2008 ISF Audio System Slow to Start...

[Jon Dee]

Haven't been able to find anything relevant by searching high and wide, so asking the wise heads here 🙂 Standard factory audio setup that works fine once it gets going... touchscreen, radio, CD, mini-disc and aux. But when the car is first started the screen only displays "Audio Off" and no amount of button pushing will goad it into life. Drive for about ten minutes giving the buttons a random prodding at each set of lights, and eventually the system will come to life... audio control screen comes on-line and all sources are available.

I appreciate that this is not a "life or death" situation, and I don't feel that it is necessary to do an audio and screen upgrade. Only I would like to have the music play when I start the car or while working in the garage. So any suggestions as to what might be causing the delayed start, and how the problem could be cured, would be welcome 😄 

Cheers...

[jeffrosie6]

Rebooting the system i guess may help

[Jon Dee]

Touchscreen comes alive at key ON so power supply to the head unit is fine. Just tried it in the garage and the audio is dead with the "Audio Off" screen showing for at least five minutes. Spent those five minutes pushing every single button and then it comes into life with music is playing.

Remarkable thing is that somehow in the last couple of weeks I have managed to accidentally transfer the content from one of my homemade CD's onto the HDD 😀😄😎 No idea how that happened, but I shall investigate. As far as the time delay goes, I'm starting to suspect that it is the amplifier that is the problem. My assumption (and I will check this) is that all the speakers are driven by the amp, so if the amp is not powered there will be no sound.

To be continued....

[Texas]

Have you checked for water ingress into the boot area via the rubber ‘letter box’ type stale air vent that is in the proximity of the Amp in the OS of the boot?

[Jon Dee]

Checked the boot and all dry around the amp. Checked the amp wiring diagram, and yes, all the speakers are driven off the amp, so if the amp is not powered up there is no sound. There also does not appear to be any "remote turn on wire" for the amp, so essentially it will (should) power up when the head unit powers up.

Looking at the logic of this problem... the touchscreen powers up when the ignition is turned ON, but the screen just says "Audio Off" when the Audio button is pressed. After a delay of several minutes, the Audio screen comes to life, and if an audio input is selected, music will play. The amp is not the problem. After it starts up, the whole audio system operates as it should. 

So it seems that the delay is caused by the audio section of the head unit. Given the complexity of the integrated head unit I'm not about to go poking around in there !!! I can live with the delay for the time being. If it gets worse I'll see if I can find some clever bloke who can diagnose and repair.

Cheers...

[jeffrosie6]

Disconnect the Battery for a few minutes and see if that changes anything

 

[Linas.P]

Them amp is driven by optical capable from head unit (all IS-F I had seen had ML, so I assume it has ML). I would assume it would be either fine or faulty (considering it is optical), but perhaps it would help checking it is fully seated and not damaged? 

Now... can optical signal (digital) be only partially faulty? I don't know... logic would say no... but car electronics are weird to the point of being outright mystical.

Could it be amp on it's way out? Sure... again maybe it has not failed completely, but on the way there.

Why would it take long time to boot? On ML system everything audio related is handled by the amp, so head unit would wait for amp to send signal it is "on", before letting you to do anything. So it seems to me that for some reason amp doesn't power on for long time.

[Jon Dee]

Yes... I have been forced to change my thinking due to something I discovered yesterday !!! I had forgotten to turn off one of the overhead "map lights" that I had used in the garage a few days previously. And when I discovered this, I turned the ignition on to check the state of the Battery, and to my surprise the HDD audio screen popped up and I could see that it was actually playing 😮😲 No sound, just the track running indication on the screen.

The other source inputs were still dead / inaccessible, but the HDD touchscreen was active. So I let the system run, and after more than five minutes the amp came online and the music from the HDD was playing loud and clear !!!! I can't think of any logical explanation for this behavior unless the HDD is powered up independent of the amp. That's possible, as the HDD has other duties beside storing music. I shall probe further when I try and figure out the HDD controls.

Incidentally, my car is a JDM version and the audio system does not carry any ML branding.

Cheers...

[Linas.P]

Yes - HDD is part of head unit, so completely separate from amp and also from source control (there are two parts to head unit - the bottom which switches from CD/DVC/radio etc. that basically controls or are linked to the amp and top which is for sat-nav and maps and includes HDD).

So sequence of events would look something like this - you have head unit on, hence HDD was on, you were therefore able to select music to play from HDD... which it did without sound, because amp was off/booting. I guess analogy to home stereo - imagine playing musing on your phone which is connected via 3.5mm jack, but forgetting to turn on the amp - music will play on the phone, but no sound will come out of the speakers until amp is on. So this really sounds like amp issue.

Your car being JDM and having no ML also adds-up, ML was "technically" an option on IS-F, but almost all UK delivered cars have it... in fact I may have seen 1 car that didn't have it, even then maybe it was JDM. So it is right to assume that UK IS-F has ML by default, but as your car is JDM it may not have it.

That is kind of good news - I have non-ML amp you could try if you want.. .and head unit and the bottom "source" selection/DVD changer (well I also have ML amp, but that is not for sale). You can ignore the part of optical connection - only ML used optical.

[Linas.P]

Actually... just a thought. Could it be that you have corrupted/scratched CD/DVD in the changer? I have seen system freezing before when it tries to read from wrongly formatted CD/DVD (although you don't have ML you won't have DVD I guess), eventually it either manages to read it or skips it for another disk and starts working again.

[Jon Dee]

Went for a drive today and had another play. CD player will only play discs recorded as "audio" and just ignores MP3 discs. It works fine loading and unloading and playing, but I have not yet been able to get it to load multiple discs. As all the touchscreen instructions are in Japanese, I could be missing something crucial to the process. Thanks for the offer to lend me an amp, only I am in New Zealand so not really viable because of shipping costs. If it turns out I need one I can probably find one locally from a wreckers.

The HDD screen opens if there is no CD or Minidisc loaded, and can be controlled. I believe I managed to get it recording from a CD at one point, and as it seems to have added new tracks to the end of the existing CD that it had mysteriously recorded. I wasn't in the car long enough to check if it actually worked 🙂 I'll get that next time. I'm also going to try and time the startup delay for the audio system to see if it is consistent or random.

As an aside, I discovered that the car has a "de-ice" button that blows air against the inside bottom edge of the screen. This apparently is an alternative to the electric heating embedded in the lower edge of the glass to defrost the wiper blades.

[Jon Dee]

Learning all the time 🙂 Discovered that the HDD will play if there is no CD loaded in the CD player and I press the CD/AUX button. That's most likely why it has taken me over a year to discover the HDD player !!

Pulled and returned the RAD1 and RAD2 fuses just in case. Checked for power at the RAD3 fuse and it has 12V (this is the B permanent power to the radio that should maintain the memory when the ignition is off). Checked for power at the ACC fuse and 0V with ignition off (this is the 12V signal that turns the amp and radio on simultaneously when the ignition switches to ACC or ON). Checked the time from cold engine start to radio turn on and it was 4 minutes and 57 seconds.

Everything seemed as usual, but when the radio fired up I could see that it had lost all it's station presets. So a problem there, either with wiring or the radio itself. Going to try pulling the RAD3 fuse tomorrow to see if that changes anything... not hopeful though.