F31 BMW audio distortion

[jinjur]

Hi gang, hope someone can help or advise

We have a 2014 F31 325d (UK car) with pro nav HK and L7 audio

Car has been fine for 5 years but last week the audio went weird.

Seems to be from all sources (radio, media, bluetooth) and notably all of the system sounds as well.

I have attached a video and you can hear the distortion most notably in the gong in that video but it is present in all sound.

I have changed all settings in the HU to try and isolate it but the distortion is in all speakers. I have tried with L7 on and off, no change

I reset the HU as well, no change

I have checked for errors in ISTA and nothing is shown

Only other notable thing is that the other day the car started asking us to select a profile every time it was started. This hasn't happened in about 5 years of ownership. I went in and turned this option off but I guess the reset might have triggered that.



I had a look around the amp in the boot area as i knew that the E9x series had issues with water ingress affecting the amp but it is all dry

At a loss guys so really hoping you can help

Can't really be throwing a fortune at this for BMW to muck about so happy to investigate if you can help me

Cheers

Jinj

 

[AlpineF30]

Amp is gone would be my bet.

 

[jinjur]

That sounds really not good at all

 

[AlpineF30]

That sounds really not good at all

Because its all the speakers it points to something big failing.

The car is wired over a fibre optic network to the amp then the amp runs over conventional wiring to each speaker.

Only thing really in the chain that could be causing it is

1. Bad head unit - Maybe worth getting the likes of Colm Hyland to take a look and to a flash on it just incase its somehow got screwed up and a reflash would sort the errors out
2. Bad amp
3. Bad wiring from headunit to amp

 

[jinjur]

Sucky. Much Sucky.

Thanks for your take on it @SilverF80 I do appreciate it.

I think you are indeed right though and seemingly the Alert "gongs" and Parking Sensor "bleeps" don't come from the HU (different ECU) so the common denominator is indeed looking like the amp and if that was a new replacement it is in the thousands. Even eBay gambles look like £600+

BBEREMAN seem to repair this stuff but I think I will have a nosey and a smell inside the amp as any failures I have seen in my googling until now have all been quite obvious damage with reported burn smells.

Not that I can fix that like

Thinking along those lines, do we have anyone like BBEREMAN in Northern Ireland at all?

J

 

[Nicky Glanza]

Amp lad , replaced mine same year as yours about 2/3 years back

 

[jinjur]

@Nicky Glanza Does that sound like similar money buddy?

 

[Nicky Glanza]

@Nicky Glanza Does that sound like similar money buddy?

It wasn’t Andy Tbf I got mine off a friend who had one for breaking at the time.

I would ring chris Coleman in Armagh

Cc automotive , he only breaks BMWs and wild decent bloke

 

[jinjur]

@Nicky Glanza cheers man

I have popped him a message to see what he has

looks to have a few HK equipped cars so there might be a chance I guess, don't know how rich it will be mind you and I would expect to have to code it in too

J

 

[jinjur]

Just thought I would post an update here.

So, well, I really don't have the $$ to throw at an amp on the off chance and unfortunately I am not in a position to test it out with a known working one.

I have pinged multiple BMW breakers and they either don't have any cars with this specific spec or they know exactly what they can ask for them and that is usually upwards of £600.

So I spent a little time in the car trying to work out what was going on as this doesn't really fall into the water damage/sound gone situation that usually happens.

Anyway, I have discovered that this noise is 100% isolated to the centre/dash channel.

It was hard to actually identify that because of how intrusive and loud it actually is but I was able to trigger each channel in isolation within ISTA and noted the centre channel was the only one that sounded off.

So I have disconnected that main speaker (at the mid unit which looks to kill the tweet too) and the car sounds better

I am going to try and remove the speaker unit (mid and tweet) in its entirety so I can test the speakers themselves but I guess, is it likely that the centre channel on the amp only would crap out like this is or is it more than likely the speaker?

J

 

[Jason]

Try ECU testing in England for test/repair.