Amp and Cap, Separate Ground Points?

    Every single instruction booklet say that the amp and cap should have seprate ground points? Why? the grounding potential is the same if it is only what 8-12" away? I have never really got a straight answer. Anyone care to venture a guess?? But if you read every installation manual everyone I have seen say the same thing Ground the cap and amp at seprate spots?remarkable53

Because a cap is a very noisy beast and can send that noise back through the ground wire into the amp, corrupting the signal.Support the12volt.com

If you want to use a common gound source just use a distribution block and have one ground pointClarion DB36MP

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Caps do not clean noise out of your signal or power.

kjonas wrote: Hi, I was under the impression that a cap cleans nosie. I have my amp and cap connecting to the same ground and cannot hear distortion. I use 4 gauge wires and my cap is about 30 cm from the amp. I get no resistance for the ground conection. I got no manual for my cap

Caps don't clean nosies, either  . Sorry, that just made me laugh. It's always good to have a laugh every now and then. Just givin' ya a hard time, eh?

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That article is absolutely correct. A capacitor will server as a ripple (noise) filter in a DC system. As the article said, the AC component (the ripple) is effectively shorted to ground THROUGH the cap, while the capacitance helps to "fill-in" the low voltage points of the ripple. coppellstereo, I was wondering who told you that caps don't filter? Have you ever looked inside a power supply - ANY kind of power supply, and seen caps? Those are doing the SAME thing as a 1F cap would do in your car stereo, just with lower values, due to the potentially smaller current demands... Yes, caps DO filter. As far as the original question? Common ground is perfectly acceptable, and IMO, preferred... Fewer connection points, shorter conductor paths (the chassis IS a conductor, albeit a HUGE one)... I built two rails, and mounted the caps DIRECTLY to them, AND made compression (set screw)fittings for the power cables, both in and out, power and ground. I have ALWAYS used a common ground connection point for caps and amps. I am STILL not saying there are many benefits to caps, but IF there are, common sense tells you to make the electrical path as short as possible.It all reminds me of something that Molière once said to Guy de Maupassant at a café in Vienna: "That's nice. You should write it down."