I took my TA in to have a 'beeping' noise fixed that showed up when playing CDs in the changer in the trunk. The people at the dealership said my radio was returning an error code related to the CD changer and they replaced it with one that doesn't say Monsoon on it. I assumed they knew what they were doing and that there isn't a difference between the headunits and that only the speakers are different or something. This was a long time ago (March 05) and whatever they did, did NOT fix the beeping problem. I just gave up after visiting two different dealerships for the same problem.

I don't know anything about the Monsoon system or any other car audio system So.. now my steering wheel mute button is acting crazy (will mute for a random amount of time but always return before I press it again) and my driver's side front speaker is fading in and out constantly. Basically it will be whatever volume I have it at, then it will get significantly lower, then back to the original volume again and it keeps oscillating that way.

I have no idea if maybe somehow the service they did on my car is the cause of these problems now. I had a 96 Firebird for 8 years with the crappy 4 speaker regular system and it never had a problem at all. Is the Monsoon really this problematic? This is a 2002 Trans Am.

If anyone has any idea what I should do to begin addressing these issues, I would be extremely grateful.

 

Welcome to the wonderfully un-reliable world of the POS Monsoon stereo system. If you read enough posts here you'll soon see what I'm talking about.

When it starts acting up like yours is doing I strongly recommend replacing the entire POS factory stereo system with a much higher quality after-market system. The POS Monsoon is of such poor quality it just isn't worth the time and effort it takes to get it fixed.

 

Thanks for the quick response. I was afraid of that Better start saving some money and learning how to do something with stereos because I know zero about it

I looked at your car link there and will probably use some of that info to figure out what I'm going to do. I'll search around and see if I can find out what would be recommended for my situation where I ideally I'd want a one-to-one replacement of all the monsoon parts with better quality stuff. Not looking for anything fancy like custom enclosures and stuff I'm sure I'd screw up

 

I found this thread on fbodyaudio.com and it seems to be exactly the same problem I'm having. I'll check if holding my mute button makes the wavering stop. I'm thinking maybe when they replaced the headunit at the dealership they did it wrong or something. If the mute button acts the same as described in that thread, I'll take it out and see if I find anything odd like they did.

 

I think I know what you're talking about. It's a beeping noise that has the rhythm and beat of GSM phone interference. but it's a bit higher pitched. It's intermittent, and annoying as hell.

On mine, it was my CD changer. Check the wire harness going into the changer. For some reason, mine had very little slack. With the CD player playing just loud enough to hear the beeping, walk back to the hatch, pop the lid, and move the cable around. Slightly massaging the wires where they were pulled taught fixed the problem. It came back a week later, so I freed some more harness out of the sail panel, futzed with the wires, and voila! Six months later, and it's never happened again.

 

This morning I tested the mute button behavior to see if my wavering problem is identical to the one I linked from fbodyaudio.com a couple posts ago. It actually is! If I hold the mute button down, the wavering stops completely. Once I let up, it starts wavering again. Next step is to see what's in there when I pull the head unit out

Hey, thanks for the tip for the beeping noise! I checked the wires to the CD changer and they had plenty of slack. I'll keep checking it out though to see if I can arrange it some way that it will fix it.