Ok, so I did a little more testing tonight. Here's the results...

- With everything connected I entered VR mode and the whine is still there. The whine is there radio on or off, in VR mode, or in phone mode.
- I disconnected the sub amp which is in the oem amp location and no joy - whine was still there.
- I then disconnected both amps and reconnected the oem e39 amp to the 12 and 26 pin connectors. The whine was still there but very very faint - it was at a level I would be happy with. Down side is the oem amp sounds like shite compared to the Alpine I am running.

One odd thing about reconnecting the oem amp was the level of the amp. I could turn the volume down real low and still hear something. The lowest (or highest; don't know how you refer to it) gain setting on the Alpine is 4v which did not give the same precise control the oem amp gave. It was almost as if the oem amp was running a gain of 5v or 6v.

Thoughts??