Or has the speed sensitive volume control gone bonkers?

Reason I ask is because the volume seems to drop at random, regardless of speed - highway or city. The only consistency I notice is that the volume drop usually happens after approx. 10 minutes of playback at high volumes. During this time the volume cannot be increased, only decreased. After about 5 minutes or so - I'm assuming a resting period - the volume returns to normal.

By the way, how do you turn off the volume control? At the time of purchase, the MA went through all the features and I knew this was something I'd want defeated but he said there was no such option, only to adjust its sensitivity from 1-5 (or something like that). However, the MINI site says "you can also turn it off whenever you like."

 

Yes there is thermal protection on both the head unit and the HK & HIFI amps. Sorry, no way to turn off the speed volume completely.

You may have a blown speaker or something creating decreased resistance, thus overheating the amplifier.

 

+1

But when my head unit overheated and went into thermal protection the sound went away completely. and when I overheated the HiFi amp it also cut all sound.

Now with that said it could be a speaker problem, where one or more is cutting out and that is causing the reduced sound output. Or you could have a loose wiring harness or a short in a harness somewhere that can cause this type of sound reduction but if it really comes back in a specific amount of time and is the same amount of time every time it does sound like a heat problem that is not part of the thermal protection system.

 

That makes more sense to me, that the head and amp shut off completely for the thermal protection.

 

I should add that whenever this happens, it doesn't sound like speakers are cutting out. There is a definite roll-off in volume - albeit a significant one - that sounds like someone turned the volume **** really fast. All speakers continue to play just at much lower levels.