Volume low on all four speakers, some static (amp or head unit problem)

If you want to upgrade your sound system in your car by adding a sub woofer or speakers powered by an auxiliary amplifier without having to get a new head unit then hopefully this should help you :)

I decided to keep my standard head unit because it looks well in the car, is less likely to attract thieves than a shiny after-market unit and it is a factory upgraded unit anyway and i find it gives pretty good audio quality, it works with the steering wheel controls and has bluetooth and aux-in, so an after-market unit wouldn't offer a substantial upgrade.

Factory head units rarely have RCA or "Low line" outputs which your amplifier will need for it's input signal.
A "Low line converter" is a device which will piggy back your speaker outputs from your head unit and convert them to Low Line RCA outputs for your amplifier

The converter i bought also gives you a "remote wire" output which tells your Amp when the car is on so it doesn't drain your battery, if you get a converter without this option you can just join the remote wire to the Acc circuit of your car, or the 12V circuit with a switch (you will have to remember to turn it off though or your amp will drain your battery)

The methods i used will require an understanding of car/car stereo electrics so just be careful so as not to damage your car or yourself :)

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If you don't hear the static at lower volumes, A speaker has blown.

easy check to carry out ,borrow a speaker that you know works, if you remove one from another vehicle make sure ignition is off when taking speaker out, take a speaker out from your vehicle ignition off , the door speakers are usually the easiest to remove,plug in the known good speaker to your vehicle turn ignition on then radio, if you get sound then the problem is with the speakers but very unusual for all speakers to blow at the same time unless there has been a power surge through the amp. if no sound still remove radio and make sure the wire connectors are pushed home securely if they are then it's most likely the radio is not working will need replacing as a repair can be more expensive than new

The volume control on your radio is called a potentiometer, which may be going bad. It works better when its warm because materials expand as they warm up and make tighter contact with each other.

It is also a possible a bad wiring connection exists. Poor contact will cause static, poor audio quality and intermittent output.

Your radio will have plug type connector(s) Your speakers will most likely each have two wires with single female spade connectors of different widths (keeps the polarity correct) the wire with the stripe (of whatever color) will be connected to the negative (-) speaker terminal.

So you need to check all the connections, one is making poor contact.
If both speakers (assuming you have two) sound good or bad... then start with the plug connectors for the radio and any independent black ground wire coming out of the radio.

If one speakers sounds okay check the connections on the other one. You check the connections by carefully pulling the speaker wire off of the speaker and then carefully pushing it back on making sure it feels tight and secure.

PS: If you pull the fuse for the radio, the radio will have no power and will not work. The radio coming on proves the fuse is good.

PSS: Your owners manual should provide lots of information on your sound system components.

Amps have a high and low input. You can run some speaker wire from your rear speakers to the high input on your amp. It comes with a small white plug with four wires. Use the green for one side, and the grey for the other! So no, you do not!

If you have volume but cannot control it, this is a common problem. The volume is optical so it may just have dust in it, but I have had zero luck cleaning them. The only solution I know is to replace the whole head unit.
If you have an HK factory stereo with no volume at all, and the four channels went out one at a time, the amp in the trunk has failed. Another common problem. The amp is on the driver side above the wheel well. You have to remove the driver side rear deck speaker to get the trunk lining off without tearing it. The screws that hold in the speaker are beneath the speaker grill in the rear deck. Good luck getting a 15-year-old speaker grill up without breaking the snaps. Slide a putty knive in from the sides to try to release them, but they will break anyway.
If the amp has failed, you can just bypass the amp but you will have no subs or tweeters. I did that while looking for a good deal on a junkyard amp. You can buy a new HK amp from BMW but they are prohibitively expensive. You could buy an alternate brand amp and add crossover circuits to power the subs and tweeters if you are really handy with electronics.

If you have an HK system in your BMW and you replace the head unit, use the antenna power wire from the new stereo as the 'on' signal for your HK amp in the trunk. Your FM may not work quite as well because the BMW head unit communicates with the antenna amplifier. Also, if you have a BMW CD changer in your trunk, no other head unit will communicate with that other than the original BMW head unit.
Other than the CD changer and the antenna amplifier, the wiring adapter that you can get from Crutchfield or from Amazon will make the stereo head unit replacement plug-and-play.
You may need a special five-sided wrench to get the old stereo out. You can buy that wrench on line if you can't force some other tool into those two cap screws that hold the stereo in.

on the eclipse the infinity sound system has a factory amp most likely your factory amp has water damage

sound like the head unit's out put mosfet is going bad, but i have also ran in to this problem when it was a speaker wires shorting out. so first check the connection on your rear speakers.

If the rear speakers worked before your new head unit was installed, then the first question is does your new head unit have the facility to feed four speakers. Some systems will only power two speakers. The Audio Shop should have rectified the fault - you paid for the installation and as the customer you have a reasonable expectation that they would do it properly and ensure that all of the existing speakers were functioning properly. It would be worth challenging them again - if they refuse you could go to Citizen's Advice Bureaux or the nearest Trading Standards Office. Alternatively, try tracing the wires back from the rear speakers to the head unit - are the wires connected up properly... at both ends (i.e., the speaker end and the head unit).

The audio shop has probably hard wired the head unit because the sockets in the back of the head unit were not compatible with the plugs that came as standard with the car. A Haynes Manual or equivalent will give the colour codes for the various wires for the audio system.

Hey Robert. It could be one of a few things. I had trouble with my speakers too.
If you still have the factory head unit in your car, the static may be because the speakers are damaged.
If you have a new or non factory head unit in it and you have the factory speakers in the car, the speakers will have a static sound when turned up because they have trouble supporting the amount of watts and power that are being supplied to them.
Another problem I think of when you say static is the metal and plastic or your car "rattling" against each other when bass shakes the area around your speaker. If that's the case, you just nee to put something in there that surpresses the amount of vibration that comes off your speaker and flows into the speaker mount.
Hope this helped.