2006 RX330. Lots of miles but in excellent condition, I bought the car 6 months ago. Long story short, the warranty replacement radio didn't fix the problem.

When I first bought the car, I installed an Alpine iLX-W650 stereo, purchased from Crutchfield, along with a backup camera and steering wheel controls. After successfully using it for a month or so, when first starting the vehicle the FM radio, Tune-In, podcasts, streaming audio, is not producing any sound. This is very intermittent. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. It may fail once every for every several times I start the car. When starting the car, the screen for the particular function comes on, but no audio. To get it working, I have to turn the ignition off/on a couple of times. Once it starts working, it stays working until I shut off the ignition. The other Android Auto apps, like Waze, Maps, Texting, etc. seem to work fine.

• You can select the app, FM Radio, Tune-In, Podcasts, etc and they are displayed properly on the screen. The volume slider does go up and down, you just don’t get any audio.
• The other Android Auto apps, like Waze, Maps, etc. seem to work fine.
• The backup camera works fine.
• The steering wheel controls, such as volume up/down, appear to work, you can see the volume slider on the radio move up & down, but there is no sound.
• I called Crutchfield tech support. He suggested doing a factory reset, which I did. It seemed to start behaving for a day or two, then started acting up again.
• Then I did a complete download and re-install of the latest firmware update. No help.
• Thinking I may have a bad connection, I pulled the radio and re-seated all of the connectors to make sure they were tight. That didn’t help.
• I don’t have an additional audio amplifier.
• The previous Lexus factory-installed radio worked properly.

So I sent it in for repair and they sent a replacement radio. Great! but, much to my dismay the replacement radio is doing the exact same thing!!! What could be causing this? It must be something in the car itself. The OEM radio/CD player never did this for me. Is there some amplifier or something between the radio and the speakers that may be acting up?

I am totally bumfluxed.

 

Update.

I called Crutchfield (again) and described the problem to the lady at Tech support. She said it's probably the Crutchfield supplied Axxess TYTO-01 Wiring Interface box. They are sending one out pronto. Sounds right, I wish I had spoken to her with my first contact with Crutchfield.

 

Did the replacement unit fix your problem? I'm having the same issue.

 

Yes it did.

Also need to use high quality USB cables.

 

Lexus / Toyota vehicles with factory amplifiers require a digital wake up signal and have volume that is digitally controlled. The Axxess interface provides these functions alternately you can use the PAC TATO interface.