Hi,

I recently installed a new AVIC 5100NEX and I immediately noticed the classic low-level engine/alternator whine coming through my front components (which was not present through my old radio). I had read about some Pioneer decks not having proper RCA grounding so I wrapped copper speaker wire around the barrels of the RCA outputs and then grounded that to the radio chassis. This seemed to take out the constant whine but there sometimes now is a very low intermittent static-type noise (thankfully barely noticeable unless you're sitting still and there's no music playing) and now it is doing the whine ONLY when I have the headlights on. It seems like the whine fades in as the radio screen slowly dims when the headlights are turned on.

I am aware of the whole pico fuse dilemma but I do not remember hot swapping any RCA's when installing the radio. I also checked the resistance of the ground wires to my amps and to the radio and they all read 0.00 ohms, and my RCA's and power cables have very little contact with each other. What am I missing? Do I need a noise filter somewhere before the radio? Could it really be the pico fuse and now I'm stuck with a whiny new radio? Help please! Thanks

I chased some similar noise for a while. Turns out most of it was remedied by better quality RCA's. Stinger 6000 series did trick.  If that's not it, you can try a few other things.

Have you tried a different ground for the radio? Many times the harness ground isn't great.

Could be an inherit electrical problem with the vehicle. A big 3, or improved factory grounds might help.

A ground loop isolator like the PAC SNI-1 Noise Isolator might help. 

Gains on amps might be slightly too high.  You always have to reset your gains when swapping in a new source unit. 

On 5/31/2019 at 8:59 PM, karmajack said:

I chased some similar noise for a while. Turns out most of it was remedied by better quality RCA's. Stinger 6000 series did trick.  If that's not it, you can try a few other things.

Have you tried a different ground for the radio? Many times the harness ground isn't great.

Could be an inherit electrical problem with the vehicle. A big 3, or improved factory grounds might help.

A ground loop isolator like the PAC SNI-1 Noise Isolator might help. 

Gains on amps might be slightly too high.  You always have to reset your gains when swapping in a new source unit. 

I have not regrounded the head unit yet, but I never had any noise problem with the previous radio. The radio is grounded through the car's harness but I may try to ground it to the chassis and see what happens. I think I checked the resistance of the ground a while back and it read 0.00 ohms though.

Big 3 might help but then again I wasn't having any issues prior to installing the new radio so I'm skeptical about the results (I know it would be piece of mind though, might do it eventually for the heck of it).

I did readjust my gains when I installed the radio using the multimeter voltage-match method (it's the best way I have since I'm too cheap to buy a SMD DD1 lol).

I will probably try an inexpensive noise filter like the PAC or Install Bay and maybe swap out for better RCAs, but if that doesn't work I'm really tempted to sell the thing as-is and go with a different brand head unit. I really don't have the time or patience to pull it apart to change the PICO fuse and I don't want to send it back to Pioneer and have to wait for who knows how long without tunes while it's being repaired.  Thank you very much for your reply!!!