Friday, 22 July 2016

Fixing the crap microphone issue on a single Din unit



I've spent hours reading the various threads since getting my HU last Novemeber. Absolutely love it, especially with the Malaysk roms on, does everything I could want it to, except make a bloody phone call. If the other end can hear me it's very faint at best.

Mine was supplied by Pumpkin, they have tried to help with a microphone app and various settings, none made the slightest difference.

There were a few posts about adding an external mic by finding the BT card after dissasembly and wiring to the mic+ and Sgnd legs on the card. Last night I eventually bit the bullet and took mine completely to piecese. Unfortunately I couldn't find a BT card, maybe it's built in, or on chip or...... But I gave up looking for it. What I did find on the front panel was the original pathetic little mic, way back from the tiny hole. You can't drill it bigger as it knocks the mic out of place.

My fix, made simpler now I know what I'm doing (it took me a lot longer and many more steps.

Take off main case
Pull tape off DVD drive to extend ribbon cable
Flip up black tab at the back of the ribbon cable connection on the screen and slide out ribbon and put screen aside
Remove two small screws from the side of the faceplate and using a flat blade screwdriver release the faceplate
Flip up tabs on both ribbon connectors and remove ribbons, I found it easier doing the short one first
unscrew all circuit boards screws in the faceplate circuit (7) and remove faceplate
Drill a hole in the rear of the unit above the ISO connector to feed a cable through
Carefully desolder the horrible little mic from the right hand side of the circuit (labelled mic1) and clean the holes
Take a mini jack extension lead and cut off the male end - either a mono one or if stereo you want the wires for the top part and the middle part of the connector stripped and feed through the hole, I also put a very small tie wrap inside with the tag outside so I could hold the wire tight and not strain the solder - tightened after assembly
The positive (top part) goes on the inside connection. I soldered this to the top of the board
The ground goes to the other terminal - these are so close together that I soldered this on the underside to ensure no contact
Reassemble in reverse of above (making sure all faceplate buttons are in place (yes I forgot the eject and screen buttons)
Then connect any unpowered condenser Mic and all of a sudden fantastic vocie clarity, quite a phenomenal difference.

I used this mic from Amazon, https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/...?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Happy for this to get merged into another thread, but I couldn't find one specifically about the mic problem with the single din unit.



No comments:

Post a Comment