Loss of reception of radio stations

[parsen66]

In my job i drive many miles every day and of course move between counties. Listening to the radio lately ive found that when i go from one area to the next the RDS radio station is not re-tuning itself as it used to do. I now have to manually re-tune for the frequency that suits where i am in the country.
Ive spoken with my local Audi dealership who suggested i change one of the settings (although he didnt seem that confident), this made no difference at all.
Am i right in thinking that it has to go back to them to have the magic box plugged in to reset eveything?

[MFGF]

If I were a betting man, I'd wager...

1. You have the HDD-based MMI 3G navigation system fitted to your A4.
2. You have TP bulletins enabled in the radio settings.
3. You also lose TMC reception on the Nav system.

If I'm right with all these, I'm afraid to say your problems are due to a "negative undocumented feature" in the MMI software. So far Audi have not managed to issue a fix for it either.

There is a workaround you can use, however. Just go into the settings of the radio and turn off TP bulletins. Bizarrely, this fixes the radio retuning and TMC dropout issues completely.

If you have a spare half-hour or so, we have a rather long thread detailing the emergence of the problem in various forum members' cars and the attempted fixes over the past 15 months here in the In Car Entertainment section.

Regards,

MF.

[parsen66]

Its a comfort to know that its not just my car. Ive read most of the link, extremely common but no real fix as yet.

You are pretty much spot on with your assumptions except that i dont have the HDD sat/nav system, mine runs from a DVD in the boot.

Yesterday the radio populated itself maybe 3 times as a drove about but for most of the day i had to re-tune it myself.

If its so common, why have Audi kept quiet about it?

[MFGF]

Hmmm. We've not seen this on DVD nav cars before, although I've heard reports of the "Now Turn Left" voice prompt issues being present in the 3G DVD based system, so it's entirely possible that the software for this system now has all the same bugs as 3G HDD.

Can you check the software versions reported in Setup -> Version Information and report back on here what version is currently installed?

Also, try turning off the Traffic Prog. feature in the Radio settings to see if this fixes the retuning problem.

Cheers!

MF.

[baylissboy]

If I were a betting man, I'd wager...

1. You have the HDD-based MMI 3G navigation system fitted to your A4.
2. You have TP bulletins enabled in the radio settings.
3. You also lose TMC reception on the Nav system.

If I'm right with all these, I'm afraid to say your problems are due to a "negative undocumented feature" in the MMI software. So far Audi have not managed to issue a fix for it either.

There is a workaround you can use, however. Just go into the settings of the radio and turn off TP bulletins. Bizarrely, this fixes the radio retuning and TMC dropout issues completely.

If you have a spare half-hour or so, we have a rather long thread detailing the emergence of the problem in various forum members' cars and the attempted fixes over the past 15 months here in the In Car Entertainment section.

Regards,

MF.

No answer on this issue yet, although the DISS report on your car is the longest I've ever seen!!!!

[MFGF]

No answer on this issue yet, although the DISS report on your car is the longest I've ever seen!!!!

Lol. Probably not something I should get included in the Guinness Book of Records though! The stack of paperwork at the dealers is in a folder now almost two inches thick!

Lee has worked really hard to try to sort the problem - I have the utmost admiration for him after seeing all the efforts he's made so far. Like me, I think he's resigned to the fact that the problem is software-related and out of his control until an appropriate fixed version is released.

Cheers!

MF.

[parsen66]

Thanks for all your help MFGF on this one.

I have tried turning off the TP alerts and also going from FM to MW and back again, makes no difference whatsoever.

The only way i can get the radio to populate is to use the MMI reset (SETUP/ BUTTON CLICK/TOP RIGHT SOFTKEY). When it comes back on the stations are all there but only for about 5 seconds or so.

The software version i have is;

EUROPA_10500_2374

DATABASE VERSION A723/20070801151856

Although i dont use the sat/nav all the time is good for checking where the traffic delays are, without a radio station this feature doesnt work.

I'd say this started to play up about a week or so ago. Bearing in mind my car is over 2 years old i struggle to understand how it could be happening after a flawless 2 years and 75,000 miles.

Any thoughts you may have would be most welcome.

[baylissboy]

Lol. Probably not something I should get included in the Guinness Book of Records though! The stack of paperwork at the dealers is in a folder now almost two inches thick!

Lee has worked really hard to try to sort the problem - I have the utmost admiration for him after seeing all the efforts he's made so far. Like me, I think he's resigned to the fact that the problem is software-related and out of his control until an appropriate fixed version is released.

Cheers!

MF.

Yes, I'm sure he's been having fun!!

Spoke to him today about your problem, he resent the DISS back to technical, they told him that Audi were "testing a fix" so we may have an answer in the nea rfuture, but don't hold your breath!!