Genesis Sound Issue/Dealership Experience

[bozzaj]

In the past, I've posted in a couple of the threads with an issue that I was having with regards to sound and my Genesis V8. I figured someone else may benefit from the details of my entire experience. I apologize ahead of time for the long post.

From the day I purchased the car, I had a really intermittent issue that started out as something minor and turned into a full-blown issue. Basically, every once in a while, when I turned the car on, no sound would work. Tuning XM or Radio or CD/DVDs would *act* like they were working, but there was no sound. Navigation would work, but no announcements. Phone would connect but (yep!) no sound if a call came in. The only other thing that wouldn't work was the Voice Command button. It just wouldn't do anything. The fix was to turn the car off and wait 4 minutes. If I waited 3 minutes, sound still wouldn't work. I found out later why this was happening (details below).

Originally, I thought it may be the fact that my car didn't have T63 loaded, so I went to the dealership and asked them about it. The first time they just took my car back and came back and told me that my car had already had the campaign loaded before I purchased the car. Since I had already checked myself, I knew this was incorrect, but how can you argue with the dealership?

I brought the car back again with a copy of T63 in my hand and showed them that the version numbers were different, along with proof of my sound issue and another problem. That morning, sound didn't work again and I drove directly to the dealership (around 30 minutes away). At the 20 minute mark, the navigation unit "rebooted". It showed static and such just like it does when it first turns on and the accept screen came back on. I informed the dealership of this problem and also made the tech come out and see that sound wasn't working in the car.

Regardless, he took the car back, applied T63 (Parts 1 & 2 since part 3 wasn't needed as per a direct call to Hyundai.) I was happy, or so I thought. About two weeks later, the sound issue came back again. I took it to the dealership again and they took the car back and turned it off, etc. By the time they started working on it, it was more than 4 minutes later and the sound was working, so they couldn't do anything, even though it was logged that they saw the problem! I asked them to call Hyundai and get their techs on the line to figure out the problem. Supposedly they did and Hyundai wasn't interested, though they said that Hyundai told them that another update was coming down the line and would be out shortly and I'd just have to wait for that. This was back in February or so.

At this point I would call the dealership everytime the sound wouldn't work, which was about twice a week. They continually said there was nothing they could do. The circle continued until I finally go fed up - end of March/beginning of April I think. Yes, I had a lot of patience, but I'm usually so busy that driving to the dealership (30 minutes each way, plus time waiting there) was a waste of time when I could just wait an extra 4 minutes and go on with my day.

At this point, I called Hyundai Consumer Server (Phone number in the back of the Genesis manual.) I quickly got on with someone that was kind enough to listen to my entire story. He then (putting me on hold) contacted the dealership to find out the details from them. He came back and told me that the report would be sent up and I would receive a response within 5 days and if I didn't hear anything to call him back.

So, the dealership called me in 3 days (a Friday) and asked me to bring the car in immediately so they could keep it there for the weekend and they would provide a loaner. Of course, even with the entire weekend, the problem didn't happen. They kept it until Tuesday when I told them I wanted my car back (A Camry is not a replacement for the Genesis!), but I would bring it down immediately when the problem happened, as long as they DIDN'T TURN THE CAR OFF until diagnostics were done. It's amazing how difficult it is to get this step to be done!

By Thursday, the problem came back. I drove to the dealership. 20 Minutes into the drive, the system rebooted itself. Tech was ready when I got there and immediately took the car back. At the 40 minute mark, the system rebooted itself again while he was working on it.

Finally, diagnostics showed that a "turn on" command was being sent to the amplifier, but an ACK response wasn't being sent back, so the system was just sitting and waiting for the response. Official issue was "short somewhere in amp", so the part was ordered.

About a week later, part was in, amp was replaced. It's been over two months now and I haven't had a single problem. In fact, I believe the sound itself is "cleaner". I was getting clipping at higher levels and thought it was just me. Turns out it wasn't.

With all of this, I found out a lot more about the inner workings of the systems. First, once the car is on, the internal systems stay in standby for around 4 minutes to allow for quick bootup if you're getting back in the car within that time period. After 4 minutes, the system shuts down completely requiring a cold boot. With my car, when I first turned the car on, the power to the amp "warmed it up enough" to allow, from another cold boot, the short to be eliminated and the system to startup correctly. When I say cold, I don't mean Massachusetts cold, but NW Florida cold/damp. I believe it happened only on the cold(er) and damp days. Moisture perhaps? Who knows.

The 20 minute reboot was the system timing out and trying again. Since it wasn't a cold boot, the amp was still in a "trying to start" phase and still wouldn't work. Voice Command relies on the amp step being completed, so that service would never start either.

In short (ok, maybe not in short!), don't give up on your dealership completely. I fully believe that my dealership is lazy when they can't duplicate the problem initially, but they were more than willing to help with Hyundai (on behalf of the customer) got on the phone and told them to get the problem fixed. I also believe that having a good relationship with both the CS people *and* the techs is helpful. My dealership usually keeps the techs disconnected from the customer, but in a case like the Genesis, the customer may know a lot more about the car than the CS people will ever know, and being about to talk to the tech directly can be extremely helpful. I now have one primary tech that always works on my car and he comes up to talk to me directly when I'm there.

I'm still not sold completely on my dealership, but the next closest dealership is 90 minutes or so away. I'm very happy with Hyundai directly though. From the time I called Hyundai Consumer Affairs to the time the amp was installed was just over two weeks. I consider that to be really good considering it was an intermittent problem and they had to order a $2800 part.

Hope this helps out others. Be persistent! If your dealershi isn't helping, call Hyundai directly. From my experience, Hyundai really does care and that's more than I can say for some of the other car companies.

 

[ImInPA]

Good write-up!!! Sometimes a "friendly" nudge from corporate can be a good thing. I agree with you 100% about keeping a level head and good relationships with the dealer.

 

[JPW]

Awesome post. Thanks for sharing all this. It will help me and I'm sure others as well.

 

[Bernie]

To bozzaj,

Your observations match the behavior of my car when I first observed the problem. Like you, I observed the difference between a cold-boot (> 4 min) and a warm-boot (< 4 min). In one instance, the radio stayed off permanently and all of the functions normally available from voice activation were unavailable and the center console iDrive knob no longer worked. The system appeared to wait for an "acknowledge" from the amp, never got it, and was permanently "hung". I had to turn the ignition off and wait 5 min for the problem to resolve itself.
Like you, I observed a definite correlation between the probability of having the problem and the outside temperature/dampness; the problem is definitely more frequent at temperatures 40F-50F with some dampness. That makes the problem even harder to reproduce.

In my case, when I first noticed the problem, I went to the dealer and he started with the T63 software update. A couple of weeks later, the problem resurfaced. Unlike you however, I spent quite a bit of time finding ways to "reliably" reproduce the problem. That's 90% of the battle. I wrote the procedure and gave it to the dealer. Sure enough, he observed the same problem. This at least allowed him to properly diagnose the problem and eliminated any doubt in his mind that the problem was imaginary. Once diagnosed, Hyundai Canada instructed him to change the amp. That's the second stage of resolving the issue. and that's where I am now. It's summer here in Canada, so the problem may resurface later this fall/winter. If the problem resurfaces later this year, they told me they will change the head unit.

...If you're interested, I can send you the procedure I used to reproduce the problem. You will find more posts under my name describing my problem. The symptoms are varied but the cause is the same... each time the amp is instructed to mute itself (say voice activation), the problem can occur. In my case, using voice activation a lot was a sure way to trigger the problem.

 

[bozzaj]

In my case, when I first noticed the problem, I went to the dealer and he started with the T63 software update. A couple of weeks later, the problem resurfaced. Unlike you however, I spent quite a bit of time finding ways to "reliably" reproduce the problem. That's 90% of the battle. I wrote the procedure and gave it to the dealer. Sure enough, he observed the same problem. This at least allowed him to properly diagnose the problem and eliminated any doubt in his mind that the problem was imaginary. Once diagnosed, Hyundai Canada instructed him to change the amp. That's the second stage of resolving the issue. and that's where I am now. It's summer here in Canada, so the problem may resurface later this fall/winter. If the problem resurfaces later this year, they told me they will change the head unit.

Bernie,

My problem wasn't so much as duplicating the problem, since I had gone to the dealership 4-5 times with the sound not working. My problem was with the dealership itself. They would turn off the car before working on it, even though I specifically told them not to. It became a cycle that I couldn't stop. My CS Rep didn't understand, the service manager wasn't interested in spending time talking to me, they wouldn't allow me to talk directly with the tech - though it was the tech that turned the car at least two of the times I was there. It wasn't until I called Hyundai Corporate that they started to realize they needed to actually spend some time listening to me. Once they listened to me, the fix (new amp) came around within two weeks.

I just read your forum posting and all the messages. I didn't have the other issues you're having, with regards to voice command, the knob, or complete hanging. The only issue I was having was the sound, and it wasn't something I could duplicate on command since it was (likely) heavily reliant on weather. I doubt I would have been able to duplicate it on command as you did. I tried several different steps, even pressing the voice command button immediately upon entering the car. The car would do exactly what it should at that time. Either "Please wait" or "SDS is starting in the background". Sound would either work or not depending on its own decisions. Once it started working for the day, I only had one time during the afternoon where it didn't work and that was (again) a colder and wetter day. It didn't happen EVERY time it was cold or wet, just sometimes, and only at cold boot. Mute was never an issue for me. It *was* getting worse though, so who knows what it would have been by now. Then again, it's currently 97°F out, so "cold" wouldn't come into the equation anymore. Feel free to send me your steps to reproduce - I'll let you know if it was something I did or didn't try.

Regardless, the dealership didn't think it was imaginary - they just couldn't duplicate the problem from a cold start because (1) they refused to keep the car for multiple days to try and duplicate and (2) they would turn off the car because they refused to look at the issue immediately or sometimes the tech (who is no longer working there) would turn off the car in an attempt to duplicate the problem.

Trust me, I spent hours tring to duplicate the problem. One day when I was sure it would happen (cold/wet), I would go out to the car every 2 hours or so to see if sound was working. Another day I tried every hour. Another every 4 hours. I was never able to duplicate the issue on command. I *was* able to get to the dealership, but that got old when they wouldn't hook up the diagnostics immediately.

So, it sounds like you at least have a slightly better dealership that was willing to at least work with you. Mine just wasn't interested enough until I got corporate on the line. They wouldn't even try T63 because their computer told them there was no campaigns required for the car, even though I received a postcard in the mail stating that I needed to bring the car in for an update.