
Alternator, motor, road, or what every you want to call it noise. It's driving me nuts. I know there are many post on this subject and a lot of very long post at that. By looking through them it seems that it always end with not getting rid of the noise. I also now see that Pioneer has some issue.
What I would like to know is anyone has tried one or both of two things.
1-Has anyone tried rapping or encasing their RCA cables in 1/2" or 1" round padding (kinda like the stuff some antennas are rapped with) to keep them away from any sources of power. Seems like when a person moves their RCA cables one way or another the noises usually gets worse or better but never gone.
2-Has anyone tried using line converters instead of RCA cables from the HU to the amp. then switching to RCA's and using the shortest RCA cable to the amp.
I had a factor HU in my Titan and I didn't want to change it out. I at first didn't like the looks of a double din radio bezel an didn't want to loose or hassle with the steering wheel controls. I did finally end up installing a Pioneer AVIC-D3 w/ Siruis, Bluetooth, Ipod.
At the start of this very expensive journey I used the factory HU and it had NO PREOUTS. What I ended up doing was use close to 200 ft. yes close to 200' of speaker wire in trying to get everything all connected and still be accessible and look good. First I decided I only wanted to use component speakers. I decided to put 2-10" Kicker Comp VR's under the back seat down firing because I new kickers sounded pretty good and because I needed a low profile sub (about 5"). So my problem was what to do with 2-amps and 4-crossovers. Because of the power I was running I didn't want to use the factory speaker wires and chose to run new. I went to a scrap metal place and bought a 1/8" X 4' X 2' piece of aluminum and cut it to fit from about 4" below the back seat down following the contour of the floor side to side. I mounted both amps, all the crossovers, 2-line out converters, and a fuse block for the amps and 2-1.5 Farad caps. I ran new speaker wire down BOTH SIDES of the truck. 2-wires from the dash for tweeters, 2-wires from the front door mids, 4-wires from the back door tweeters and mids to behind the back seat between both amps where I had mounted the crossovers. Then of course 4-short pieces of wires from the crossovers to the amps. Researching I found out I could open up the factory HU and by using some ends cut off some RCA cables that it was possible to solder them to a part of the board and get my preouts that way. It sound like it would be a pain in the *** plus I didn't have the confidence to do it that way. Instead at the back of the HU I cut the 4 speaker wires in the factory wiring harness and tied in new speaker wire at a heavier gauge and ran them to behind the back seat. I picked up to line out converters a Bestbuy, mounted them next to one of the amps and wired in the 4-wires from the HU. I had some cheap maybe 2' to 3' long RCA cables and plugged them into my Alpine 4 channel amp. from the preouts on the first amp I ran another short RCA cable to my Alpine mono amp. I started off running a 4 gauge from the battery right next to half of my speaker wires to the fuse block in back. Out of the fuse block with 8 gauge around everything to the amps and caps mounted on each side of the truck. Using a couple 5' pieces of 8 gauge right to the top center of it all to ground using the child seat safety hook. Later because I was sucking so much power I ran another 4 gauge positive right next to the other one and double up with 8 gauge grounds as well. All that equals about 200' speaker wire, 50' of 4 gauge for power, 30' 0f 8 gauge for ground, and 3 short RCA cable. The best part it could beat your skin numb and rattle your brain to give you a pounding headache WITH NO ONE ONCE OF IRRITATING WHINING ENGINE NOISE.
Now the worst part and a $1000 worth of speakers blown and in the trash can I'm forced to put in a new aftermarket HU so I can have better control over the Hi and Low pass filters and make sure the lows go to the subs and everything else to the doors. I put in a Pioneer AVIC-D3 with all the bells and whistles. AND AT NO EXTRA CHARGE TO ME THE NEW HU CAME WITH A IRRITATING WHINING ENGINE NOISE TAHT CAN'T BE ELIMINATED NO MATTER HOW HARD I TRY.
If you made it this far here something I found. Kicker amps you can set/wire to either accept Hi-level inputs or Low-level inputs so you can use RCA cables or speaker wire. It's nice because the line out converters I bought had to be adjusted and it was a pain in the *** to do. With the Kicker amp all you adjust is your gain, bass boost, and crossover.