Any LIDL/ALDI Head Unit Owners?

cormie

Hi,
I have 3 head units, 2 Silvercrest (Lidl, Astra and Transit) and 1 Tevion (Aldi, Transit). If I have an MP3 player hooked up to the AUX it plays fine, as soon as I plug it in to charge via the cigarette adapter, I get a noise (can be heard best by turning the head unit up full volume and the mp3 player down a bit). Auto Electrician thinks it may be the head units themselves.

If anyone has a Silvercrest/Tevion head unit, an mp3 player and in car charger, could you please test this to see if you get the same problem?

Any feedback appreciated

alias no.9

I'd imagine it's interference from the car charger. Have you tried listening to the MP3 player with headphones while running on the battery and then plugging in the car charger to see if there's any degradation of sound quality?

langdang

Happens on each of your head units? With the same MP3 player?
If so the common factor is the MP3 player/charger...

What MP3 player? "Official" car charger or spurious cheapo charger?

Hard to explain this but is it a humming noise or is there a rhythm to it, like morse code or something, or is it just extra "untuned radio" type noise?

Putting anything in the AUX port is likely to pick up some sort of noise, the MP3 player has a certain amount of noise, as does the headunit, but putting it in through the AUX port will amplify some noise from the MP3 player the same way it amplifies the music...
I tend to avoid using the AUX port if possible and use a usb stick or an MP3 CD.

cormie

Thanks for the replies!

Good tip about checking with the headphones, I went out just there and can report that with headphones (they are good quality Shure ones) there is no interference sound at all, when I plug the charger in and out the sound remains the same, perfect. When I then hook up the aux cable to the headunit and out the vehicle speakers again, the sound returns. This is the case on all 3 vehicles, each with a different cigarette adapter where I plug the usb charger into, 2 cigarette adapters have their own usb socket with 3 extra normal sockets, and then the other has 3 normal sockets and I have a 12v plug thing which I plug into that and then plug the usb cable into that. So a different set up in each vehicle, the only common thing is the MP3 player and cable, but when using headphones, it's perfect.

The noise is a constant whining on the Astra, like a white noise, but on the 2 Transits, it a whistling and reacts in pitch when you rev the engine.

Seems it's a strong possibility that it's the head units so, the auto electrician said that the reason the Aldi/Lidl head units are cheap is because they take out all the stuff they deem unnecessary to most buyers and he reckons they left the thing that gets rid of the noise out of them.

Can anyone else with a Silvercrest/Tevion unit check this I wonder?

I bought 3 ground regulators or whatever they were called on a suggestion from a previous thread but the auto electrician said these wouldn't do anything if the problem was with the head unit so I wonder is there any other option that having to replace the head units? :eek:

langdang

Try the same experiment with a Hifi or those speakers you can get for Ipods.
Plug in MP3 player at same volume, whack the volume of Hifi up and see if you get same noise charging/not charging the MP3 player. Use the same charger if you can use that away from the car? And/or try it with a normal 230V charger if you have one?
Should give a good indication if it's the MP3 player/charger combination, or the head units.

You're probably like me when it comes to these noises, bought a clock radio in Dunnes one time that I nearly took a hammer to there was such loud 50Hz mains hum even when it was only in clock mode.

alias no.9

I'm still not convinced it's the head unit. If the noise is not there when running on batteries but is introduced when you connect the charger, then the root cause is the charger, probably some parasitic effects from a switch mode power converter.
The reason that it is worst when the MP3 player volume is low and the head unit volume is high is that the head unit will be amplifying the noise, even though it isn't causing it.

langdang

Ya, I'm guessing the same noise will be there on a hifi. Not apparent on headphones but being amplified up when put through the aux port and going through another gain stage as wot said Alias.

cormie

Aghh. Finally got around to getting a "decent" head unit, a "Sony MEX-3700U Bluetooth Car Stereo AUX USB" and the noise is STILL there

Victor_M

I had a similar problem years ago with a handsfree kit I had installed, turns out the fitter had tapped power off the 12V cigarette lighter and I experienced exactly the same whining noise as you, after a bit of head scratching I eventually tapped 12 of the back of the radio instead and hey presto sound gone.

Is there any way you could hard wire the charger to the radio power leads or some other clean 12V?

Matt Simis

"The noise is a constant whining on the Astra, like a white noise, but on the 2 Transits, it a whistling and reacts in pitch when you rev the engine."
You mentioned you bought 3 "ground regulators", I assume you mean Ground Loop Isolators (not Interference Suppressor), did you try them? Cos that sounds a stereotypical ground loop problem.

The charging point and the speaker grounds are not common to each other.

cormie

Thanks for the reply

No, I haven't installed the 3 things I bought yet. I'm not too familiar with any of this kind of thing myself. The auto electrician I use said installing these could cause knock on problems and suggested I try a new head unit first but this hasn't fixed the issue unfortunately

Matt Simis

cormie wrote: »

Thanks for the reply

No, I haven't installed the 3 things I bought yet. I'm not too familiar with any of this kind of thing myself. The auto electrician I use said installing these could cause knock on problems and suggested I try a new head unit first but this hasn't fixed the issue unfortunately

Well, they can kinda muffle the bass and mid range apparently. Im going to have to figure out something myself too, similar problems confounded by loud "popping" noises when changing track. The GLI fixes that but I need 2 and cannot even fit one behind the head unit, the Halfords ones are stupidly huge.

Why do you need 3 and are yours small sizewise? I might try the Maplin one:
http://www.maplin.co.uk/Module.aspx?ModuleNo=33172

cormie

1 for each transit and 1 for the astra is the reason for 3. Here's another thread I made on it, what I bought is in post #10 (sorry, I had written 7, but that was the wrong link - this is what I bought: http://www.newmp3technology.com/nf.htm)

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2055747753

Buffman

I have a Silvercrest head unit, but I use a 16GB memory stick for my music with no issues. Might be a handy solution, they are cheap enough these days. No problems either playing music from my phone over the bluetooth.

MarkR

Same as buffman. No problems. Except the microphone was crap and I had to shout to be heard. Changed to a separate car kit for my phone and all is well.

cormie

Yeah, everything is fine once there's no power source connected. It plays music fine off the mp3 player battery connected with AUX, and also through bluetooth and CD etc. The problem only happens one the mp3 player is charging