Hi there. I've recently acquired an AVIC-F900BT headunit and have installed it into my car. Both the body and the harness are grounded to the chassis and I am still suffering from the dreaded pre-out speaker Hiss. The noise is only a soft hiss which increases with the volume of the pre-outs. Im pretty sure its also coming from the AVIC speaker outs as well indicating that its not only an RCA problem (I have rear speakers connected to the rear speaker channels of the AVIC amp) I have also run a separate ACC wire directly to the battery for testing to ensure that noise wasn't entering the system from other electrical on the ACC line. Having the engine turned off also makes no difference to the problem. Its not so noticeable when the volume is down low but as soon as i increase the amplification to a reasonable level it becomes a problem, particularly on softer music as its unable to mask the noise

Has anybody experienced anything like this in the past and if so how did you go about rectifying the problem?

Thanks

Toby

Nobody hahah?

Nobody hahah?

i believe that this is a problem with the poorly designed hardware, every one that i have installed has made this slight hiss, i probably wouldn't have noticed it right away if i hadn't have come from owning a eclipse and a alpine headunit before switching to this pioneer, sure its a lot cheaper than an eclipse nav system, and im pretty sure thats one of the reasons. you get what you pay for.

Hmmm its bloody annoying when its coming out of your tweeters right in your ear. The only way to reduce it is to flatten the EQ so the static highs arent coming out at your ears. Im wondering if a line filter would do anything to reduce it.

i doubt a line filter will do anything for the static, i believe that the problem is created because of how the units computer hardware connects to the audio hardware, its pretty much created at the source (or just barely after) of the sound.

hmm damm. I rand up a pioneer dealer today and asked him if he had had any static from the units he has installed and he said zero... I think that most people just don't care that its there. Im taking it in on sunday to get them to have a look at it anyway and let me know if it has a problem. If i didnt have tweeters at ear level it would be barely noticable.

This issue drives me crazy. It seems worse when connected to the Ipod. In between songs is where you hear it clearly. I have purchased a new composite cable ( non-Pioneer ), but have not installed it just yet as my car is in storage. I sure hope it fixes this annoying problem.

Any Luck with the new cable? I find that the static is apparent no matter what source I have the unit set to. I even hear it during the navigation button sounds... so, so annoying... Pioneer need to be ashamed of themselves. I have the proper apple cable for my ipod to and the noise is still there.. Im going to plug in an ipod directly into my amp and see if the sound is still there. Otherwise its just the shitty nav unit... I wish they put out a software fix for it or something.. Better yet if somebody found a hardware fix i would be more then willing to do that. Unfortunately i don;t think its possible.

Any Luck with the new cable? I find that the static is apparent no matter what source I have the unit set to. I even hear it during the navigation button sounds...

ifyour having this problem with EVERY SOURCE, why would changing the cable change any of that other than the ipod?

read the post ^

I said that I already have a decent ipod cable and that i experience the hiss on all my sources. I was just trying to clarify the problem by saying that i don't think the cable will affect the hiss.

Anyway its a shit unit... Im thinking of selling it and buying an eclipse.

Have you tried isolating the AVIC as the source of the hiss?

Do you have a different deck you can swap out with it to see if the hiss is still present?

Have you tried changing the ground for either the head unit or the amp, one at a time to see if this resolves it?

I'd think if no one here is complaining of the issue, and the local pioneer dealer hasn't heard of it, perhaps the issue is either than you have an issue with your install or there's simply an issue with the specific f900 you have. Worth a shot trying to move the grounds though, in my opinion..

Have you tried isolating the AVIC as the source of the hiss?..

yes, the hiss is coming from the AVIC

Do you have a different deck you can swap out with it to see if the hiss is still present?..

yes, the alpine i had in there before switching to the AVIC did not make this noise, and i have plugged it back in to make sure

Have you tried changing the ground for either the head unit or the amp, one at a time to see if this resolves it?..

I'd think if no one here is complaining of the issue, and the local pioneer dealer hasn't heard of it, perhaps the issue is either than you have an issue with your install or there's simply an issue with the specific f900 you have. Worth a shot trying to move the grounds though, in my opinion..

thank you for your wise advise, if you had been around longer you would see that there have been many threads about this, tons of people(here) have been having the same problem, the people that dont hear it just haven't had a higher quality headunit to be able to notice the issue and when a headunit should be dead silient, or just isn't as picky when it comes to how there music sounds.

as a pioneer dealer, i have installed many many f-series and every one of them has done it, i have also called and talked to friends that work at competing shops and they tell me the exact same thing, every unit they install has a very low level background static. one of my installers took out his long installed D3 to replace it with a F90, and was so annoyed with it that he returned it and went back to his D3 and guess what, no noise.

have you ever hooked up a computer (with out a fancy sound card, just the onboard sound chip) to a home theater receiver with a standard 3.5mm plug to stereo RCA's, you get the exact same noise.

Thanks for stepping through that, 1loudls.

I saw your responses, and I've seen the previous threads. Post count doesn't denote how long I've been here, only how many times I've posted..

I'd be interested to see the OP try some troubleshooting instead of just saying he's going to replace it. In 15+ years of installing car audio, I've seen countless people replace components trying to solve an issue, and in the end find a bad ground or someone else points out they zip tied their RCAs to their power cables and ran them down the side of the car together.

Sometimes it helps to take a step back and review everything from 10,000ft.

There's also a tendency on some caraudio boards for people to become hypochondriacs too, where one person has a problem, and then another, and then after reading several threads about an issue, nearly everyone begins to believe that they're experiencing the same issue.. Know what I'm saying?

yea dude, i feel you knocking

your right, i have seen quite a few times where some one has mis-diagnosed a problem or just started throwing parts at the situation only to find out that they where focused in the totally wrong direction.

i do wish there was some way (easy or difficult ) to remedy this problem, as it does bug me more and more every day, however in the summer i do seem to completely forget about it because i always have my windows down and the wind noise completely covers it.

Post count doesn't denote how long I've been here, only how many times I've posted..

Beleive me.... I have definitely tried to trouble shoot the problem. I have run external power and ground cables primarily for the unit so its not a grounding issue... I've tried it without my amp plugged in and without and i still have the same problem. Its also being produced though the internal amp.

I find that when an audio source isn't connected there isnt any problem. For instance when all sources are turned off its fine. As soon as i click on ipod i get a constant hiss even when the song is paused. I find that as soon as i click on cd it does the same thing. Its really quite annoying. Im taking it to get bench tested before i replace it. In fact i might bench test it myself when i get home and save myself the 80 bucks seen as though the pioneer repairer wont do it for free.

Well Im taking the car to FHRX in Sydney and Marty is gonna have a look over it for me and tell me if its the norm.. If it isn't the next step is to get it properly bench tested by a pioneer service centre. Sucks that i bought it from the US, even worse that it was a refurb.. would have loved to have known what was wrong with it before i received it. It only had a 90 day warranty but i let the seller know i thought it had this problem before the 90 days was up... Hopefully the company issues the refund if its found to be defective. Wouldnt mind them to upgrade me to the F90BT as i did update this unit to 3.0 and i dont really want to do that again... Only more money. With all the awesome 3.0 mods out there I really hope i can rectify this problem because other than that the unit is pretty sweet. Yeah its a big laggy at times and the ipod interface is a piece of shit but i can deal with it.

Well After a trip to see Marty at FHRX in Sydney this morning he managed to fix the problem for me It was simply gain settings as people had stated i just hadn't realised it. Can't thank guy enough for the couple of hours he spent educating me on car audio and tuning my system. I've learnt more in those couple of hours than id learnt in the space of my entire life. The customer service is unparalleled to anywhere else I've ever been to... and he was kinda enough to take time out of his day to help a clueless idiot like me and recommend me the best way about making my system better.

I'm pretty sure I know where to go for car audio from now on

Awesome, tobsta.. Glad it worked out for you without having to replace the F900!