my D3 "whines"

[etong]

ever since i installed the D3 in my acura, it makes a whine or whistle noise when the car moves. It gets louder in relation to the RPM. We've already tried regrounding to a different location and attempted to seperate the wires and cables still no help. It also makes a "buzzing" noise when it's on. Any ideas on what to do?

[sportsfan21]

Double, triple, quadruple check all of your grounds.

[tillithz]

separating the grounds was a mistake. You want to have as few grounds as possible. Double,triple, qua.. you get the point from whatsportsfan21 said. thats a great suggestion since usually multi grounds and dirty grounds say to painted surfaces are to blame. also, if you have amplifiers or anything the power and ground wires should be the same size.

[etong]

separating the grounds was a mistake. You want to have as few grounds as possible. Double,triple, qua.. you get the point from whatsportsfan21 said. thats a great suggestion since usually multi grounds and dirty grounds say to painted surfaces are to blame. also, if you have amplifiers or anything the power and ground wires should be the same size.

 

I'm going to attempt finding another spot to ground it because right now it's grounded to a bolt directly behind the unit and it has 2 other ground wires connected to that spot already.

[tillithz]

I'm going to attempt finding another spot to ground it because right now it's grounded to a bolt directly behind the unit and it has 2 other ground wires connected to that spot already.

 

 

thats good, thats a single ground, thats what you want.

[mr.ceddy]

Do you have RCA cables running next to a power ( not ground ) cable ? Ie to your trunk from the deck...

[fenguin]

I have this problem with my D2 in my Acura RSX as well; it wasn't an issue at first but seemed to develop over time. I've had it back to Circuit City twice, both times they said that I got a defective head unit. So I checked it out myself.

 

All the vehicle grounds converge on one spot (the ground connection on the wire harness), and I've installed ground loop isolators on the audio out connectors. That takes care of 80% of the alternator whine, but I still hear a constant buzzing, almost like a 1940's tube radio not tuned into anything. Before I go through the hassle of returning the unit, I'm going to put a self-tapping screw into the chassis and try grounding to that instead of through the wire harness.

 

Also, the engine whine gets louder when I have the air conditioning on.

[etong]

I have this problem with my D2 in my Acura RSX as well; it wasn't an issue at first but seemed to develop over time. I've had it back to Circuit City twice, both times they said that I got a defective head unit. So I checked it out myself.

 

All the vehicle grounds converge on one spot (the ground connection on the wire harness), and I've installed ground loop isolators on the audio out connectors. That takes care of 80% of the alternator whine, but I still hear a constant buzzing, almost like a 1940's tube radio not tuned into anything. Before I go through the hassle of returning the unit, I'm going to put a self-tapping screw into the chassis and try grounding to that instead of through the wire harness.

 

Also, the engine whine gets louder when I have the air conditioning on.

 

do you have type-s? i wonder if it has anything to do with the factory bose amp

[fenguin]

nah, it's just a regular one. No Bose to worry about.

 

Oddly enough, I've got a surround-sound processor that I've had to unplug because Circuit City is saying is problematic as well. It also makes a constant buzzing/humming noise. I'm wondering if the power connectors are an issue. The way they have them set up, it's splitting the power (yellow wire) off the factory harness 3 ways - to the D2, to the XM receiver, and to the processor.

 

Some of the unused RCAs are uncapped as well, I'll wrap them up in some electrical tape and see if that helps.

[etong]

nah, it's just a regular one. No Bose to worry about.

 

Oddly enough, I've got a surround-sound processor that I've had to unplug because Circuit City is saying is problematic as well. It also makes a constant buzzing/humming noise. I'm wondering if the power connectors are an issue. The way they have them set up, it's splitting the power (yellow wire) off the factory harness 3 ways - to the D2, to the XM receiver, and to the processor.

 

Some of the unused RCAs are uncapped as well, I'll wrap them up in some electrical tape and see if that helps.

 

you don't hear the whine anymore after using ground loop isolators? any loss of sound quality?

[fenguin]

It's not gone, but it's greatly reduced although still unacceptable. I don't know about the sound quality though, it's hard to do an A/B comparison. I wouldn't be surprised if the quality is getting hurt a bit though.

 

Here's some other things I'm going to look at:

 

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

 

The forums on Termpro seemed to indicate that Pioneer units have an issue with grounding, which would explain why my unit developed a problem after several months:

 

"The pioneer radios have an internal ground that will burn out when your amp has a bad ground, the amp will try to ground itself through the shield of the rca wires & it will burn out this ground in the deck. i have seen this many times, the best way to fix this is to ground the shield of the rcas to the back of the head unit. this will not harm the amp or head unit."

[mlammert]

Some of the unused RCAs are uncapped as well, I'll wrap them up in some electrical tape and see if that helps.

 

I don't know about your particular situation, but way back when I was in college I had an RCA cable just barely touching the metal of my trunk floor... Caused horrible whine and buzzing...

 

From that point on I be sure and tape up all RCA cables... Even when I have RCA cables plugged into other RCA cables, I be sure and wrap some electrical tape around the thin strip of metal that is exposed...

 

Good luck,

Mark

[etong]

It's not gone, but it's greatly reduced although still unacceptable. I don't know about the sound quality though, it's hard to do an A/B comparison. I wouldn't be surprised if the quality is getting hurt a bit though.

 

Here's some other things I'm going to look at:

 

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

 

The forums on Termpro seemed to indicate that Pioneer units have an issue with grounding, which would explain why my unit developed a problem after several months:

 

"The pioneer radios have an internal ground that will burn out when your amp has a bad ground, the amp will try to ground itself through the shield of the rca wires & it will burn out this ground in the deck. i have seen this many times, the best way to fix this is to ground the shield of the rcas to the back of the head unit. this will not harm the amp or head unit."

 

how exactly do you ground the shield of the rca cables? tape them to the headunit?

[tillithz]

some rca's, monster rca's have a ground loop grounding wire. Keep in mind that any 'filter' or isolators like the one mentioned are ONLY a band aid to the problem. Along with suppressing the whine, it also suppresses the sound you want to hear. The best bet is to find the problem and not to waste money on a generic 'cover all' fix.

 

make sure the paint is removed (and any other film, covering) from the grounding surface. running signal wires on opposite sides of the vehicle is good also. cleaning your distributor cap can help. spark plug gapping helps. and grounding the battery properly is ideal. Make sure the same size wire is used to ground the battery as is for the positive side coming from the alternator. Also, an engine mount ground is often helpful. You should tape up and keep the unused rca ends of anything away from grounding points and the back of the head unit. Also, metering the ground on the harness, since some vehicles dont actually have a ground in the harness sometimes (even though it has a black wire for ground) is good. Because if you dont ground the head unit, it will search out its own ground ie.. the ant. and that can cause the whine as well.

[etong]

the buzzing noise disappeared when i unplugged the front output RCA cables. I also saw no other bolt i could use for grounding besides the one i'm using now.