RCA Cables Close to Power Wires?

The term "general rule of thumb" to me, means.....not completely necessary!

I put my cables where I have room too. With no ill side effects....ever! 

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nouseforaname wrote:

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ok. this is something i know just about anyone that has ever messed with mobile audio has heard; "Be sure and keep your rca cables as far away from your power wire as possible." it's always been a known rule of thumb that if you have to cross them, do it at a 90% angle or a minimum of 45% to cut down on interference. it has also been said to not run your rca's through a factory wiring harness due to interference.

now, it has been brought to my attention, by haemphyst i believe it was, that this logic is not true at all. he even linked me to an old thread discussing the issue disproving the matter. of course, anything haemphyst has to say, i take it as the truth so this makes me wonder, how did this way of thinking come to be? i know i've actually ran my rca's right beside my power wire the full length of my vehicle before (due to being in a hurry) and never had a problem with noise. i always thought i was just lucky. if you think about it, it really makes alot of since, seeing that power is DC and signal is AC, so it would be kinda odd that they could interfere with each other.

so any feedback and everyones opinions on this matter would be great. thanks.

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Well at work we have had customers come back getting interference in their system. And it was an installer who never runs the power and rca's separate. So we grab the rcas pull them out and run them through the outside of the car for testing and bam the noise was gone. I took that as reason enough to keep doing the installs the way that i do.

I have personally run into issues in my car with running RCAs too close to power wires so I know for a fact its true.

nouse, it's not the DC that causes the interference at all... It's the AC on the DC that CAN cause the interference. The DC component CANNOT cause noise. If your alternator has a noisy output, you can get noise, or if the battery is going bad or just plain old, it can't filter as effectively, so this could add an AC component to ride upon the DC, which COULD cause noise.

As I said in that thread, 9+ times out of 10, replacing the battery, or even something as simple as cleaning the battery terminals, or all the ground points in the car will make the noise go away, without even TOUCHING the RCA/power cable proximities.

(Strange, I cannot find that old thread at all either, I wanted to link to it...)

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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."

I have only had 1 install that it mattered.... every other install i have done it didn't matter.... but in an 02 GMC for some reason it had noise in the sub so i guess it can happen but like i said i have only seen it once

Normally, I wouldn't go back to dig up a thread this old, so forgive me, DYohn, et al...

nouse, here is the thread you were looking for... Odd, though, that it won't come up in any searches for it...

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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."