Sorry guys, I've been reading for awhile on differant forums about installing amps. I have a RF 500x that i installed last night. Me and my boy ran all the wiring....power on driver side and RCA, speaker, and remote on passenger side. Any way, I have the engine wine in my 6x9's. Course those are the only speakers hooked up right now. I grounded it right behind the rear seat where it bolts to the chassis. I have a feeling that it might be that but I am not sure.

 

Well,the problem could be a few things.Lets run through some possibilities:

(1)Different gauge ground cable then used for power.

(2)Did not take paint down to bare metal.
(3)Ground cable connectors not on tight,or loose connection on the cars chassis.

(4)RCA's not plugged in tight
(5)Bad rca cables
(6)Amp gain jacked up to max or near max.
(7)RCA's too close to power cables.If cables must be near each other for a short run,make them cross each other at 90 deg angles.Don't run them parallel to each other.

These are just some of the causes possible.If all these things are okay,then more in depth troubleshooting will be needed.

Let me know how you make out.

 

I did a little double checking earlier but it got too cold so...

1. The guage of the wire I know is the same cause they came in the same pack and I looked on the cables...lol

2. I did for the most part but I guess I will do more.

3. Cables are tight.

4/5. RCA's are new and were a pain in the butt to put in....but I guess I can see if I can get them in better. It was like i had to unscrew the outer part to get them in.

6. Gain is practically all the way down for both front and rear even though front is not hooked up.

7. Power is run down the driverside and RCA's run down the passenger. They never come close to touching nor crossing.

 

are the rca's any where near any power wires, not just the one to the amp? like under the dash? or in the trunk?

 

Whine is practically always a ground problem.

The trick is to determine if the problem is in the amplifier, or in the deck. If your deck has speaker outputs, hook up speakers to it, and see if the whine is there. If it is, then nothing that you do at the amplifier is going to get rid of it.

Properly connected and grounded equipment should not pick up whine. At least if it's better quality equipment than K-mart special audio. Just as an experiment, I bought one of those $19.95 "amplifier hookup" kits, and setup the following:

Bypassed my 4 AWG power wire and strung the cheap 8 awg between the battery and my amp. The power cable went right next to the alternator casing and the ignition coil.

The (Incredibly cheap) RCA cables were zip-tied to the power wire, and left in loops on the trunk floor before being connected to the amplifier.

Started it up... no whine. No alternator whine, no pops from the coil. Nothing. The bass and treble response were terrible, and the amps showed signs of current starvation when anything hit the subwoofers, but playing the zero bit track on my IASCA CD, there was no whine. Engine was running at 2500 RPM. I got a hiss from the system, and there was an audible interference when my power antenna went up and down, but nothing otherwise.

The moral? Whine is usually ground.

Check that your deck is grounded to the firewall, or the frame. Not to the dashboard. (Factory ground wire should be okay, but if in doubt, firewall, or frame.

Amp ground cables should be as short as possible, and still have a good frame ground.

And don't get me wrong. I'm not saying that it doesn't matter how you ring your RCAs and power wire. It does matter. It's just not (In my experience) a source of whine.

 

That's true that whine is usually ground related.But,I have seen RCA cables that had a broken ground shield inside the connector.If this happens,noise that is radiated into the cable will corrupt the audio signal.

I know you said that the RCA's are new,but it is possible that you damaged the ground shield when you were pulling the cable under the carpet.

Whine is also caused by something called a "ground loop".The audio signal has to have a ground referance point,which is achieved at the head unit.If another signal referance point is introduced you will have a ground loop and there's the source of the whine.

If you have an ohm meter,I can explain how to find that sort of problem. smile.gif

 

well when i did my stereo i knew i had a good ground but still had a whine, and i figured out that where the rca's were behind the deck, they ran right next to my cd changer wiring and that was causing the subs to whine.

 

Thanx for the responses....I've been real busy cause I just moved up to Nashville but I will get to work on it this weekend. I've talked to a couple shops also and they told me that I could either take the ground from the deck and route to where I grounded the amp or get a RCA ground isolator??? I think thats what he called it. Either way I did hook up that and it works that way but I lost bass in those speakers. I am like totally clueless to this stuff so you have to speak to me like a kid...lol

Here is what I did...I ran the power on the driver side underneath those metal clips and ran the RCA's, speaker, and remote hook-ups on the passenger side also underneath the metal clips there. Could these metal clips with the stock wireing there cause the interference? I was also told by a shop that the ground wire needs to be, or should be as short as possible????

Im trying to understand this and being real patient in learning.....am I off base and just not getting it???

 

Grounding the hu at the same location as the amp does sometimes do the trick.But,that's usually a last resort.Also,if you end up doing this,make sure you bolt them down so that the ring connector for the amp ground is closest to the chassis.Then the hu ring connector goes on top.

As for using a ground loop isolator,don't!! The usually don't work that well.They're more of a half-*** band aid then a real fix.

No.The clips will not cause whine.You definetley did the right thing running the cables that way.You should have no trouble with any of that.

Yes.That's correct.The ground cable should be as short as possible,but that is most likely not your problem.Unless the cable is like 10' long!!

You're getting there!!

It seems like your whine is slightly more complicated.Let me try and give you a proceedure to figure this out.

Let's see first,if the problem is noise entering the speaker wires.This usually doesn't happen,but it is possible.

(1)Disconnect the left and right speaker wires from the amp.
(2)Turn the system on.You will have no music comming from the speakers at this point.
(3)Rev the motor a bit and see if you can hear any whine or other noise from the speakers.Have some one put there ear up to the speakers and see.

If there is whine comming from the speakers,then your speaker wires are picking up noise from some sourse of high current power.You'll have to figure out how to re-route them.

If the noise is gone,then the problem isn't the speaker wires.Now,do this:

(1)Turn off the system.
(2)Re-connect the speakers to the amp.
(3)Disconnect the rca's from the amp.
(4)Turn the system on.
(5)Rev the motor and listen for whine.

Do you hear the whine? Then the noise is entering thru the amp,not the rca's.You may have the amp mounted directly to the chassis of the car.Or, there's a defect with the amp.

No whine? Then the amp and the way the amp is mounted is okay.The problem is now either the rca cables or the hu(head unit).Actually, the rca connectors on the amp may still be bad.You'll need an ohm meter to figure that out.

I know it's a pain,but it may be worth it to gat a length of cheap rca cable and loosely connect it from the hu to the amp.In other words,by pass your existing rca cable.That'll tell you if the current rca's are bad or possiblly you're getting noise into them.

Sorry for the long post,but there are alot of things to check out if you want to fix this.

 

You will not hear whine from a sub!!! Whine is too high of a frequency for subs to play. It's either that or you are low passing the sub way to high,or you have no low pass at all,which will make the sub sound like total crap.

...........Oh!!!! Forgot one thing that may help you.If the ground shields on the rca connectors,at the head unit,are touching any metal parts of the dash,this will also cause whine.Can also cause buzzzzzing noises too.