FAQ: Getting Rid of that Whine or Buzzing Noise in Your Speakers

**KyferEz** · 09-04-2005, 08:44 AM

A little more info about grounding...

It's not always a good idea to ground directly to the battery, as long lengths of wire can be the cause of ground loops as well, as previously stated. If you make sure you have a heavy grounding wire (4gauge or larger) from the - terminal of the battery to the vehicle's body, then most often grounding to the body of the car will be fine. However, there will be noisier ground spots on certain locations of the body than others, and these locations are different for each and every car.

Also, grounding everything to the same ground point may not be necessary, and may even make the situation worse, depending upon the gauge of wire used and if the 1 ground point you choose was already a noisy location because of all the other ground currents flowing around your vehicle.

The BEST thing to do is try each and every suggestion you can find and see which works best for your particular vehicle/setup. (Or at least try them until you find one that you can live with.

KyferEz

**attack eagle** · 10-01-2005, 02:27 PM

if you are adding big loads or long runs, please consider upgrading the chassis to battery ground to 2ga...

another thing is that with many electronic devices like amplifiers and other metal cased devices the outside shell is ground. Avoid if possible screwing and in essence direct grounding them. For some reason they will give you noise if they are grounded thru the chassis instead of thru the ground wire.

mount them isolated, using a wood block or plastic to electically isolate the chassis from chassis.

Ever since i started doing this 8 years ago I have never had a single alternator whine problem in any install. Example, in my current car I have 2 ga power, changer cables speaker cables and 3 sets of rcas bundled together, and in my mgb after adding a bigger ground for the dual batteries, and isolating the amps and crossovers by building a trunk board all noise was eliminated, and that was a noisy little car to begin with.

**12Vsystems** · 11-02-2005, 06:38 PM

In the past I have had problems when running cables near the air condition. Everything sounds great until I turn the A/C on then I get a buzz. Rerouting the cables away from the A/C solves the problem.

**carabuser** · 11-02-2005, 06:55 PM

Originally Posted by 12Vsystems

In the past I have had problems when running cables near the air condition. Everything sounds great until I turn the A/C on then I get a buzz. Rerouting the cables away from the A/C solves the problem.

I have/had very similar problems. Same thing happens with rear window defroster.

**anky1** · 11-03-2005, 02:03 AM

http://www.termpro.com/articles/noise.html

older article but always a good start.

**Paul C** · 11-04-2005, 11:47 AM

I had a ground loop problem and alternator whine I fitted a ground loop isolator, which apart from making the music sound weak did cure the ground loop problem but i still had my whine. After lots of messing about with volt meters etc and a trip to my local audio shop I cured the problem (or rather they did). The guy took one look and said i bet its your amp so he got one of the shelve and tried it and low and behold all my noise has gone.

**Jono** · 11-12-2005, 02:48 AM

Some Pioneer head units have bad earths to the RCAs which causes a whine through the speakers.

A quick fix is to take some wire, strip it, wrap it around the RCAs and wedge it under a screw on the back of the head unit.

**canopy** · 12-13-2005, 08:24 AM

Hey all,
I found something on how to solve some ground loop issues: https://myeporia.eporia.com/resource...ote%201002.pdf

hope it helps...

cya

**Ko_deZ** · 12-15-2005, 09:57 PM

Hi. I'm new here, but I think i could contribute.

First, try running the stereo without any RCA attached. If there is still noise, the problem is grounding, or noise trough power cables to the amp. Then, get an USB soundcard, and use USB cable all the way to the amplifier (elmininating noise, as it then is transfered digitally), and us as short a cable as possible between the soundcard unit and the amp. That would stop most noise from beeing able to mess up the analog part, cause that's where it hurts.

-ko_dez-

**smactek** · 04-19-2006, 07:15 PM

One small additional note. Mainly focused in automotive sound systems. be sure none of the negative speaker leads are grounded to the chassis. This can easily be checked by disconnecting speaker leads one at a time at the amplifier. One grounded lead will cause all the speakers to buzz.