Small bit of alternator whine..

Okay, I finally got my system installed on Saturday (pics to come). It sounds phenomenal but I do have a slight bit of alternator whine. I didn't have any whine when I just had my Eclipse head unit pushing my boston acoustics all around but once I added the amps, cap and subs, I picked up a bit of whine so I'm thinking it's a grounding issue at the back.

Now for my question.. where did you all (that have installed amps in the trunk) ground your amps? I grounded mine at the antenna ground under the passenger trunk lip just because it was the closest good ground point.. I'm contemplating moving the ground to the battery ground under the seat.

Thoughts? Opinions?
Thanks!

I've received much criticism for this, but I am a firm believer that the chassis is a horrible ground for audio (I'm not alone. Audio Control is on my side). My grounds go through distribution blocks, and right back to the battery. Never have heard even the slightest bit of wine, ever.

Hey, if it's worked for you, I have no room to criticize

Being that the battery is in the back of the riv, I think it would make an excellent choice for location.

I think 3 of the reasons for wanting to make the shortest path for ground are economics (running 0/1 gauge for power is expensive enough w/out having to buy 0/1 gauge ground wire to run 15' back to battery), another reason is it's a lot easier not to have to find a good channel/path to run a second 0/1 gauge wire back to the front.. finding it for ONE cable is hard enough sometimes.. thirdly, I've always imagined that you want to expose power wires to other 'signals' as little as possible to reduce the chances of picking up interference..

This has always been my school of thought, but again, if grounding directly back to battery has worked very well for you, I can't argue that fact. I may go pick up another GM battery terminal and some more 0/1 gauge wire and run back to the battery and see what happens...

Other than that, I'm drooling over this system's performance. I still need to pink the system and make some fine tuning adjustments on the parametric eq, but it's VERY rich sounding and I can get a great combination of SQ AND SL and it's not fatiguing on the ears at all. I've just got some upper midrange that I need to dip just a little bit.

I took a cue from one of the other members on here and put 3 1/2 Infinity Kappas in the door pod where the tweeters were located to assist the 5 1/4 Boston Acoustic drivers in making a smooth stage up front and it sounds amazing.

Still, your problem could stem from some other part of your system. I would hate to see you invest in all that extra wiring without the same result. Can you isolate the noise to one component? Then, try various grounding locations, including direct to the battery, with a decent gage cable and good connections, of course.

Yeah, I'll do a little research on it before I physically run the new ground.

of course good cable and connections. 0/1 gauge, fine strand all day long for me.

4 gage is more than enough for my install. Short runs = less voltage drop. 1/0 surely doesn't hurt, though.

Unplug your rca cables first. Then turn your system back on. If the engine noise remains. then it is probably a ground issue, or possibly the passive x-overs are too close to the battery (I have run into this in the past with boston acoustic speakers. If the noise is gone, then the problem is rca related. Likely poor shielding and/or a ground loop.

Thanks for the tips, SQ. I doubt it's low quality RCA cables, I got some top of the line RCAs and it's not crossovers. I'm using the digital crossover system in my headunit. I think it's just a ground issue. I'll get it lined out soon.