cd changer plays, but the sound is terrible - BMW Forum

ahb1972 · 01-13-2009, 11:58 AM

I've got a 99 E46 318 and I've just fitted a second hand 6 disk cd changer in the boot. It's one of the standard BMW branded stock ones...made by alpine I think (??)

Its been a total nightmare so far and now I'm really stuck.

The unit is wired to the standard two factory fitted wires and it reads the CD's fine and plays them, however the sound coming out of the speakers is bad. More specifically when the music is playing it sounds like there's a lot of interferance to the point of only just being able to make out the track (sounds a bit like very a badly tuned in FM station) and when the unit is not playing (doing a disk check or changing disks) a loud buzzing sound comes out.

I can turn the noises up or down with the volume control and the radio and tape player sound fine, so it's not the speakers themselves.

Anyone got any ideas what this could be?

witeshark · 01-13-2009, 02:08 PM

I would start with the connections to the player.

da_bull · 01-13-2009, 04:24 PM

to the forum.

I would maybe take it to a repair shop and see if they can clean and align the laser. If it is out of alignment, it can make for fuzzy sounds. Is this a burnt CD or a normal one? Some players (especially older ones) dont really know what to do with burnt CDs.

Hope that helps...

ahb1972 · 01-14-2009, 06:40 AM

Thanks for your responses

It had crossed my mind that it could be laser alignment, especially as I was originally getting a "NO DISC" error when disks were in and I've had to open up the unit and move the motors around to free them up a bit (which sorted the NO DISK error) so there's a possibility that I've screwed the laser positioning a bit. I have run a laser cleaning CD on the unit, without any difference.

The thing that makes me think it could be a connection problem is the electrical buzzing noise that comes out when it's changing disks, when I assume the laser would be switched off. This is all guesswork though as I'm not at all familiar with how it works

Only tried new CD's so it's not that.

da_bull · 01-14-2009, 08:43 AM

Yeah the cleaners only do that, clean the eye. It just basically knocks the dust off the receiving eye, does nothing for aligning, does nothing to the laser end, and if the cleaning pads are thick, they could even knock them out of alignment. I really dont like them, just another "snake oil" thing in my books. A professional repair place can do a "clean and align" for not much more than these cleaners (local I think used to be 1 hour shop rate).

If the connections are fairly bright "brassy" looking, and its firmly plugged in, there's not much that can go wrong there, unless maybe a bad cord.

Hope that helps...