I am going to lay out all the dirty laundry here and hope that someone can offer some advice.

I installed a Parrot MKi9200 in my 2004 R53 with a HK system. I cannot say the Parrot system is great, but it was working nicely with my factory radio, amp and speakers. Parrot recommended and I purchased a pricy adapter cable so the installation was plug and play for the most part except for finding power for the Parrot system.

So I ahve been enjoying this set up nicely, listening to music from an SD card, a flash drive and even my Nuvi 750. After taking a great drive into West Virginia mountans last weekend we enhjoyed music and route instructions with every mile. I get back to the normal grind for work and turn on the sytem (that is Parrot plus OEM Stereo) and nothing out of the speakers. My first suspicion is the Parrot as the QC in engineering is not that good. So I called the Tech Support guy who only suggested I disconnect the parrot system, go back to factory wiring and see if there is a problem with the stereo.

So I put all back to OEM configuration and ...nothing. I checked all the fuses listed for the radio and amp in the footwell. I checked the fuse on the back of the head unit, all were OK. I have full display and can change channels and the like, but no sound out of the speakers.

Is there any way to diagnose if the problem is the amp or the head unit? Is there a fuse somewhere right on the amp in the rear compartment? Unfortunatly the service manuals are thin on advice, so any help is greatly appreciated.

DR Kane

 

Can you see the H/K MODE setting when you cycle through the music button (after bass/treble/etc)? If not, the H/K amp is not talking to the HU. There's likely a separate H/K amp fuse, worth checking. Don't know where, sorry.

Sadly, these H/K amps have a bit of a habit of failing.

 

Ian,

I cannot thank you enough for your help. I did the simple test you recommended and there are no H/K functions showing after the base, treble and balance functions after cycling the button with the music note symbol.

I will check the wiring diagrams but I think the Amp fuse is in the footwell at F10 location. But given that the head unit has a fuse buried in that is referenced nowhere in the documentation, I will pull the rear compartment apart and see if there is a fuse on the unit.

If not, and given the propensity of these amp units to fail, is it a safe conclusion that the amp is dead and should be replaced?

DR Kane

 

"safe conclusion" ... maybe, maybe not.
Many of the dead H/K amps go through a failing phase, marked by curious squeaks or pops, before they stop dead. Since your one didn't, maybe it's a wire disconnect somewhere.

But if you put the original car harness plug back in to the HU connector, that should eliminate the wiring worries.
The critical signals are pin 9 (K-BUS) and pin 13 (antenna).
If you have MFSW and the steering wheel buttons still can change track/channel, then the K-BUS is OK.
Only way to be sure about pin 13 is to measure at the H/K amp itself - you then could also check for 12V+/- at the amp. Pretty well requires pulling the rear seats and passenger side rear panels though.
If you go that far, H/K amp connections are:
http://www.gbmini.net/downloads/HKconnections.pdf

 

Ian: "E" is probably short for "Ein" which is German for "in" and "A" is probably short for "Aus" which is German for "out."

 

Ian,

I got the passenger rear side panel off, and there is no fuse on the amp itself.

I do have a MFSW and tested the channel changing fuction and that works. Obviously I cannot check the volume.

I have just a bit of confusion with the PDF chart and your recommendations.
You say 12V positive is at pin 13. Or do you mean that the antenna is at pin 13, but you have test for voltage elsewhere? The cart you reference has input 12 volts at pin 5. Are we talking about the connector at the amplifier or the connector at the head unit?

Is the proceedure to disconnect the negative battery cable, remove the plug from the amp, reconnect the battery, turn on the radio and test for voltage at pin 5?

If I am getting voltage to the amp, then what is next?

Damon

 

drkane,

I was thinking about putting in the Parrot MKI9200 in my 2004 MCS. Did you ever find the problem? My HK stereo is working perfectly, I want Bluetooth but not at the expense of wrecking the stereo!

Thanks!
Mike

 

The Parrot kit is very easy to install if you buy the espensive wiring harness adapter they recommend. All you have to do it pull the radio, pull out the plugs and plug in the new adapter. You will have to tie one wire into a switched fuse, I used a fuse adapter to keep from cutting any wires.

Now, I will be brutally honest, every thing about the parrot kit works as advertised, but I have gotten so many complaints about the background noise that I stopped using the hands free portion. I un-pared my phone from the unit.

I really think the problem is my MC S is very noisy. Mostly tire noise and this is after I changed from run flats to regular tires. Long term I am considering doing the dynaflex film treatment but in the mean time I am looking for bluetooth headset.

Some pointers from my experience:

The unit makes a great interface to the radio for multiple types of input. This is really cool as you can play your Ipod, or a flash drive, brand X mp3 player or I even use it to interface with my GPS, which I will explain in a minute. But the most useful interface is for the IPOD. The other interfaces are pretty dumb. I put a 8 gb flash card into the unit to play my music, but it would not work until I reduced the amount of songs to about 4 gb. (this is a flaw according the tech support, but they have no fix for it yet) The other thing that sucks about playing music off of the card in the head unit is that it will not randomly play the music. I do not have an ipod, so the best I can do is with a MP3 player or my Garmin GPS. This GPS interface is pretty cool as I get the shuffle feature with the Garmin, it is tolerant of a larger card and when route instructions are announced I hear them thorough my HK speakers and it stops the music while making the announcement.

So in retrospect I am not sure this was a great purchase. The most essential feature of hands free does not work due to either poor noise reduction software in the Parrot unit or a noisy car or both. I love the abilty to play other sources through the HK stereo but I think there are much cheaper ways to do that.

While I did have the hands free working I liked all the functionality of the unit. You do have to get used to stating the last name, first name or it will dial the wrong number. If I could just get the background noise down. Oh well.

I should mention that I mounted the dual microphone to the top of the steering column to get it as close to my mouth as possible and I still had to shout.

One other bit, my HK amplifier failed. This is well documented pattern failure elsewhere on the fourm. It had nothing to do with the Parrot kit. Just a stupidly expensive repair.

Good luck and let us all know what you decide to do and how it turns out.

Damon Kane