9500ix No Sound Issue - Not Speaker Related

[wamdue]

hi everyone,

I bought a 9500ix a couple weeks ago and was using it fine in the car with internal speaker with no problems. today, I mounted it on my motorcycle and attached an 1/8th cable out of the earphone plug to run the sound into my Amplirider, which is a small audio mixer / headphone amplifier. At first it sounded fine, but within a few minutes the audio quality of the 9500 started to deteriorate.... as I started to investigate, I unplugged the cable from the 9500 and now there is no sound coming out of the internal speaker and no sound coming out from the earphone plug.

so the question is how did a 'fry' the audio of the unit all together? ...by simply connecting an audio cable to it.

I got impulsive and went to Best Buy and picked up another brand new 9500ix .... and it appears the exact same thing has happened to that one.

Is this a known issue? or do I have some kind of weird voltage issue that is travelling through the audio cable and causing this to happen....

-chris

[boatboy]

Just a few different ideas...
Polarity reversed between the 2?
Mixer impedence mismatch, causing it to draw too much current from 9500ix?

I think I would call Escort's tech support and ask them.

[wamdue]

...guess I learned the hard way.... I need an isolation transformer
to take the mono signal from the 9500 to the balanced inputs on the amp.

[MEM-TEK]

...guess I learned the hard way.... I need an isolation transformer
to take the mono signal from the 9500 to the balanced inputs on the amp.

And to prevent ground loops between the radar detector and other electronic devices.

Bel/Escort really does need to publish the specs for the audio jacks on their radar detectors -- stuff like the minimum allowable impedance of whatever device you plug the audio output into, the jack's max P-V voltage at maximum volume, et cetera. But most importantly Bel/Escort should at least mention something like:

"The radar detector's audio jack is designed to work only with a high impedance earphone or an amplified speaker which features a high impedance input and ground loop isolation. Do not connect the audio jack to a conventional speaker. Do not connect the audio output to an electronic mixing device unless the mixing device features both a high impedance monaural input and ground loop isolation circuitry. Failure to observe these precautions will likely result in damage to your radar detector."

What do you think guys? Does that pretty much cover it in a way that someone with basic electronics or car audio knowledge can understand? Maybe the electronics gurus here might tweak the wording. Once we get the wording right then I think that we should fire it off to Escort so that they can include it in their manuals and on their web sites.

[wamdue]

I agree. I went through all of the literature supplied by Escort and couldn't find a single reference to any of this. You'd think it would be a major issue.

[stlcardsfan]

Never a good idea to plug an earphone or normal speaker to a RD. I also fried the internal speaker on my old Cobra plugging in headphones and had to leave earphones in it all the time.

[CJR238]

And to prevent ground loops between the radar detector and other electronic devices.

Bel/Escort really does need to publish the specs for the audio jacks on their radar detectors -- stuff like the minimum allowable impedance of whatever device you plug the audio output into, the jack's max P-V voltage at maximum volume, et cetera. But most importantly Bel/Escort should at least mention something like:

"The radar detector's audio jack is designed to work only with a high impedance earphone or an amplified speaker which features a high impedance input and ground loop isolation. Do not connect the audio jack to a conventional speaker. Do not connect the audio output to an electronic mixing device unless the mixing device features both a high impedance monaural input and ground loop isolation circuitry. Failure to observe these precautions will likely result in damage to your radar detector."

What do you think guys? Does that pretty much cover it in a way that someone with basic electronics or car audio knowledge can understand? Maybe the electronics gurus here might tweak the wording. Once we get the wording right then I think that we should fire it off to Escort so that they can include it in their manuals and on their web sites.

x2. plugging in a stereo jack into a mono output never really works. But it shouldn't always fry it. The out put on the 9500 is a low level out put like on most jacks and needs to be plugged into an amplified systems low level input.