now when I brake at a red light, I use to stop just when reception is good... or move slowly until getting it

BUT: I now know that my car antenna is amplified, and I didn't attach the power lead to Rio blue cable. So reception looses could be caused by a weak signal. What I don't understand is why signal bars are yet signaling so high...

SO: My opinion is that PCA Tuner is extremely sensible to signal strength, and too much or too less signal affects the reception. At home it doesn't matter, but It is a big problem with a mobile tuner, more if you live in a big city with narrow streets as Madrid.
I still have to try powering up my antenna amplifier, although I guess I'll have to attenuate the signal not to overload the module. (Does anybody know how to do it?)

I'll report the results soon

Thanks:

Miguel.
Madrid, Spain

I noticed someone mention FM_Boost settings in the players config.ini file

Not sure if this is the setting you're referring to when you say FM_Boost, but fail to find anything on FM_Boost when searching the BBS, so...

volume_boost_FM=nnn in HiJack sets a volume adjustment to be made when switching to the tuner (FM mode). There are also settings for AM, AUX IN and MP3.
See this entry (towards the end) in the HiJack FAQ.

/Michael

There is a disable_bassboost_fm in hijack also.

Have been searching around for a way to set the FM bands as default when switching to the tuner and I cant find it. At least I can turn down the volume on AM so I dont blast my ears when the switch happens, but still

Fitted the heated rear screen aerial and it has made a massive improvement, however there is still some of the issues mentioned above. Im stripping my car this weekend to wire in a few extra bits and try to cure the still ever present alternator whine so will check the tuner wiring then.

Ok, whil I've read alle these posts, I want to tell my practice with the tuner:

- Signal is definitely reported too high (is it possible to decrease the displayed signal at at leat 6dB?)

- RDS display: Yes, I had this issue, too. And the signal shown was full strength. But in real it wasn't! That might be the problem. I put an antenna amplifier between the antenna and tuner and RDS was much better.

The Reception is not the best but maybe I can fix it by exchanging my cheap antenna amplifier with a very good one.

- If there is no station at all, I have no signal, no bars displayed.

I'm in Germany.

Rolf

This issue is being discussed again here, if anyone is still interested:

http://empeg.comms.net/php/showflat.php?Cat=&Board=empeg_general&Number=195144