White Noise

I finally got all of my equipment installed here is what i have

Source:
Pioneer DEH8500

Speakers:
6.5" RF TS162C 70watt RMS power handling
6x9" RF FRC4369 70watt RMS power handling
12" Stage3 Punch DVC Sub 500watt RMS power handling

Amps:
Mono Sub: RF P3001 424watts x1 @ 2ohm (birth certificate)
4 channel: P4004 70 watts x4 @ 4ohm (bith certificate)

wire:
RF Twisted pair RCA's x3.
4awg power to distro block to 8awg for each amp.

other:
Monster Cable 1 farad Cap

This is all fine and dandy but i have a lot of "noise" coming out of my speakers and it isnt good noise. I mean everything sounds good but there is a white noise that gets louder up to about 25% of max valume, then kinda plataeus and stays loud for the last 75% ( i dont play it that loud mind u).

I ran all my RCAs on one side with the speaker wire for my fronts, and i ran my power on the other side. I dont know what is causing the noise! It seems like it is the deck somehow? I have the Schoche deck replacemnt module. Its late so i cant htink of anything else to list. Feel free to ask whatever, I have pics of everything.

Ps one friend told me to check my ground, but i had the noise BEFORE i installed my amps. When i just had deck running my stock speakers for like a few days. Although i guess i could bee mistaken. Is this ground location ok?

Im making a cardomain site right now, more pics will be there shortly

If you didnt I would recoment scraping some of the paint off around where your hole is, other then that it looks fine.

yeah i grinded for about 20min to get it all off. THats a crappy Pic i know. There is a better one, among others here:

http://www.sounddomain.com/memberpage/607041/1

[BLK03GXS]

Im trying to think where that ground is... cant picture it... i know if you take out the rear seats there are some bolts for the seatbelts that would be a better choice...
If its just thin sheetmetal that your grounding too... then find a different one...
if you take some time, you could prolly run the rca's more central in the car... by pulling up the carpet and taking out the rear seats and one front seat to isolate the amped signal and premp signals...

Allso if you have a lot of extra ground/power/rca length balled up behind the rear seats then that can cause this...

Allso you may want to check and see if you get the static with the deck off... ie jump the amps so that they are on when the deck is off and see if you get the noise....
could be a bad amp.... if its never worked

^^^ya i think what he said..lol..
run the pwer cabel one side and the rca jacks on another
the ground ya need to scrape off the paint to bare metal
i did that ran the wires on boths side same with the ground and no noise what so ever
i am not the audio guy...lol....marc or joel are i dunno try that maybe maybe not

I ran my power and rcas on seperate sides. That ground is back behid rear seats pull back carpet.. youll see it. I will change those tho, wont be hard to the seat belt bolts.

I also have extra RCA balled up.. what can i do with it though?

I would agree with alot of this stuff but it made similar noises with the amps not even in. That could be due to just poor stock wires and stuff though.

I will correct ground and make sure my RCAs arent crimped or anything. Hell i may take it to best buy where they installed the deck and see if they will help me. Thanks for the help boys and girls.

[BLK03GXS]

Are you accually runing the wires from your 4chl directly from the amp to your speakers?
Cus if your not you should be, dont even bother with the stock wireing in a case like this. Not worth the hassle.
As for the extra rca's... its ok IME to ball the rca's up by itself.. but if you have a ball of Rca's/power/ground and ouput wires your lookin fer trouble.
I looked at the pics of you install.. you may want to take some time and clean all the wires up, and have them run so that they dont look like poop... if they're not mixxed up like that that may help too...
Allso isolate the cap away from the amps... i havent delt with caps myself but usually they're not right beside your 4chl... the cap has a lot of stored power in it... could be annother soruce...
But it kinda sounds like a ground issue...

oh yeah, wires are direct from 4chan to my speakers, used RF 16awg speaker wire for fronts and moster XP wpeaker wire for the rears.


IME=?

I will try and keep output wires spools away from my RCAs.

Any suggestions on running wires??

[BLK03GXS]

IME= im my experance....
suggestions on runing what wires? i did post above the easyest way to seperate preamp/amped by runing the rca's more central in the car... in a post b4..
But let me know what you want to know about and i'll do my best to help ya

[mikegett]

It might be more helpfull to describe the noise that you are getting in detail. It may be a ground loop as stated earlier or possibly a mis-adjustment of the amp gains. since you stated that the noise was there prior to the amp I doubt it is gain settings. The easiest way to tell here is to lower your gain. The noise will go away. If you have a ground loop the noise will stay very prominant until you have turned the gain to nearly off. A Head Unit that is equiped with a larger pre out voltage than what the amp can input will cause this. Check to see what input voltage your amps can handle. I believe that the Pioneer is a 4 volt pre-out.
As for ground loops, they can be a nightmare. Many amps are now equiped with coils to dampen the effect of a ground loop. Unfortunately, some cars are just very prone to be noise problems. First, start with your head unit . You can get a ground loop from two locations. The most common being the antenna. There are two draw backs to our antennas. The first is the location. Antennas in the rear of a vehicle are known to introduce more noise than ones in the front of the vehicle. Second is that all window based antennas must utilize a booster to compensate for the poor reception. It is a must to keep all speaker wires away from this booster. They tend to be located just under the window. follow the antenna wire to a small black box and you have found it. To rule out the antenna just unplug the jack from your radio. Sometimes you can simply switch from radio to cd, but this is very uncommon. If the noise goes away after unplugging the jack then try to relocate any speaker wires or rca from the antenna lines. If you still have problems then look at the grounding of your head unit. Try grounding the head unit to the chasi instead of the factory ground. I am leaning toward this due to the noise being in the vehicle prior to the amp.
IF you have had no luck with the head unit then start looking into your amplifier. Trace back all wires and be certain that speaker and rca cables are ran seperate from any power cables. You may need to experiment with various locations to ground your amp. Sometimes grounding alll amps togeather works while other times seperating the grounds does the trick. First, attempt to ground both amps at the same location. Place the ground going to the largest amp closest to the car frame. If you are still having difficulty then you may take all grounds directly to your battery. The battery in the car is the best ground you can get. Not to mention that a battery is a large capasitor and a natural noise supressor. In this case, you will run a power and ground from your battery to your amp. You may even need to run the head unit ground to the battery. I have only had one car that I needed to go this drastic. At one point in time I had a eclipse cd deck, eclipse mini disk-dsp, the factory tape deck, and a e.q, in the front of a ford taurus. It was powered by a eclipe four channel and two, two channel amps. The grounding was a nightmare that took nearly a month to get under control. If you decide that this is the route to try, then I would suggest hooking the ground to your battery and amp outside of the car. That away you have not spent the time re-running the wires if it does not work. After this, it is possible that you have a head unit or amp promblem. Good luck and as stated earllier, try to describe exactly what the sound is like. example: is the noise there when the car is in aux or on? Is it only in cd, radio, or both? Does the pitch change as you excellerate your car? If you turn down the radio does the noise go away? Good luck and let us know the results.
Sorry about the long letter, but I just thought that it might help to explain what a ground loop is and how to avoid it. A ground loop is caused when two electric componants are grounded in seperate locations. This causes a magnetic field between the two points. If you place a wire, such as a speaker wire or rca cable, between the two points it will broadcast the noise into the speaker wire. This is why you will first try to ground all points togeather. The more electronic devices in the car, the more chances of getting a ground loop.

BLK03GXS: My question was bascially how to make things look prettier than they are, I got a lot of wires all over the place. Looks blah.

mikegett: d00d, thanks so much for the time. Im gonna try some of this tonight, after work.

RE: Input voltage is listed as 14.4V and I know that isnt the same inout voltage. Is the Voltage for RCA inputs called something else? I couldnt find that info around anywhere.

Here is the link to my Sub Amp: http://www.crutchfield.com/S-VDvduTz38Gk/c...info&i=575P3001

And my 4chan: http://www.crutchfield.com/S-VDvduTz38Gk/c...info&i=575P4004

RE: Ground Loop

I have not checked slowly turning the gain all the way off to check for noise, But i do have noise at almost ALL volume levels. Unless very low. Also On crutchfield's web site there is this info on the subwoofer Amp, but NOT on the 4chan, I am guesing they just didnt include it.

"TOPAZ (Tracking Operation Pre-Amplifier Zone): TOPAZ is a circuit that simply eliminates noise. The TOPAZ circuit allows the amplifier ground to move with the source unit ground, creating a "noise elimination" zone just before the preamp section. If there is any noise in the ground coming down the RCA line to the amplifier, TOPAZ amazingly tracks it down and eliminates it. The result is a 30-40dB improvement of the isolation between input ground and chassis ground. "

RE: Antenna noise

There is the same amount of noise on radio and and CD settings. However, The noise seems to be louder on the rear speakers. My gains and fades are all set equal, and both sets of speakers are much comparable. Again, I will try unplugging the antenna later tonight.

RE: Grounding of deck.

The only part of the install I did not do was installation of deck. The ground shouldnt be hard to find. I should use the existing wire correct? and just crimp a longer wire and ground it to Chassis?

RE: Grounding Directly to battery

That would be the best, i agree. one reason i didnt consider this was that all installation instructions made note that the Ground wire should be much longer than 2 ft. Is this not really that important than? As long as I am using thick wire?

Re: Type of noise that it is.

It always makes it, whether the engine is running in ACC or with key out in RAP. The noise does not change whatsoever with revving the engine or acceleration. When i turn the radio down, the noise does go away, but the volume needs to be very low. less than say 20% of its capability. This pretty much rules out engine noise.

PS: Thanks for teh explanation on ground loop. Please do not hesitate to get to technical, I am a Junior in Computer Engineering and have had mostly EE classes so far.

Thanks again for the help! Plz Reply!

[mikegett]

No problem with the information. I am glade to see that I did not overload you here. Giving instructions is not my best strength. I tend to be a little scattered on what to do.
You stated that the noise does not change from acc to engine on. This lends me to believe it may not be a ground loop. If it is then the loop is coming from something electric that is on in acc mode. You stated that the noise was there prior to the amplifier so I am still considering something in this area of the vehicle. You must also be aware that it is possible to have more than one source of noise or to create some noise attempting to diagnose it. This is why it is best to take a systematic approach to what you do. lay out your car as a diagram. List your radio componants and anything in the vacinity that you may think could be a cause. Start from the front and go back or vis versa. Since we are possibly looking for a device that is on at acc, I am going to suggest such things as the ingnition cable, the climate control center, and the auxilary or lighter plug. Considering that your climate control will always have the fan on, even at the off positon, I would pull the fuse on it. If you can think of anything around here that may have a ground or power wire in the head unit vacinity try to remove the fuse. Your power locks may go around the dash as well. They have to get from one door to the next. If you are having no luck then do as I suggested by changing your ground to the chasi or straight to th battery. Attempt the chasi first. It is always best to keep your ground to the minimum. The best bet is to use the biggest wire you can. Just like your power cable, the ground is matching your signal note for note. If you can only squeeze 15 volts through your ground then your power will ony pull 15 vots. Since it is a head unit you probably only need five volts so this applies more to your amp.
The reason for keeping your ground to a minimum is to try and avoid making a ground loop. Just as you can ground between two grounded points and get a loop it is possible to run a speaker wire between or around a long power or ground going to your battery. So be certain that if you run a long cable keep it clear of any speaker wires. Also be certain not to loop up your ground. Coiling your ground or power is much like making a electro magnet. This can radiate a field that broadcasts into your speaker wires.
Your amp has a pretty nice loop isolator. Normaly, the amps will contain a row of coils and caps to eliminate the noise but it looks as though this one is similar to a unbalanced signal. A few decks (mostly home audio) will run the signal unbalanced to the amp and then balance it at the destination. This eliminates all noise. If that is what your amp is doing then I would think that it would eliminate all of your problems. Try contacting RF and see what they say about this technology. IF they can confirm that this is what the amp is doing, then concider the possibility of a bad Head Unit.
You asked about the input capabillity of the amp. My eclipse states in the manual .2 -8 volts sinsitivity. It may be just as easy to look at the gain on the amp. I downloaded your pdf files and the amp will except up to 6 volts from the radio. You should be fine here. Good luck.

Haha, your instructions aren't bad. A tad scattered but i have seen worse.

Like i said i am at work, but i will check a lot of this stuff tonight. Best Buy did the HU install so i may take it into them and say: Its noisy, fix it. I know all the guys back there, i used to work at Best buy.

I checked out your profile, the s7000 is a great camera. One of my favs, and i dont usually like fuji. Its a solid camera. If u have any digital imagine questions go ahead and ask me, i worked at best buy in The camera/camorder dpt for 3 years, and its also a hobby of mine.. somewhats.

Peace out. thanks again

EDIT: PS, what do u think a good grounding location in the trunk of the Alero is? Like BLK03GXS said the seatbelt bolts good?

Is there really a way i can test my gound? I have ocillioscopes at school but they nail the motherbunnyers down.

[mikegett]

I recenty put my 3322 eclipse amp into my car. I will be slowly getting my speakers put into it, but would prefer to wait for the head unit. I have the monsoon system so a LOC was needed for it. I first ran my power through the fire wall. There was small grommet just to the left of the power steering grommet. The power was then ran to along the side under the plastic facia. As I got to the trunk I placed my amp on the fold down seat. I drilled a few holes for the speaker wires, power and ground to go through the seat. I left about a foot of space between the speaker wires and the ground as they passed through the seat. The LOC was placed in the firewall next to the monsson amp. The Ground from everything, the LOC, my amp, and the monsoon were wired to the frame about four inches from the monsoon amp. At first, I had a bad ground loop as I turned over the ignition. I tested the LOC and found that it contained a bad a ground. This was done by ohming the ground coming in to it to the ground going out. After replacing the LOC with a new one, I had no problems with the noise. The main reason that I chose to ground everything in this are is that the factory amp was already utilizing it. The frame of the amp acts as a ground as it is bolted to the car chasi. So I assumed that the area was fairly clear of any other electrical grounding. If you don't have the monsoon amp, then open your trunk and pull back the carpet on the left side wall. You will see a piece of metal extending out from the tire well with two bolts slots. This is where the monsoon is supose to be placed.
If you have access to a meter your can check the ground. First leave the power off. Place the meter on your power and your ground. You should get a flat zero. Some amps need to be on to comlpeate the circuit. If this is the case then turn it to auxilary but turn down the head unit to be on the safe side. Be certain that your meter can handle the amp rating of the amplifier. More than likely it will be 40 or above. What your looking for is resistance. If you have a bad ground then you will measure a resistance. I believe that a more accurate way to tell would be measuring your amps directly. A bad ground will limit the amount of amps that can pass through. The issue here is that you do not know the exact amount that the amp, radio, excetra should be using. This is due to the fact that as you turn up your amp or radio the amps used will go up. I imagine that someone would know a more exact way to measure your ground, but I do not. Not without putting things directly onto the bench.
Thanks for the offer for some camera support. I purchased the 7000 in october about two weeks after it was released. It has been a pretty good camera. I bought it mainly for my wedding. My wife and I went on a cruise and were married in the Vigin Islands. St. Martin to be exact. This was my first attempt at real photography. I have had a fuji 3200 for almost four years but rarely used it. The 7000 kind of forced me to go beyond the point and shoot. I have been reading photography books for the past nine months now but I would still love to take some classes on it. I recently was in Indianapolis with my friends and managed to get some great shots at the zoo and canal. It is amazing how you can change such ordinary things that you see every day through the lens of your camera. I think that this is where the 7000 realy shins. In its macro settings. Do you shoot digital or traditional. What are your favorite subjects to shoot. Once again, magroshots are my favorite. I like landscapes but portraits would be great to do. Unfortunately, portraits seem to be the hardest for me. I think I need more experience in lighting effects and how to achieve them. Later and good luck.

Mike: Do u have AOL or something i can talk to you on?

Here is a further explanation of noise. AS i switch bewteen radio and CD there is NO noise. And it SEEMS the noise is LOUDER on CD rather than RADIO. However it is difficult to tell because FM has noise anyways. I switched the ground to a seat belt bolt and it really didnt help much.

It honestly sounds louder, if not lounder DIFFERENT between radio and CD. Could this be an issue with the deck install? or the deck itself? honestly....

When i turn the noise up REAL hi (MAX) it makes a little clicking noise when on CD (on pause). I cant really do this on Radio. The noise is there REGARDLESS if i haev ingition on ACC, ON or if the engine is STARTED or if someone is revving the engine. THanks again.

[mikegett]

I don't have AOL but I do have MSN messenger. My name is mikegett@msn.com
I work third shift so I am online around ten to noon. I realize that you are probably at work at that time. If you would like, we could try to set up a time on the weekend.
I am curious about one thing in your instal. What module or wiring harness did you use? If you used a module then let me know the part number from it and possibly a webpage that would have a link to the pdf file. If you don't know of a link to the pdf then possibly tell me what wires it has to connect to your radio.
It is realy hard to understand what a noise is coming from without being there to hear it. But it is sounding less like a ground problem every time you write. If I understood you correctly, then as you change between your sources(cd, and radio)the sound diminishes shortly. If this is the case then it eliminates the amp and any grounding around it. A bad ground, mis adjusted gain, or even a bad amp will produce the sound at all times. The sound appears to be broadcast via the head unit. As you switch sources the head unit will turn all voltage to zero to eliminate feedback, and popping. So you either have a bad wiring at your head unit, RCA's that are located near a power source, bad module, or bad head unit. I think that you stated in your first post that the sound was there prior to installing the amp. That would eliminate the RCA's. If you have the time, I am going to suggest that you pull out the head unit. Note as to where all of the grounds are going. This will include your modules ground. I am going to assume that the module plugs into your factory harness ensuring that it will be grounded to your radios ground. If it is not then place them togeather. More than likely the factory harness ground will give you the best results. If you have no affect then try removing your radio ground and place it to the chasi. If you still have the sound then you may try running a quick speaker wire from the module and radio outside of the car and into your trunk. I doubt that grounding is the cause so do not take the time running the wire through the car.
I am leaning more to a voltage problem or a bad module or radio. what amp and voltage does your module require? What amp and voltage does your radio require? You can just check your radio fuse to find out the amperage it requires. I am unfamiliar with you radio. The 8600 has a mosfet 50 watt amp. Many of these mosfet amps require a larger amount of amperage and a constant voltage to operate the head unit. Add the module and head unit amp rating togeather. Look in the manual for what fuse the radio is on. Is anything else on the same fuse? If you have any doubt then run a quick 12 volt line from a empty fuse location or straight off the battery. Just be carefull since you wont have a fuse in line. Did the noise go away? I am going to suggest that you look into this one carefully. It is more likely that the deck is being uderpowered as opposed to being faulty. If you are famililar with eclipse stereos, then you have probably heard of the skipping problem that the 2000 decks had. It was extremely hard to diagnose because some cars had a problem while others were fine. It turned out to be two problems. One had to do with the ram modules that buffered the tracks. The other was that the head unit needed a constant 12 volts to 14 volts. If the car alternator dropped down to 11.5 (which is common in small cars like a civic) then the radio would skip. If your radio and module are overloading the wires more than likely a fuse would blow, so the amperage is probably not a problem. To check the voltage you can buy a cheap DC meter for your battery. Autozone has them for under ten dollars. If you have a multimeter, then even better. Just turn on your car and test the voltage of your battery (at the terminals) with all of your excessories running and without. Your battery should read between 12 and 14.4 volts. A good alternator and battery will hold a constant 13 to 14 even under loads. If your voltage drops below 12 then you may need a new battery or altenator. To test your altenator and battery seperate then turn on the car and remove the battery wires. As always, be very carefull. You can then test the wires to see what the altenator is displacing. I would suggest going to Autozone to have this done. Just be sure that they check the altenator without the battery. If not, you won't get a true reading.

RE: the module i used...

http://www.scosche.com/news/04-01a.asp

Im afraid i do not know much about the install of the module, I had best buy do that part. I can scan the instrutions if i still have them when i get home.

RE: the voltage at my battery.

My power Capacitor (hooked strait up to the battery (through a fuse of course) ) has a voltage read out on it. It consistently reads above 13v i believe. I havent checked it that closesly I will do that when i get home. I personally am leaning towards the module.. It was the first time the boyz at best buy ever even saw one of the modules, so they may have did something wrong. I will get u a wire diagram, and u can let me know which wires would pertain to or cause an noise issue.

I have an appt at best buy to have them look at it on thursday. THanks again for the help bro. If u want to e-mail me, feel free. des509bREMOVETHIS@yahoo.com

[mikegett]

If you can scan those instructions it would be great. The website does not have pdf files at hand. I have emailed schoshe before for manuals. They tend to answer fast but two out of three files were corrupt when sent to me. I finaly gave up and bougth a new LOC to get the manual. I will say that scosche does not impress me on the quality of there products. We use there line out converters at work for hooking up the radios to the test equipment. They are very noisy. We ended up switching to road gear if that says anything. I have also bought one that had a bad ground on the inside of it. It wouldn't be as bad if the company hadn't started to raise there prices. Now you can pay just a few dollars more than what they offer and get some decent quality brands. Just don't condemn it already. It could very easily be something else. when you take it into best buy ask the guys to hook up the radio without the module. It will be the easiest way for them to rule it out. In fact. They shouldn't even have to remove it compleately. Just remove the data, ground, and power wires from the harness. The rest of the connections can stay the same.
PS. That is a cool feature on your cap. It has saved you alot of time and trouble already.

http://www.eagleauction.com/scan.jpg

the image needs to be big or else u cant read it.

I tried this: Hooked up an external souce (mp3 player) though some crappy RCAs into my amp. There was very little noise. I will say what noise was still in there, was prolly the fact iw as hooking an mp3 player up from headphone jack, through a $3 radio shack cable. That narrows it down to the deck/module or the RCA cables.

But i guess i can hook up right from deck to the speakers using stock wires.. see if it still makes the noise.. eh?

i will ask them to hook it up w/o the module. ANd if not ill make them replace my deck

[BLK03GXS]

if you go deck to speaks using the internal amp then it may or may not make the noise...
It could be an issue with the internal preout hardware.. not the internal amp as well....
I dunno...
you could allways just run annother set of rca's from front to back like over the seats etc... and see what happens... and make sure your deck is grounded... (dont know if it was said b4)