engine whine.

Hello guys,
Well I'm having a major annoying problem. Which there is a million threads here. which I basically read them all and tried all the methods I read about.I get the engine whine noise. The craziest and weirdiest thing about it is. I have a 4 channel amp which only they're certain speakers who are doing it not all of them are. just the two selenium tweeters and my selenium 8"woofer and there is also like a popping sound coming from the speakers not real loud but they sounds more or less like pop corn popping. This is a run down of my system.

Three amps, Clarion crossover and clarion Equalizer

Headunit is a Alpine Cda 9886

Kicker Kx 850.4 - I have two 10" mid woofers to one channel bridged and the other channel. I have two 6" beyma loudspeakers and two tweeters.

Alpine MRP M1000 pushing a Kicker L7

Hifonics 440.4 pushing one 8" selenium bridged and the other channel I have two Selenium tweeters

Big 3 upgrade with zero gauge

2 distribution blocks one for ground and one for power

The way I have everything connected is as follows. From behind the headunit I have a set of mids/highs RCA going to the head unit to the main input in the Equalizer and for the sub, from the headunit to the low pass in the crossover. From the equalizer to the crossover I have a RCA running to its input,from the crossover to the amps. With the hifonics amp I'm running the RCA output to my kickers input to power it up.
This is what I have already done to try and fix my problem.
I ran a separate ground to the Kicker amp, checked it out still had the problem, I went to the Equalizer and I re-grounded it to the chassis. I re-grounded and sanded the main Ground to the distribution block. I checked all my RCA they are all brand new. I grounded my radio to the chassis as well. Remote wire is ran to a relay which I doubt that matters. I ran the kicker amp with no RCA splitter and still did the same. When I turn my lights on and fogs the noise gets louder and when I put the AC on it gets ever louder. I hope someone can help cause, I ran out of ideas and everywhere I read tells me the same things.

If you turn the gain adjustment of every amplifier all the way down, do you still hear the noise?

If I'm not mistaken no it does not do it. but will double check tomorrow if anything

Turn the gains up on the channels that are making the noise.  When you begin hearing the noise, back them down so you do not hear it.  Adjust other gains to match the desired level,

Alright, Thank you very much I hope this will work. I'll post back tomorrow.

So today all day for the 3rd day in a role I decided to find this problem and i have still not found it. It's just one of my amps out of three that is giving me problems which is is engine whine noise, out of one RCA terminal in the amp makes the engine noise extremely loud and this is running directly from the headunit ontop of my interior to the kicker amp, Even with the gain all the way down the high pitch out of the one RCA input is really loud. The other RCA input the kicker amp doesn't do it as loud and when the gain is down it doesn't do the hit pitch engine noise. Hope someone can help me.

When you disconnect it goes away, I just installed a buddies amp and everything works just fine I guess I bought a used defected amp

If it was to be the amp would anyone have an idea of what can it be ? I opened up and I really don't know much about boards but looking for swollen or burnt marks around the board i really dont see anything that catches my eye.

These are some pictures of my setup looks and some pictures I took of the kicker Board

dealing with engine noise can be tricky or impossible. it could be something as simple as moving an rca over a few inches or having a better ground in one spot. i will tell you that ive had bad noise problems with those kicker amps but that doesnt seem like that is your problem. the easiest way to find the source of your noise is to start bypassing components one by one. bypass your crossover by connecting each amp directly to the EQ. if that doesnt get any results then bypass the EQ by going straight to the HU.  even if the noises dont completely go away, if you get any kind of change in how it sounds then it can be a clue telling you about what is wrong because the noise could be from multiple sources. the whining could be one thing and the popping sounds could be something completely different.

if the noise goes away completely when you turn the gains on your amps all the way down then that is a clue telling you that the problem is probably with your crossover or EQ or head unit or any connection between them. unplug things, wiggle connections, more wires around and listen for any kind of change in the noise while you do those things and you will eventually find the source. hope that helps

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Did you unhook the speaker wire and check for a short to ground?  Some amplifiers will not give you any issues if there is a grounded non-bridged speaker wire, other amps will have noise just as you are having.

I haven't I need to get a hold of a ohm meter. I really think its the RCA Inputs in the amp. I wrapped bare wire around the Rca terminal and grounded it and it actually the noise got lower. But the noise was still there.

Are the EQ, Xover & radio all grounded in different locations? First thing I'd try is grounding them at your B- Dblock, just run a test wire over the seats.

Will do that thank you

boulderguy wrote:

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Are the EQ, Xover & radio all grounded in different locations? First thing I'd try is grounding them at your B- Dblock, just run a test wire over the seats.

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any ground should be as short as possible. if the ground block helps with the noise its because the ground you had at first was vastly worse then having a 6 foot + ground through the ground block for the amps. if for some reason sending your ground through the amps ground block helps your noise then you know for a fact that the ground you had at first was definitely no good and you need to try a different spot but still it should be as short as possible because as you increase the distance of your ground wire you increase the resistance that the electricity needs to overcome to get back to your power source.

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^^ Yes, but there are no ironclad rules for eliminating noise, it's whatever works. IMO 90% of noise comes from ground loops, usually b/c components are grounded in different spots.

It gets complex with floating, common & isolated ground systems across components plus balanced or unbalanced I/O's. That's probably what's happening here and I suspect if the EQ and/or the Xover came out of the system the noise would go away.

But eliminate the easy targets first. Ground them all in the same place.

Equalizer, cross over, head unit all to the DB and still no luck

true, there are no ironclad rules about noise, what i said was that if you can find a better ground 6+ feet away at a ground block then you can definitely find a ground thats just as good or better somewhere closer to the source. its just good basic practice in car electronics to have the shortest ground possible on all of you stuff. if its not too inconvenient you have all of your grounds meet at the same point then thats fine but if you have to send a ground more than 2feet away just to meet with something else then thats just not worth it to me.

my overall point is that it might work but there are better options to explore.

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Yup, looks like we didn't get lucky with that trick.

Now I'd eliminate components til you find the culprit. Working backwards, disconnect RCA's from the amps. If still noisy, that was easy. Otherwise go upstream & repeat on the in & out of each piece.

I'm betting on the EQ or Xover...

:)

I'm convinced It's the amp, I ran a RCA straight from the radio to the amp and still did it ran a separate ground from chassis to the amp and all the other amp disconnected and still did it. So i think the amp is junk.

see if someone you know will let you borrow an amp for testing purposes cuz i would hate to buy a whole new amp just to find out the noise didnt go away.

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