i don't have much luck...yet again, i have speaker whine. slightly different set up than what i had last time, ive ruled out many things.

the whine is coming from the 4 interior speakers, which are all amped by a 4 channel 400 watt kenwood. that amp is grounded in the same place as my sub amp, and the ground is clean and very secure. the wierd thing is, i had this setup for a few months, then the alt whine started all of a sudden, just one day. the whine is only present while the car is running, and if i go back there, and jiggle one set of RCA's, the whine dissapears, until i hit a bump or take a corner..i thought it might be one bad set of RCA's, so i unpluged that set, but the whine still came back.. this makes no sense!

could it be the terminals on the amp? how could they just 'go bad' all of a sudden?

any help is appreciated.

 

Sounds like something is wrong with the amp, or there might be a ground loop somewhere, where's the amp mounted?

 

i hope theres nothing wrong with the amp, it was working fine for months and months, why would it all of a sudden just go bad?? ... its mounted against the backseat.

do you mean ground loop as in the ground from the amps and the ground from the HU? because the amps are grounded in the same location.

 

the ground(s) making bare metal to metal contact with the chassis?

 

You can try grounding the HU at the same spot as the amps. Or the Big 3.

 

yes.

yea, ive been thinking of doing the big three...

i wonder if my alternator is going bad, its worse when my lights are on, or when i roll up windows

i think im gonna try to get better RCAs, then maybe your other 2 suggestions if that doesn't work.. thanks

 

What kind of RCAs do you have now? If theyre crap, yes replace them, but if theyre decent, do the big 3 first.

 

what's a big3? (sorry for the noob question)

 

I had a similar problem. Sometimes the whine was worse than other times. Also, If I unplugged the RCA's and then plugged them back in, or if I jiggled them a little the whine would disappear for a while. It would always come back though. It even seemed to be worse on wet/humid days for some reason. I tried alot of things to get rid of it. I finally swapped the amp out for a different one and the whine went away. Maybe there wasn't anything "wrong" with my old amp or your Kenwood but maybe they are more sensitive to whine induction than higher quality amps. Before you go tearing your h/u out and running a six foot ground wire to your trunk or adding ten pounds of 4gauge wire under your hood, take that amp out and test a better one in its place. See if that fixes it. If not, then you can try the big three or whatever else but try a different amp first.
BTW, big 3 doesn't seem necessary in the max unless you are running some SERIOUS power. I have at least 1200 watts rms between my two amps and I don't get serious light dimming while the car is running. I don't have a capacitor or any other crap either. My old Honda, on the other hand, dimmed badly just from my smaller amp being in there though (400-500wrms). It could have used a big 3 upgrade probably.

 

kpr10is, theyre red fosgate ones(youve prolly seen them in stores).. theyre sheilded, theyve always worked fine for me before

KCMaxima98, its funny you mention the fact that it only happens in humid weather, cus now that i think about it, it does only happen in humid weather, when its dry out (like today) its gone... hrm... i dont know my brother used this amp before, had the same problem, rewired his whole system cus he tried everything else and it went away....

my headlights dim a tiny bit, hardly at all, im running about 1200 watts total also. the big 3 isnt always nessecary, but it will always help.

its gone for now guys, im postive it will be back tho. im gonna go clean the ground, cus last time all i did was looked at it, and it looked okay.

 

btw, i think im gonna have to re-mount the amp's somewhere else, i went back and touched the 4chn. today and burnt my hand it was so hot. to the batcave! i think its false-floor time..

 

Good luck hunting it down. Changing the ground is easy so go ahead and try it. My amps run their grounds into a distro block and from there it is grounded at the seat belt under the back seat. It isn't grounded around the seat belt bolt though. My ring terminal didn't fit around the bolt so I sanded an area down near it and my ground is held in place by the black clip that the seat belt attaches to. It doesn't sound like a good ground but I measured it with a multimeter and it was damn near zero ohms and Ive never had any issues with my amps since I got rid of the bad one. It doesn't move around either cause I tightened the seat belt clip so tight. You could try this place first just to check....you wouldn't have to drill any holes and if it doesn't solve the whine you can always change back to your normal grounding spot or just leave it alone there.

 

wow, this is straight out from the twilight zone. im running thro distro blocks also, and my main ground is the seatbelt bolt under the backseat too! thats wierd...

 

The big 3 will help your engine noise, it is not solely for the purpose of getting more power to your amps. Im not going to go into detail because the topic has already been beaten to death, and you can search, but if you ground everything at one point, and do the big 3, and Ive got money on the fact that you wont have any more noise.

The big 3 is upgrading your main 3 engine power/ground wires. They are battery to ground, engine to ground, and positive alternator to positive battery. 4 gauge will do fine for this.

 

Maybe you should try the big 3 like he said. Im curious to see if it gets rid of it. What amp is on your sub right now though. Before you do the big 3 you should hook that amp up to a set of your speakers temporarily and see if you still have whine. If you do, get some 4 gauge and some ring terminals and upgrade the wiring. If not, you just saved yourself some time and money. Good luck, alternator whine almost made me tear my hair out. You pay all this money for this equipment and you have to hear your alternator amplified

 

yeah, i know the positives of the big 3. KCmax98, yeah sure ill try the other amp. we'll see..

now to either buy a kit or find some wires and connectors

 

Its the amp, my boy had a Kenwood and always had whine, we switched to RF and no more problems.

 

i also suspect the amp. had a similar problem, tried the amp in another car, same thing. changed the amp, problem solved

 

lol i used to have an RF, and i had ridiculous whine, switched to kenwood and it went away, until now. now it only whines when it wants to, which makes it impossible to diagnos

 

i dont even have an amp connected to my speakers yet i still get a whine, but only when i rev the engine past 2600rpm'ish .. otherwise theres no whine at all at any volume.

This only started happening once i replaced the stock hu / cd player for a dvd player / lcd monitor.. so i dont know why that would've caused it.

 

bad ground on your dvd player

 

Where is your radio grounded?
Have you tried running a separate set of RCA's outside of the car?
Does it whine when you unplug the rca's at the amp?
Is your ground secure?
Set your gains at 50% front and 40% rear. Does it go away?
When was the last time you changed spark plugs?

 

radio is grounded behind the dash there somewhere at a bolt.

no i have not tried a different set, as i mentioned earlier these haven't ever given me a problem until now, all of a sudden.

somesimtes it still whines when i unplug the rca's, yes.

ground is secure.

thats around what my gains are at right now anyway

spark plugs were changed 2 weeks ago (with NKG platnum plugs)

 

Well becuase it is an electronic device it is destined to fail in a BIG or small way. It could be your radio or amp that has a problem. Difficult to diagnose sometimes. You can swap out the amp or radio and it may go away. That doesn't mean the radio/amp are bad. You may ahve a ground loop issue. They may work fine in another car. Even in another Maxima. Although all Maxima are the same they are all individuals. We could take 2 of the same car, install all the same amps/radio, etc and they will sound very different.

Sounds like you have a ground loop or the amp is defective. Try buying a ground loop isolator. It's a bandaid not a cure. But you can get one for $15. See if it fixes it. If it does you know what your issue is. You can keep the GLI or return it and fix the GL.

 

I tried a ground loop isolator when I was having these problems and it reduced the whine but didn't get rid of it altogether. I also noticed that it cut out a little of the midbass frequencies. If you want one I'll sell you my PAC sni-1 for cheap but I wouldn't recommend it for a longterm solution. I tried the radioshack isolator and that thing actually induced more noise into the system and made weird noise when you changed the radio stations.

 

Monster Cable makes an extremely nice and effective one. They run about $60.

 

UPDATE:

yea yea i know, bumping an old thread. at least its better than starting a new one...

so my speaker whine magically went away, along with the REAR RCA OUTS on my pioneer deck ...i dont understand. they all of a sudden cut out.. and with some trial and error, thats what i figure happened, ... but anyways now the speaker whine has stopped. think its possible it could have been bad rca out- jacks from the deck causing the whine? or just a major couincidence?? what are the odds of that?

eh, oh well. more reason to get a dvd-compatiple deck for 7" screen. thank you all for your help!