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?
Double, triple, quadruple check all of your grounds.
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.
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.
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.
Do you have RCA cables running next to a power ( not ground ) cable ? Ie to your trunk from the deck...
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.
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
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.
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?
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."
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
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?
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.
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.
then a) your cables are bad, or not run properly (see above recomendations) or 
your amp is bad or not installed as noted above.
if the rca cables are bad, i need to replace the whole harness?
harness? we arent talking about the avic side, we are talking about the rca's run in the car for amps and such
after some research, the factory amp has no rca plugs, they are just wires
then it would appear you need to match the gain out of the avic to your factory amp, usually by a bose adapter or whatever for your particular vehicle. should probably find out what you ahve in it before continuing
I got dug in again last night, here's what I did:
That took care of the low buzzing engine noise and greatly reduced the alternator whine. However, when I added the surround-sound processor back into the mix, it was back to squealing. I re-grounded the processor to chassis with a 1.5 foot wire, didn't help.
I don't know where my amps are grounded to, but I do know that the ground wires they have are very long, like 8 feet or so, so I'm going to try re-grounding them to something closer.
Tonight's menu:
id guess guess you have to use a special wire harness just for your bose system, i wouldnt fool with the grounding of the factory amp.
Engine whine is now 95% gone, buzz is 100% gone without using any noise filters/ground loop isolator. And I've got my surround sound processor working with it too. Here's what did it for me:
I also ensured that all used connectors were covered in electrical tape, and there were no exposed wires.
Judging by the fact that this problem developed over time and by the working solution, I'm guessing that the microfuse inside the unit was blown. From SoundDomain:
i've noticed a lot of people having issues with getting sudden alternator noise with their Pioneer headunit. if you suddenly get alternator noise, you probably popped the microfuse inside the deck thanks to a poor ground. with a Pioneer you MUST ground the chassis of the headunit to the chassis of your vehicle. same with the main ground. if you don't, you will pop that microfuse that's less than half the size of an eyelash. with this fuse popped the headunit tries to seek a ground through the rca's. this can wear out your speakers a lot faster than they should because of constant flutter. any authorized Pioneer benchtech can fix this problem in less than an hour if he can get right to it. just taking a couple extra steps during the install will save a lot of headaches later on.
Circuit City did a poor job grounding everything initially, which created a ground loop. Eventually that burned out the microfuse, creating a permanent ground loop. Grounding the shields of the RCAs is a fine temporarly workaround, but eventually I'll have to get the fuse replaced.
so to ground the D2 chassis, you use a wire and hook it up to the back screw of the unit and the other end to the car chassis? also which chassis bolt off the car did you use? i have the same car
Yeah, in the back of the unit, right in the middle, there's a hole for a screw. I built a little ground wire using 10 gauge with O-connectors on both ends, and fastened it pretty solidly to the back of the unit.
The ground that I used was in the dash opening, in the back on the top. There's a little piece of metal that sort of hangs down with a hole in it that you can put a bolt and nut on. It looks sort of like this:
__ __
\ O /
---
Use a star washer so it stays put.