The retained accessory power that runs the radio and windows is controlled by the BCM. Several members have found that the wire at the BCM gets loose and causes intermittent connection.

If your car radio stops working intermittently, in that you lose sound, but the head unit clearly doesn’t lose power, then you’re dealing with a different issue.

In this type of situation, it’s very likely that the head unit is still working, but there is some kind of intermittent break between it and the speakers.

You could also be dealing with an internal head unit fault with this type of a problem, but it’s important to rule out the speakers, speaker wiring, and amp first.

One possibility is that the amplifier is going into protect mode. In amp protect mode, the head unit will stay on, but it will seem to stop working as you will lose all sound from the speakers. Amps can go into protect mode for a variety of reasons, including overheating, internal faults, and wiring problems, so it’s important to actually inspect the amp while your stereo seems to be in a fail state to rule that out.