This has slowly started to become an issue for the last two months, and now is pretty constant / annoying. I'm going to try and explain the situation as best as possible.

While the player is plugged into the Car (I don't notice it on AC Power), occasionally it sounds like alternator whine is being amplified heavily AND I can hear data going over whatever busses are on the empeg (ie during a drive read I can hear the "click click click" of data being passed from here to there.

I can usually stop it by undocking the player and redocking it. I've also noticed it happens more when I'm listening to music more loudly (<10db).

Also, now, even when it's not doing it's little amplification trick, I can almost always "hear" the drive speed up, and access data through the speakrs. It's an extremely difficult sound to explain.

I'm assuming the issue could be with my amps, but I'm not entirely sure.

Does anyone know of anyone else having this issue, if there are any fixes, or if there are any suggestions?

Could be ground loops. Have you gone through all of the troubleshooting steps in the FAQ?

Another question: Is this a Mk1 or a Mk2? I had this problem on my Mk1 a lot and cleaning the docking connector pins would help it for a while.

Mk2a

I always suspected a ground loop eveer since it was installed, and I did go through and make sure everything was properly grounded and stuff. I do not know if I followed all of the instructions in the FAQ however (as I haven't seen that entry in the FAQ).

I guess the thing that has bothered me most is just listening to the data, and it being intermittant.

I'll go ahead and dig through my car this weekend to see if I can notice anything and follow the faq.

The FAQ entries get updated over time, and that particular one has had a lot of additions as time went on, including a few recent ones. Make sure to follow the sub-links and print out the third-party troubleshooting guides. There's a lot of steps there, lots of things to check. It's a lot of work, so go through everything carefully, slowly, and methodically.

Thanks for your help Tony (as always!). I'll defiantely post an update on this this weekend (breaks out the tools)

No problem! Just to make sure, the FAQ entry to which I'm referring is this one.

Well good news, and bad news.

Bad news first.

Car toys sucks... don't ever get an install done there. Basically to ground my player and amps, they just drilled a hole in the body of the car (instead of using the grounding post ALREADY THERE 6 inches further up the body.

Also, I was not able to illiminate the original ground loop that was there since installation (that I've tried to so many times before.

Good news.

The grounding point that they used started to get some oxidation on it, which was causing the ground to be bad. Since I didn't have the tools or equipment to put new connectors on the wires to connect them to the grounding post on the car, I just took a wirebrush and some steel wool and scraped off all of the oxidation.

This appears to have fixed the issue, as I was not able to get it to recreate the issue I was having (with it sounding like I can hear the data going over the bus, hard drive acess, and the occasional "lower ground loop")

Thanks Tony! Again, you are the FAQ Master

I'm glad it's not something wrong with my empeg.... I would cry.

Hey, cool! Glad you got it working again, and that the problem turned out to be a simple one.