Wow, Still Ground Noise.

[MyCord]

I'm sure some of you posted in my last thread about my ground noise problem, so heres the deal.

Radio off, no noise, radio on, high pitched wine comes from all 4 speakers/tweeters. As the rpm's of the car go up, so does the wine.

What I have:
Pioneer HU
Focal Speakers in front w/ seperate tweeters and crossovers.
Infinity's in rear w/ built in tweeters and crossovers.
4 Channel Amp
and sub/amp

So this is what I've done so far to try and solve the problem:
- Grounded head unit to chasis by itself.
- Grounded RCA's to the metal on the HU
- Added ground wires/beefed up OEM ground wires in the Engine bay
- Sanded every single ground point I could find.
- Tried different amp ground points
- Traced every speaker wire in the whole car to see if any where touching something

A long time ago I tried ground loop isolators and they didn't help but I'll try them again.

I've unplugged one speaker at a time and the others still make noise so it's not a connection with the speakers.

Seriously all I can think now is either the HU just sucks or the amp sucks. Any more ideas?

Thanks

[jcoleman_11]

what kind of 4-channel amp?

[marquisdee1018]

Check this out, it helped me when I had my Pioneer.

http://www.caraudio.com/forum/showthread.php?t=337644

[wherm]

what kind of 4 channel amp do you have? I had an old mtx that had really bad engine noise and found that it was actually the solder joints from the outer rca contact that had broken loose from the circuit board. They broke in a way that I could not repair them, so I took two rca pigtails and hardwired them to the circuit board and plugged the rca's into those instead of the ones on the amp. It was pretty ghetto, but it got me by till I could upgrade the amp.

Have you tried a different amp, or jiggled the rca connections at the amp to see if it got better or worse?

[MyCord]

The 4 channel is a Power Acoustik amp, I'm not sure if they're good or not.

[jcoleman_11]

The 4 channel is a Power Acoustik amp, I'm not sure if they're good or not.

WE HAVE A WINNER!! there is your problem man, the only things power acoustiks can do right are caps, everything else is crap in my opinion.

[MyCord]

Haha... damn. Well my brothers all use JL audio.. What do you recommend?

It might be worth noting that when I turn the defroster on it gets 2x louder.

[ChIoVnIdCa]

Did you ground the rcas ? Pioneers are terrible when it comes to that.

[g7kobayashi]

Did you try to disconnect the RCAs of the amp?
If the whining disappears, than it's the amps or the RCAs that
cause the noise. (Since you mentioned that you checked the cables,
it probably would be the amp.)

If that doesn't change anything, than try another headunit,
or feed the amp with some protable music player like i-Pod.
Of course you will need some special wire but that won't be a trouble.
If the noise doesn't exist any more or it decreases, then I would say
that there somethins wrong with the headunit.

For the whinie that follows reving, you can add a 33,000 micro-farad cap
on the alternator.

And I would like to know that did you connect the positive power
of the H/U to the stock harness or you had it from the battery?
Try the latter and you'll see the difference.

[lost_accord]

had the same problem for different reasons. once the amp ground worked loose. whine came through the subs. it would change with the rpm. other time i got lazy and ran the rca line with the power down the same side of the car. whine was constant and didn't change with the rpm of motor.

[evil_demon_01]

What did you change in your system when the problem first occured?

Does the whine pitch increase with engine rpm?
Did you run the rca's and power feeds on opposite sides of the car?

[LoDollar92LX]

i still have a slight ground noise like that (i didnt know it was a pioneer thing, i have a pioneer..hmm) but i swapped out my alternater and it improved greatly. there was something about the old alternator that made the whine really loud, but the other one i swapped in improved it greatly....

[kapone]

is your 4 channel amp bolted to metal ... (like the back of the seat ) that will cause alternator noise also. Make sure the amps chasy is not touching any metal.

[MyCord]

Both amps are bolted to wood.

I plugged my ipod directly into the amp and the noise went away thus the problem was the HU.

I replaced the HU with my brother Apline in the noise dramatically reduced. I also ran a wire directly from the battery for power and gave it it's own ground.



**** Now I have a bare yellow ware and a bare ground wire coming out of the harness. My clock is extremely dim now am I'm guess it has to do with those two wires not flowing current. What should I do with them?

****** I still have slight ground noise and it gets louder with rpm just like before, it's just not as loud.

I'm going to try new RCA's and then a ground loop isolator I guess. I also think I might benefit from a new wire going from the battery to the alternator. What type of fuse should I put on this if I do 4ga wire?

[ChIoVnIdCa]

Did you ground the rcas ? Pioneers are terrible when it comes to that.