Last week I would start hearing a “pop” sounding on my car radio. This would occur a few minutes after I started the car, and the radio would be silent for the rest of the time until I shut off the engine. I blamed this on a loose speaker wire connection, not something I know how to deal with.
Tonight, however, I changed stations–I do this regularly coming home from a weekly meeting. There was no problem with the second station. (The first was classical music station KUSC-FM; the second was KRTH-FM, which plays oldies. I have been doing this for years, in three or four different cars.)
Is this a reception problem or, as I suspect, something wrong with the receiver itself?
Well, you see, speaking dumbed down to avoid confusion… an electronic radio , with a PLL, has an electronic memory of it.
Seems to me something is going on with the memory.
Now the pop seems to occur as it warms up … then you can get the 2nd radio station to work even though its warm.
Need some further tests.
- Tune in radio station manually, If it doesn’t work, what range is not working ? What I mean is if its only one station not working, then it must be the preset causing the issue.
2 So you’d done the manu ave it to a channel preset… You see, you might refresh the memory… You see a computer memory actually works as a charge in a capacitor, so it might need the capacitors topped up…
If it was just the one station not being able to tuned, can you reset the presets ? save some other station into the problematic preset, and see if it works better ? swap the stations around…
3. Its possible you have a FM transmitter, eg MP3 player, bluetooth to FM ?
I must have guessed wrong. Yes, KRTH played just fine all the way home (5 miles) last night, but this morning I drove only a little ways, on an errand, with the radio tuned to that same station and the sound popped out again. And even popped in a few times. I must have faulty speakers…
Lately I have had the radio switched off. It has been making sudden, strange loud chirping sounds through the speakers, completely out of my control. I think the radio is on its last legs, or the sound system has gone completely haywire.
Presuming your car has the factory-installed standard sound system, what is the make and year of the car? Does the system have these problems in AM? Do you have a cassette deck or CD player, and if so, how’s the functionality there?
It’s a '94 Mercedes C-280. The antenna is missing–I have not been able to replace it yet-- and I get no AM reception at all. The unit has a CD player which seems to work properly.