Bad RCA cables or bad wire run??

Hey,

I am having a similar problem with my new system. A really high-pitch whine, that I hear when I accelerate and decel. It is pretty darn annoying, the audio shop said they would put in a noise filter but F8L said that was a no-no. I am pretty sure they used new RCA cables, but not sure if this is a grounding issue or what to do about it. Let me know how your issue progresses.

 

The Kicker RCAs don't look too bad, but what is the new one you tried? I'm pretty sure it's a routing issue more than a wire issue but it'd be good to know what you replaced the Kicker RCA with.
Which side of the car did you route the RCAs? Did you keep them on the door sills along with the stock cable bundle? I'd suggest going along the floor, just below the door sills on the passenger side. You could also go right up the middle but it's a big carpet removal job.
Where did you ground the PDX-5?

- D

 

The fact that you picked up the "Whine" indicates the ground/shield portion of the cable is not shielding properly. I have noticed that while the center pins of a RCA type connector are usually consistant in diameter, the ground lug outer ring I.D is not always the same. Make sure the outer lugs make firm contact with the mating RCA jack. I usualy bend the outer lugs slightly inward assuring a good electrical connection.
Shielding does no good if it's not connected propely!

 

I had to do the same thing with one of my amps, the RCA was pretty loose otherwise.

KCobby, if the RadioShack cable is quiet then it may not be related to your amp ground. Pretty much narrows it down to either a bad Kicker cable or problematic routing. Obvious next step is to try either routing the RadioShack cable the same way or reroute the Kicker cable and see if it clears up.
Driver's side is where you see the big fat orange power lines from the traction battery. Give the passenger side a try, along the floor as mentioned before. No fun tearing the car apart again I know!

- D

 

One simple way to check for noise in a cable is to run a new cable OVER your interior (instead of under the carpet near the chassis) and see if the noise goes away. If it does, then uninstall your old cable and try that cable ran OVER you interior and see if you still have noise through that cable. If you do then that cable is bad. If the noise goes away then you have either a cheap cable with bad shielding or your routing needs to be changed.

I use Stinger brand cables (about $30 for a 17') and have not had noise in most of my vehicles or the ones we installed at the shop. A cheap $10 RCA is just begging for noise. Keep in mind that even an expensive brand and model of cable can be DOA out of the box.

I run my RCA's on the passenger side of the car.

As for noise filters. They can work but they can also degrade your sound. Shops tend to use them because it is much cheaper than troubleshooting a noise problem. i.e. it's an easy fix for them and they get to sell you another part.

 

I brought'er in to the shop and the noise filter did not do the trick- which I am glad b/c it sounds like that is a crappy way to fix it anyway.

I called them up this morning and they said it was fine now. I will repost later on and let you know what the problem was.

I was NOT getting the noise when ACC was on.

 

Aye, you should only experience noise when the engine was running.

Glad to hear it is fixed. Please update us when you find out what the problem was.

 

Ok so problem not entirely solved.

From what I can gather they tried a combination of new cables, upgraded cables, amp and head unit - and could not figure out the noise. They seemed to think it came up only during the transition between the ICE and Hybrid battery (essentialy during accel). Anyway the whine is less audible and more tolerable - cant hear when volume is up, but it came with 2 noise filters to dampen it? They at least replaced the amp with a new one fwiw.

 

Just curious, where's your amp ejmckee? Under a seat or in the back?

- D

 

The amp is in the trunk, something tells me the rcas are on the driver side but im not sure how can I check?

I feel like I should just try to fix this thing myself since the people at the shop dont seem to have tried to reground the amp? Although I would need to read up on how to do it. I would really like to take care of the real problem of the whine and take off the sound filters...

 

The sill plates on the driver's side pop off extremely easily. That is how I would run the RCAs so I would check there first. Well I should say I would run them through the sill plate channel, but not on the driver's side.

 

Follow the ground wire from the amp, should be bolted down somewhere within 18". Same with the RCAs, they'll have to go from the amp towards the front of the car either L or R of the traction battery, you'll see which way they went soon enough.
From there it's a matter of pulling trim and pulling back a little carpet along the edges of the door sills. Getting to the back of the HU is a pain tho, I must admit. So see if ground can be improved first. Use some sandpaper to rough the contact surface. I also used a star washer between the ground cable ring terminal and the car's sheet metal. The star washer has some teeth that bite into both a little. You can see my gray/black ground wire here:



- D

 

Another source of whining noise can be through the +12V line into the amp. Usually an inductive filter on this line will clear this up. You may want to try that if there's not one installed already between the battery connection and the power input to your amplifier. You'd want the inductor installed as close to the amplfier as possible.

 

Ok so here are a few photos to give you an idea of whats going on in there then maybe you guys can tell what you think.

Here is the amp which sits on a board above the tools and the wires feed directly under it.


Now you are looking at it as if you were under the amp and looking forward towards the seats. Here it looks as if the ground wire? black with pink tip is attached to a bracket?

Now you are seeing the wire from the side.

It looks like the RCA's (blue?) run to the driver side left, and there thick red wire runs to the right.

Sorry Im so noob with this, I need to learn this stuff so I can troubleshoot these things.

Here is a link to the album I am using in case that is easier because I seem to also be noob at linking photos
http://picasaweb.google.com/ejmckee/CarPhotos?feat=directlink

 

Yeah, looks like they ran the RCAs on the driver's side. I would look into swapping sides and putting them on the passenger side. Maybe running so close to the high voltage hybrid cable is causing your noise. I caanot guarantee that but I have zero noise, not even a slight hiss between tracks and I ran mine on the passenger side.

Thankfully the sill plates come off easy so the only hassle is removing the head unit to get access to the wires.

 

Agreed. I'm also not too crazy about including the traction battery case in the grounding point. Can't say for sure it's a problem but I wouldn't have done it (and didn't!). Otherwise, the amp looks nice and tidy in there, very slick.

- D

 

Aye. I used the factory 12v battery grounding point for one of my amps. Forgot where I grounded the other.