speaker whine?

Hi, I'm trying to get rid of my speaker whine and I've tried a lot of things and all I know is its my alternator somehow. It's not my rca cables, it's not the amps hooked up to a bad ground and I tried making a filter for the power in my head unit and it did nothing. Both my amps are wired directly into my battery so it can't be the amp grounds or dirty amp power right?

I'm gunna try to take some time soon to basically wire the head unit power as well directly into the battery terminals, and delete my remote wire entirely by hooking up my remote turn on wires directly into the battery wired into a distributor block to go to all the amps and the head unit also hooked up to an aftermarket switch to turn everything on or off regardless of the engine running or ignition switch.

I used a 35 volt 6800 uf capacitor and a random inductor that looked good enough to try to built the filter for the radio. It had no effect what so ever.

What kind of spark plug wires are you using?

Due to the fact that my step dad never gave me a parts list of when my car was in the shop for 41 days, I have no idea but if I had to guess? AC Delco? I don't know lol.

I talked to a guy at crutchfield about a power noise filter and he's convinced that my problem is that the head unit and my speaker component amp are grounded at vastly different locations. I got a 1 dollar 20 foot long cable to see if I Can rectify this issue in like  an hour maybe less depending on when I wanna freeze my ass off lol.

which makes sense because actually last time I got my alternator tested, there was like barely any ripple.

Also, before I got my component amp when my old Pioneer was amplifying the speakers, I never had this issue, but when I got the amps in the back powering my door and deck speakers, the problem became apparent.

No whine with car on and just my phone playing the amp with a 3.5mm to RCA adapter. No whine without RCA plugged in. But I get the whine with the head unit plugged in and the guy let me use a ground isolator for a min to see if it helped and it did nothing, but I'm hoping grounding it at the battery as well will basically fix my issue.

if that doesn't fix it then I'm hooking the head unit directly to battery terminals, and if that doesn't fix it, then I'll see if it's the remote turn on wire for the amps, and if that's not the issue I'll try a power noise filter.

if all that won't work then maybe I'll need to look into refurbishing my alternator?

The head unit is picking up a whine from somewhere, most likely sources are alternator or spark plug wires. It's a pretty common thing. It's also possible the RCA wires from the head to the amp are picking up the whine. Can you temporarily try a different set of RCA cables or a different path for them?

What if you hook a speaker directly to the head unit with no amp? Whine? No whine?

I'm just saying that some troubleshooting is in order before you go doing anything to your alternator.

Agree - you need to isolate the source of the whine first. All you know right now is whine comes from the speakers. Without changing any grounds, you can plug a set of headphones into the head unit RCA output. If no whine, the amp may need to be re-grounded. Plug in at the other end of the RCA cable, near the amp. They make cheap patch connectors to do this. This will rule out the cable as the source.

A long ground to the battery isn't always the best solution. Try different parts of the car near the amp. Use star crush washers to get a good bite into the metal. Try multiple grounding points.

If the head is making the noise, consider using a commercial noise suppressor on the positive lead. These use an inductor, not a capacitor, and they do work. Scoche probably supplies one for cheap.

Good luck!

Okay so this is probably a complicated problem here.

Rca cables off my amps and I get a slight clicky whine I didn't notice before cause my input voltage was jacked way down. Rca wires hooked into the head unit outside the window of the car into the trunk still has an engine whine.

I'll try the headphones listening to the Rca on my head unit when I get home today

But I just got a battery test at advance auto and apparently I'm running like 15 volts and I have a ripple of 26Mv.

If my amps are hooked up to the cigarette lighter off the ignition wire for remote, would that be causing any of the whine?

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But I just got a battery test at advance auto and apparently I'm running like 15 volts and I have a ripple of 26Mv.

15 volts is within normal range for any 12v audio component. If the max voltage is exceeded, the component will usually turn off. Better unregulated power amps will usually take a lot of voltage since the benefit is increased power output.

Quote :

If my amps are hooked up to the cigarette lighter off the ignition wire for remote, would that be causing any of the whine?

Since they're not - because this would be a very bad idea - you've got nothing to worry about here.

AA wrote:

Quote :

But I just got a battery test at advance auto and apparently I'm running like 15 volts and I have a ripple of 26Mv.

15 volts is within normal range for any 12v audio component. If the max voltage is exceeded, the component will usually turn off. Better unregulated power amps will usually take a lot of voltage since the benefit is increased power output.

Quote :

If my amps are hooked up to the cigarette lighter off the ignition wire for remote, would that be causing any of the whine?

Since they're not - because this would be a very bad idea - you've got nothing to worry about here.

Actually they were lol. Until recently my amps never worked properly off the red remote wire of my old crap pioneer head unit but now they work on the remote of the new one but I get ignition noise. I don't like all this dirty audio.

I ripped out the back seats and un bolted them out of the car and re wired a lot of wiring and cut out about 20 feet of excess wiring for the amps and speakers where I could, wired speaker wires and pre amps away from power wires and such as well.

but then everything started going whack, and I Think it's my ghetto battery terminals. I ordered some rockford fosgate platinum plated terminals, platinum plated ring terminals with two 0 gauge screw in terminals for the chassis ground, the Soundstream 3000 watt RMS monoblock amp, as well as one for the power side. I also got a few extra 0 gauge ring terminals for the 200 amp in line fuse, and such, which are gold plated.

basically I plan on replacing the original 4ga ground wire with a 0 ga wire I have for the battery terminal for a cleaner better ground. Original power wires will probably stay. I should probably look for a 4ga to 0 ga adapter for that but yeah, it got bad enough to the point where the HVAC controller randomly beeps on and off, the turn signals will slightly dim my lights, and if the sound system is hooked up, just the component speakers on will dim lights without the subwoofer on, and they have terrible distortion as well.

Small chance that the relay that the windows need and the radio in the back is going bad, or should I chalk this up to my horrible terminals?

EDIT: radio wiring harness isn't even plugged in and it still dims slightly from turn signal and the HVAC system beeps on and off with or without the sound system wired in.

The OEM battery cables and terminals are more than plenty. Can you post a picture of the battery terminals?

I did run a battery cable from the positive cable mount point under the hood to the back of the alternator, and a battery cable from the chassis ground under the hood to the alternator bracket. That made my small 'light dimming' issues go away.

I would review all your wiring. Questionable wiring can be a major source of issues, there's no point in going much further troubleshooting or replacing parts if the wiring to the head unit and amp are not well made to begin with.

My problem  is that I want to mount ring terminals for 0 gauge wire as well as some ring terminals for 8ga for two different amp which will probably in the future become ring terminals for both 4ga and 0ga and the 4ga will go into a distribution block into two sets of 2 channel stereo component amps for greater control and build quality for the same price bracket of the amp you buy.

I like dedicated 2 channel stereo amps because it allows for a better product because they don't have to worry about space constraints to building an amp they think is too big. I'd rather have a little more bulk for better quality components, and so I decided to go aftermarket battery posts that ring terminals screw into.. I was going to upgrade pretty much everything I could connector wise to make my audio system more simple as well as a better quality connection for audio clarity in a class AB dedicated amp which uses good quality speakers with silk dome tweeters, and clean bass for 1400 watts rms going into 4cu ft into two alpine type r..

I mean yeah, I could get away with stock battery connectors. But do I want to settle for it looking ghetto and not like a quality system? I'd rather have fancy battery connectors that are actually useful with an improved connection which makes sense for me, adding in heavy amounts of aftermarket parts and wiring. It's just me probably waiting money on fancy parts to most people though lol. Maybe it's PTSD from things like my old wiring harness caught fire a couple years ago from just a bad cable crimp one a ring terminal. The little things matter now to me lol

But yeah I wasn't trying to come off as a pompous ass to justify why I'd prefer having 3 amps and overkill in my trunk and waisting parts on fancy connectors, more just explaining why it makes sense for me lol I'm still learning

So, my terminals are horrible because I had an aftermarket terminal just on the positive to easily add multiple ring terminals and made it super easy to take it all on and off for charging battery. That broke, and it's hodge lodged until my packages get here lol

So I guess occum's razor would dictate to fix battery terminals, then re wire it so it's functional again and try to better locate problems for a proper diagnosis?