So I noticed today I have a very slight engine whine through my speakers. As the engine revs and what not, there is a whine through the speakers. I know my grounds are solid so I googled it and came across a couple of things I'm going to do. First is I'm going to pull out my head unit and give it a better ground. I figure there should be something I can run a wire to, to give it a more solid ground. Next is my RCA cables. The cables I have I bought when I first got into car audio, so they're a good 9 years old. I never bought a new pair since I figured wires don't go bad. However, I'm not sure of any of the specs on them and if they're shielded very well or not. I hope if I reground my head unit and get some new RCAs that it may take care of the problem. The whine has actually been around for a while once I thought about it. I always assumed it was just my engine, sounding however, but then today I turned the head unit off and it went away. What would be a good set of RCAs to invest in? I was thinking of getting some KnuKonceptz. Are they good, or are there others you would recommend for the price? I was looking into their Krystal line, since it isn't much more than the Karma ones and is triple insulated.
knu is pretty much all i buy and recommend to people. i suspect you wouldn't need anything above the karma's if its going to be for your sub stage. i would invest in the krystals for your mains though (if you have them set up).
This happened to me but then went away and came back randomly after I hooked a cb into the fuse block for the radio. After a little while it went away. Electronics do weird sh>it.
What would be the proper way to run a second ground? I like to make sure all my ground connections are solid. Is there a way of giving your head unit a great ground connection?
did not read all the thread but if you have engine noise..
try to run a clean ground cable from the battery to the aftermarket radio if you have one.. a 12 gauge wire will usually work...
if you have external amps.. make sure the power wires(ground and 12 volts) are at least 6-10 inches away from the rca's wires..
make sure the amplifier is insolated from the chassis and not touching the chassis or anything that can connect the chassis to ground(some aplifiers heatsink are connected to some componenets usually mosfets or something else, and some can induct whine noise if their connected to ground)
make sure any wires are not touching anything on the stereo chassis..
make sure you dont have any lose cable on your entire cable that is shorting out..
Ok so I just ran a ground from the casing of the head unit to a bolt I found that is on bare metal tubing. It looked like a pretty good place to ground the wire. I started my car and its still doing the same as it was, no different. I also noticed with the car off, and my keys on accessories that I can hear my fan spinning through my speakers also. The fan I'm referring to is the fan for the cars's heat and a/c. I turned the heat off and it quit. If I'm hearing my fan through my speakers could it still be my RCAs? I guess I could try running a ground to my battery but would that make a difference? Not sure what else it could be.
Here's a picture of the bolt I tightened it down to. I used speaker wire. I connected the wire on the case in two different spots just to make sure I was connecting to the right part of the Head Unit.
My cables are all tight and secure, I'm pretty positive no wires are touching anywhere and my RCAs are ran on the other side of the car from the power wire. My RCAs are running along next to my remote start wire.
i suggest you remove the factory groudn cable.. since sometimes they induct noise ( because some oem radios are built in noise filters for the grounds.. and/or they have a propetary dc/dc converter..
do that and the black groudn wire of the harness of the radio wire it to a chassis (make sure its a good metal thing..that you are 100% sure is well connected to the frame of the car.. but i suggest run a wire to the battery..)
is because some cars even if you see metal by the inside of the dash.. its not well connected to the chassis.. sometimes they are connected to a plastic molding and is not conducting.. sometimes they are metal but they dont conduct really good at al..
ALWAYS SCRAPP off paint if you see it for better conductivity..
Someone had told me I may be getting alternator whine. They said to upgrade my ground for my alt. Is this something I should do? I have the spare 1/0 gauge wire to do it if so. I found a bolt on the side of the alt that looks to be a grounding bolt to me. I could hook up to the bolt and run down to the frame under the engine. What do you guys think?
If you have done the big 3 then your alternator is grounded good. The alt grounds thru the metal case, to the metal engine, to the battery, so the engine ground is its ground wire.
That's what I was thinking. Thanks M.S. I'm gonna run the ground to my battery one day this week. It's just a pain pulling my HU out and putting it back.
I didn't read the whole thread but if rounding the RCAs didn't fix it, run a ground wire from the battery to the HU instead of using the one in the factory harness.
Electrical noise is almost always fixed by one of those two things.
Alright so I ran a direct line from the battery ground to the head unit. I also clipped the stock ground on the wiring harness so it is only being grounded from 12 gauge speaker wire. I turned on the car and its doing the same thing, no change what so ever. The last idea I have is grounding the RCAs maybe, but I just imagine that is going to be a huge pain in the butt seeing how I have NO slack in my RCA lines. Plus I'm not sure if speaker wire will wrap around well enough to make good contact. I'm kind of running out of ideas here.
I believe next I'm going to pull my RCAs completely out along with my remote start and re run both. I'm going to run the remote start on the same side my power is on and leave the RCAs all by themselves. I'm first going to just run the RCAs freely through the car and play my stereo to see if there is a difference. While I'm at it I guess ill ground my RCAs on the deck too.
Alright so I spent a lot of time on my car this morning. I pulled everything out and tried the stereo with my RCAs free of anything and I even grounded my RCAs on the back of the deck. There is no more noise through the front speakers at all, so thats good. However, there is still the same noise through the rear speakers. I switched the RCAs out thinking maybe the rear ones were bad, no difference. So the RCA cables appear to be ok. I unhooked the rear RCAs from the amp and the rear speakers still produced the same noise. So, the noise coming out of the rear speakers is not from the RCAs, or apparently the head unit, since unplugged from the source there was still noise coming through them. Any ideas?
It appears for some reason that the noise is coming from my rear speakers themselves. I tried reversing the wires from my front and rear speakers and the noise still only came out of the rear speakers. I also reversed the RCA cables and it still only came out of the rear speakers. For whatever reason, the speakers are picking up on engine noise. So, I just unhooked them and now there is no more noise. I'm going to hook up another pair of speakers I have sitting around and see if I get the noise through them too. If not, then I guess for whatever reason those speakers are just messed up.
Turned out it is my rear speakers. I hooked up a pair of 6x9s I'm not using and there wasn't any noise at all coming through them. I just ran new wires to the rear speakers a few weeks ago so I know everything is ran correctly. Not sure why they're making noise. None the less, I unhooked them and no more engine whine.
