I downloaded a signal generator from the web, and it seems that the frequency that I'm hearing is much lower....maybe somewhere in the 8.5-10K hertz spectrum. My point with the hearing loss is that any sound that is loud enough to make my ears ring for hours after driving the car is too loud and could be damaging to our hearing...that's why most of the dealers can't hear it...they've been exposed to extremely loud noises over the course of their lifetimes that has damaged their ability to hear high frequencies. The loudness that we are hearing from the ECU or whatever it is could easily be much louder than the overall db levels of the rest of the car. I'm like you - this problem needs to be fixed NOW!

 

NEWS FLASH!! THE NOISE WE HEAR IS INFINITI'S NOISE CANCELLATION SYSTEM

stopped by service today and that is what they told me. I just looked at her like . I was so baffled by what she said I didnt feel like debating with her. I just asked if there is a fix and she said not yet... seems like the only way they will fix this is if someone actually gets hearing damage from it or something

 

I don't think our car comes with one of those, and not sure you can get that in any Infiniti.....maybe the M, but I doubt it. It's not the audio system...I already pulled the fuse on that system and the noise was still there. Do you have any more details?

 

Sorry, I shoulda been more clear about this. I meant to say the dealer is making stuff up by saying our cars have noise cancellation. She told me it was the audio system emitting a noise to cancel out outside noise. Now I know that is a lie cause our cars dont have it.

But she did seem well aware of the issue, atleast well enough where she started making stuff up like this to get owners to stop bugging her. I hope Infiniti is really working on this.

 

jesus christmas, what bizarre lies....

 

Unbelievable. Hard to believe that they'd make us something as bizarre as that to present to you versus a real fix.

 

Wow, just wow...

How can anyone working in a service department open their mouth and intentionally or even worse, unintentionally come up with stuff like that.

Mind boggling!

 

The really frustrating part is that all of us are having to go to a forum to try to sort it out, and hoping that someone has made a breakthru. We need help from Infiniti to resolve this issue.

 

After taking my brand new g37x to the dealer (who could not hear the noise) I pulled out my own equipment to get some specifics. Take a look at the pic below, the baseline is the engine noise at 1200 rpm. The peak is around 10kHz (10.045 kHz on the graph, but I didnt nudge the pointer right to the middle.) -14dB is pretty loud, considering I was parked.

 

That is beyond sweet and exactly what I expected based on the test sound I used from the signal generator that I downloaded from the web. So what the chart shows is that the baseline noise is fairly low, but the 10kHz frequency is much louder in comparison...right? Can you do two things....a) explain what the -14db means in layman's terms in comparison to the baseline - loudness, etc. (also remind me why there is a negative there), and b) can you possibly take a reading while the car is at a higher speed with no radio or ventilation system blowing? Mine seems to get louder with speed up to a point.

Have you shown the chart to your dealer? Maybe the CEO of Nissan/Infiniti needs to see your test chart.

 

As a first swag, what you can read off of it is that there is about a 20dB difference between the 'normal' noise that the car should make, and the noise this tone makes. Thats a big difference. Dont worry about the -14dB reading, thats relative to a bunch of variables. Tommorow I'll get some real data - i.e. car turned off, car turned on, car driving. I'll also get a more accurate +-5 Hz (not that it really matters) freq. How fast do switching power supplies 'switch'?

 

Awesome....look forward to seeing your results. Is there any way to determine the approximate db level of that frequency like you'd see in car reviews where they measure noise at highway cruising and wide-open throttle? In other words, if our cars normally produce 70 db at highway speeds, what would the db level of the 10K frequency be...I really hope it's not a +20 db gain like you've seen on your initial test or else all of us with good hearing will be in trouble.

 

10KHz is about at the bottom end of where a switching power supply would operate. The lower the frequency, the larger (and more expensive) the components.

From Wikipedia:

A switched-mode power supply (SMPS) works on a different principle. AC mains input is directly rectified without the use of a transformer, to obtain a DC voltage. This voltage is then sliced into small pieces by a high-speed electronic switch. The size of these slices grows larger as power output requirements increase.
The input power slicing occurs at a very high speed (typically 10 kHz — 1 MHz). High frequency and high voltages in this first stage permit much smaller step down transformers than are in a linear power supply. After the transformer secondary, the AC is again rectified to DC. To keep output voltage constant, the power supply needs a sophisticated feedback controller to monitor current draw by the load.

Who knows if this noise is from a "switcher", it's just a guess. they are very common in modern electronic designs.

 

Punker...

When you do your next test, could you also record some sound clips and post to the forum? That may help others identify or confirm the same noise in their cars. It may also help others realize they can't hear those frequencies, which may help explain why many of the Infiniti techs can't hear it.

 

This is great. I think we would get a better response having real data to prove the noise exists. Has anyone tried sending a letter to Car and Driver, Edmunds, or Consumer Reports or something? I'm grasping at straws here, but I'm just trying to think of a good way to get Infiniti's attention about this matter.