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Trying to solve audio problem that ive been chasing for a while. Looking for other suggestions or tests that I can do to try to isolate and chase this down.
Car: W219 CLS
I ran star diagnostics and below is the outcome that I believe is related to this problem.
D303, cable to GPS antenna has short/ open circuit
Problem:
When the command system is turned on it will randomly shut off while listening to audio (Radio or CD). When the audio cuts out the command system doesn't power off, no errors are detected in the radio tuner or CD mode. It will just lose audio everything else looks the same. It seems I am hearing a faint pop right when the audio cuts out, hard to say.
I ran some tests and heres the outcome.
If I leave the car run and not drive it, the audio will play indefinitely .
As soon as you drive the car that is when I experience the problem of random shut off.
When the command unit does shut off it's in 5 second increments.
It doesn't really matter speed or condition of the road. I've hit some pretty good bumps at speed which didn't have any issues. I've also been on what I would consider smooth pavement with no bumps and had the audio shut off
I reset the command unit which didn't do anything that I could tell.
This consisted of pulling fuses and resetting the command unit in the SW.
If I play a DVD the same audio cut out happens with the 5 second interval. It seems with the DVD the music doesn't lose 5 seconds. Like the laser is actually pausing when the fault happens.
I don’t seem to have sat/nav which I believe is related to the shark fin antenna, it does both sat and FM???
This picture I thought was my GPS line however it doesn't match the picture in WIS. The arrow is where I disconnected to test drive, it didn't solve probem. Part number ?? Doesn't match what I see in WIS, this is on the drivers side in trunk, I thought this was the GPS Antenna line A2/49a2x1.
Subscribed, I am having the same issues... Had it for years and don't know what it is... I have no error codes for it. Only thing I noticed is when the system is connected to my phone via Bluetooth you have the signal strength indication bars at the lower right hand side of the radio unit screen, well when the audio goes off for those 5 secs the signal strength bars dissappear (ie drop to zero signal strength) then when audio returns the signal bars show the current strength again... Car is also a CLS W219 55
I am happy I have a Star code to go off of, the problem is trying to rule out possibilities. There aren't currently any other star codes for the command or AGW that I saw. I didn't want to pull every wire when something with a bit less pain could be involved by testing. I'm going to try a couple different things today.
I cleaned the splitter real well, other people would say water would drip into the splitters that would cause them to get the SOS on the dash. I had what looked like a little bit of corrosion but nothing extreme but its clean now.
By disconnecting the splitter I was hoping I could isolate the short (Maybe it was bad), I drove with it disconnected and still had my 5 sec blackout So the short is coming from further up the line, im thinking its not the GPS antenna. Also I suspected the splitter because the GPS doesn't work currently and it did.
Yea I'm stumped. Funny enough, before the CLS55, I had the c32amg and I had exactly the same issue with that radio unit... Changed the bose amp Zhang ed the head unit, tried alot and could never get it working without the audio shutting down for a few seconds every now and again.. Highly irritating. When this car started doing it as well I didn't even bother trying to find the issue as I tried alot on the previous car and wasted alot of time and money without fix.
Ground is usually a good cause for most things not working. I will check the connections I find, so far the grounds I have found have been associated with the GPS antenna. I did go old school.... I tried to shake or bump everything in the trunk as that's where the GPS connections are. I wasn't able to reproduce a road driven car and have the command unit short.
Is there a specific wire for the GPS that connects to the back of the command? If so I can pull the unit (not looking forward to that) unplug the cable and see if it will solve the problem.
D303, cable to GPS antenna has short/ open circuit
I still find it odd that the GPS doesn't work right now. You would think if it were just shorting out I would still get a signal.
Update: Last weekend I pulled the dash to check connections, everything looked well seated in the back of the CD changer and the command unit. So that didnt really do anything for me except to understand better how all this goes together. Ended up putting everything back and still had my 5 sec cutout.
PSA - When watching YouTube to see how to take off trim around the shifter, it appears like it would pop out so easy. Mine would not release at all, you could see it flex. I had to actually remove the shifter boot and use a screwdriver to push the plastic clips. Once i did that was very easy. Ok, that's your PSA.
The next isolation technique actually worked. As previously mentioned I disconnected the GPS antenna cable which had no effect on the intermittent problem. So I used optical bypass and took the navigation unit completely out of the system. THIS WORKED, AUDIO DOES NOT CUT OUT ANYMORE!!!!! I do have the SOS message at start now, but I may just connect the navigation back up but leave the optical bypass and see if that gets rid of the SOS problem.
I think i have 2 options:
1. buy a used replacement Nav unit to get the system back up and running, with crappy nav.
2. toss the entire optical system and its connected components in the garbage and install a more up to date system.
For now it appears that my command unit functions with no audio cutout. Kind of a PITA to get to this point, but keep testing until you find it.
Update: Last weekend I pulled the dash to check connections, everything looked well seated in the back of the CD changer and the command unit. So that didnt really do anything for me except to understand better how all this goes together. Ended up putting everything back and still had my 5 sec cutout.
PSA - When watching YouTube to see how to take off trim around the shifter, it appears like it would pop out so easy. Mine would not release at all, you could see it flex. I had to actually remove the shifter boot and use a screwdriver to push the plastic clips. Once i did that was very easy. Ok, that's your PSA.
The next isolation technique actually worked. As previously mentioned I disconnected the GPS antenna cable which had no effect on the intermittent problem. So I used optical bypass and took the navigation unit completely out of the system. THIS WORKED, AUDIO DOES NOT CUT OUT ANYMORE!!!!! I do have the SOS message at start now, but I may just connect the navigation back up but leave the optical bypass and see if that gets rid of the SOS problem.
I think i have 2 options:
1. buy a used replacement Nav unit to get the system back up and running, with crappy nav.
2. toss the entire optical system and its connected components in the garbage and install a more up to date system.
For now it appears that my command unit functions with no audio cutout. Kind of a PITA to get to this point, but keep testing until you find it.
I hope this helps someone else out.
Interesting stuff... Glad you got it sorted! Thanks for sharing and your persistence has certainly paid off
FWIW.... I experienced very similar in my 2006 E-55.
Turned out out to be a fuse in driver's side of the dash (A pillar) that while not blown would make for just a flaky enough connection to make Command turn off intermittently.
Update: Last weekend I pulled the dash to check connections, everything looked well seated in the back of the CD changer and the command unit. So that didnt really do anything for me except to understand better how all this goes together. Ended up putting everything back and still had my 5 sec cutout.
PSA - When watching YouTube to see how to take off trim around the shifter, it appears like it would pop out so easy. Mine would not release at all, you could see it flex. I had to actually remove the shifter boot and use a screwdriver to push the plastic clips. Once i did that was very easy. Ok, that's your PSA.
The next isolation technique actually worked. As previously mentioned I disconnected the GPS antenna cable which had no effect on the intermittent problem. So I used optical bypass and took the navigation unit completely out of the system. THIS WORKED, AUDIO DOES NOT CUT OUT ANYMORE!!!!! I do have the SOS message at start now, but I may just connect the navigation back up but leave the optical bypass and see if that gets rid of the SOS problem.
I think i have 2 options:
1. buy a used replacement Nav unit to get the system back up and running, with crappy nav.
2. toss the entire optical system and its connected components in the garbage and install a more up to date system.
For now it appears that my command unit functions with no audio cutout. Kind of a PITA to get to this point, but keep testing until you find it.
I hope this helps someone else out.
Hi all thanks for everyone’s input. Had the same problem with my 2006 cls350. After lots of reading and head scratching I thought it must be the satnav in the boot. So before buying a new one I did this.
1: start car
2:open boot(trunk) with car still running
3:push eject on DVD satnav
4:remove disc
That’s it command no longer has intermittent audio dropouts. Looking at the disc it seems to have laser burn maybe. So unit could be bad but it cost nothing to pull the disc and worked for me. Hope this helps someone.
12-01-2018, 12:49 PM
