I recently bought a TL SH-AWD 2010 (non-tech) and
I hear alot of white noise from the stereo when no music is playing. Not excessive but easily to hear.

But when I put my iPod touch (4th generation) I hear alot of pops and clicks in the music. Specially with smooth music. It's like i'm listening to a LP record.

All my Mp3's are all using extreme VBR and are also all volume normalized with MP3Gain (non-destructable). When I play the same songs on my iHome radio alarm I don't hear these pops and ticks and also I don't hear them with my expensive Shure E-530 earphone.

Anyone experience the same pops and ticking sounds while playing their iPod ?

So far not impressed about the quality build of this TL. (rattle on the passenger side, passenger seat moving but the dealer say it's normal, and now the radio)

 

On some songs I hear a lot of background noise too. I think the high fidelity nature of the ELS sound system makes it easier to hear.

 

Well i don't have the Tech version so I don't have the ELS.

This stereo system use probably Class D amplifier and their is alot of white noise when the radio is on and nothing playing you can hear a background hiss.

Normally i'm used to listen to Class A amplifier and with these you don't hear white noise (background hiss noise). Well, I dont expect to get the same sound quality as my home stereo system in the car.

But what i'm talking about is pops and ticking sound that is randomly happens when I play the iPod in the car.

To give you an idea of what i'm talking about and you would probably be able to reproduce about the same pops and ticking sound if you put the Stereo to the AUX for the iPod. As now more and more the volume control are digital which is not the best because it generates noise unless they used very high quality ones which most of the time it's not.

Don't play any music and just play with the volume knob and you will hear a kind of ticking noise. This is what I hear when i play music and without playing with the volume knob.

I don't hear theses pops and ticks on my earphone, stereo system at home (testing only) only in the car.

Well I guess I will have to go back to the dealer...

 

I've experienced the same 'popping' noise when playing from my iPhone via bluetooth audio or usb on my 2012 TL-Tech. I don't experience it when playing music through an sd card plug into the usb. Only difference is that my iPhone is configured to convert the music to 128b aac files when loaded onto the phone (a setting in itunes that conserves space), whereas the sd card is the raw mp3 files (higher bit rate). I've not done anymore trouble shooting beyond this, but would like to try my iPad, which has the raw mp3 files

 

I just got a CPO '09 TL (base) and have noticed a few glitches with the audio system, including this:

1. Occasional pops and ticks when playing tracks from iPhone4 via AUX/USB on some tracks (sounds like a vinyl LP!)
2. Connectivity error messages on the center console display.
3. Incorrect number of tracks loaded (e.g., 1/1 instead of x/1843).

This only happens to me when a bluetooth HFL connection has been established and have the phone on the USB connection (XM radio seems unaffected.) So far, the following have help resolve all of these issues:

I. Turn bluetooth off/on in the Phone to reestablish a HFL connection.
II. Disconnect/reconnect the USB cable after reestablishing the
HFL connection.
III. Power cycle the phone while USB is connected.

Would love to hear about other owners' workarounds for audio glitches and any successful dealership fixes (if they exist!)

 

Update:
Conflicts between AUX/USB audio and bluetooth HFL only appear to occur if a single device (e.g., my iPhone) is communicating with the car. If I have an iPod on USB, no issues with iPhone HFL. No audio issues with AUX/Bluetooth and an active HFL connection simultaneously with the iPhone.

 

I'm experiencing clicking (static like pops) when using my iPod Touch and Blackberry HFL in my 2012 SH-AWD Tech. It's still there when I turn off the Blackberry's Bluetooth and the iPod's WiFi etc. I have a lot more testing to do to determine correlations and causes such as turning off Blackberry but it sure is annoying to have anything but perfect audio on an iPod interface :-(

 

I have lost my ipod touch and bought another during this winter and I never got the ticking noise with the new one.

Only sometimes the radio does not show my playlist from the ipod. I unconnect and reconnect and it's fine.

So far I think that is something to do with the audio digital output from the ipod Touch and iphone causing the issue.

But so far with my new Touch I dont't have the problem anymore. Maybe Apple made a board revision without any recall as usual.

 

Hmmm, I have both a 64GB 4thG iPod Touch (newest) and 16GB 6G iPod Nano (newest) and both have this clicking/popping issue. I'm going to try a USB Memory Stick next.

 

USB memory stick seems to be clean - no clicks and pops. It is arguably more convenient than an iPod. No album art but that album art display on the TL sux anyway - doesn't even come close to the beautiful album art display I see in the new Honda Civic commercials! I can live without album art.

The interface for USB memory is better in other ways. For example, the ID3 tag info shows up in the non-nav display. When playing an iPod, all you get in the little non-nav display is the word "iPod" and the track number and playlist track total - that's it! Pathetic. So if you're navigating, you can't even see any info about the current track, not even the time elapsed playing a track. However, with a USB memory stick, you get to choose what to display on the non-nav screen - pick an ID3 tag field and it will display that! Perfect!

And who cares if it gets stolen? I'm going to explore the USB memory stick approach further.

 

As a further update to this clicking iPod issue, I have set my iPod Nano to recode all music sync'd to it to AAC at 128 kb/s using the iTunes settings. The iPod Nano no longer has any clicking and popping. It would seem that the ELS system has an easier time decoding 128 AAC than the higher bit rate MP3s I used to have on the iPod Nano. Further testing is still ongoing...

 

I've stopped downloading .mp3 and instead download .flac and encode them to .m4a (MPEG-4 Audio)

pops & clicks (like vinyl surface noise) seemed to have gone away for the moment...