BUzzing noise with stereo

WaffleJam2250 · Criminal Joined: 29 Jun 2003 Posts: 81 City: Green Bay

I recently put a cd player, 2 speakers getting powerend fro the cd plaer, and 2 speakers that are going to go on my pylon that are getting powered from an amp. And everything sounds great excpet when i start up the engine you hear a buzzing sound out of the pylon speakers. And when you rev the engive or go faster the sound gets louder and faster also, it matches exactly. But you can only hear the noise out of the pylon speakers when the engine is on.

Has anyone else had problems with this? Could it be something with my sparkplugs or do i need a special shield? You can still hear the music when you wakeboard but it would be nice to get rid of this noise if possible.

jryoung · Ladies Man Joined: 19 Mar 2004 Posts: 7664 City: Man Jose

What you have is "alternator whine". The three areas I would look would be
1. RCA from head unit to AMP
2. RCA connections in AMP and/or head unit
3. Grounding of AMP

If you have cheap RCA wires, you will pick up the interference, spend some money on Monster Cable or the like. The noise is being picked up, the amplified by the amp and run through the speakers.

Your connections could be bad (not from the wire but from the hardware), I had this problem, I needed to have my connections in my amp re-soldered.

Lastly I would guess you are not properly grounded but I doubt it, if your not grounded your amp shouldn't work at all. I would first get a new RCA.

WaffleJam2250 · Criminal Joined: 29 Jun 2003 Posts: 81 City: Green Bay

Thanks gor your help, im going to go try some monster cable and hopefully that will work because im perty sure everything is grounded right. Thanks again.

jryoung · Ladies Man Joined: 19 Mar 2004 Posts: 7664 City: Man Jose

WaffleJam2250, let me know how it works. Send me a PM, I'd like to know if my diagnosis was correct.

89 skier · Addict Joined: 30 Jun 2004 Posts: 729 City: Dallas

The first step is to run your RCA wires as far away from your power wires as possible. Also make you have a good size ground wire from your battery to your amp. If you're using a small wire, then you may need to get a larger gauge wire.

lumpy · Criminal Joined: 25 Jul 2003 Posts: 99

I really think your problem has already been identified but just as a secondary measure, check your gain on your amps or crossover if using one. I am likely running cheaper equipment than you, but I had a little alternator buzz that I was able to eliminate by reducing the power just a shade on the crossover. I am using the cheap RCA's ($3.99) from Radio Shack, it wasn't worth the $60 to get premium RCA's for the minimum amount of volume I lost.