Amp is picking up unwanted sounds

DrJoe

I just got a new Pioneer CD player and I have a problem. When I hooked up the signal wires to my 4 channel amp, the speakers play the sounds of the car. When I rev the engine, the speakers pick it up. I think you guys get what I'm saying. I tried putting the RCA cables in different places, same problem. it's pretty cool when you rev the engine and it plays through the speakers, but I think I'd rather do without it.

ilikesound

check your grounds, make sure that they are at a solid piece of the CHASSIS, not just metal. shave the metal down at the ground spot with some kind of file, or screwdriver, so you cant see any paint, and connect away. if that doesn't solve things, pick up a ground loop isolator at your store (the radioshack ones don't do enough for my system) and connect at the h/u. those are the only ways i know of, short of wiring directly to the battery...but there is some skeptisism about that working correctly.

DrJoe

I guess the problem is with the new CD player. When I was using the stock deck with a speaker level input, I never had this problem. I'm going to try a different ground place for the CD player. I'll tell you guys what happens.

Thanks

MacLeod

Check the RCA's first. This is the most likely culprit.

An easy way would be to run down to Radio Shack and grab a cheap-o set of RCA's and then string them from the head unit to the amp. Dont run them under anything, just drape them over the seats and what not. If you dont get noise than its either a crappy set of RCA's or theyre picking up noise.

DrJoe

Thanks for the idea mac, but I tried that already. Two different pares of RCA's right across the seats. Same damn problem! I'll trying grounding the deck to another spot, I'll tell you how it goes.

ilikesound

update?

csnut18

Ok being that I have done this a few times and have had this annoyance occur I can give you some advice. Listen to what I have to say cause it can save your life hehe. 1)Firstly, make sure you have an absolutely solid ground that is clearly a piece of metal and part of the frame of the car. 2) If any of your speaker wire has the jacket rubbed off and it is touching metal, if the amp doesnt go into short you will deff have alternator noise. I would check to make sure none of your speaker wires shorted cause that happened to me once and I could never believe my noise was coming from there. 3) Your problem is almost certainly a ground loop between your headunit and amps and the system is trying to equalize it through your rca's resulting in the engine noise. To solve this problem. you must have every component in your system grounded at the same point. If you have a head unit, equalizer, sat radio tuner that requires power connections, all this stuff must be grounded at the same spot as your amps which means you need to run adequate guage wire from the headunit location or wherever to the amp ground location in the back. This will almost certainly solve the prob. 4) if you still have alternator noise, I would chect to make sure the tips of your rca interconnects are not touching any metal behind the headunit as this will cause alternator noise. Try it yourself and allow metal from the car to touch the tip of the rca, you will hear the alternator noise. Get back to me and my ideas will surely cure the prob.