I'm going a little nuts ... I've had my 2013 MCS since March, but the HK radio has been driving me crazy. I spend most of my commute listening to my local NPR affiliate and the sound quality is just terrible.

I'm never more than seven miles from the transmitter, I've driven dozens of other cars and never had the sort of static/crackle sound I'm getting out of this car. I recorded a bit of it for you to check out here:


And here's a second file, recorded sitting in my driveway with the engine off:


Listening to podcasts, everything sounds fine. Hopping from the MCS to our Prius or Ridgeline, the sound is fine in those. It seems (stress the seems) to get worse the longer I have the radio on, but that just might be my tolerance dropping.

Thoughts? Ideas? Snarky commentary on listening to NPR?

Thanks.

-mark

 

no sound clips attached - but from the symptom description it sounds like there is a bad connection in the FM antenna path. This could be anywhere from the antenna itself to the cable to where it plugs into the FM tuner circuit. Does AM have a problem as well?

I had a problem like this on an old Volvo 850, I could reach under the radio and wiggle the antenna connection into the tuner and it would clear up, then gradually start fading into static. After I got sick of doing that, I started listening to AM. After about 2 days of AM radio I pulled the radio out, opened it up, and reflowed all the solder joints in the FM tuner section and that fixed it.

Start with the antenna on the roof and make sure that the antenna whip connection is clean and tight. Check on realoem.com to figure out where the FM tuner is located on your car and follow the antenna cable to the tuner. Make sure there are no kinks or places where the cable is chafed through and contacting the body. Check that there's a good connection at the tuner and see if wiggling it changes the symptoms. If it does you found the problem and you need to be confident with a soldering iron to fix it.

Also some cars (like my old Volvo) have an amplifier or filter in the antenna path, but those rarely fail unless they get damaged or wet. realoem.com should show all of that.

Good luck - isolating this sort of problem is really difficult.