I just had my stereo installed (tower speakers, sub, amps) and it sounded great. however, I went to the lake and when i started the engine, distortion came out of all the speakers, whats the deal?
That type of distortion can be causes by several things. If you only get the distortion when the engine is running, it more than likly is one of two things. You either have a hum coming from your RCA cables picking up the electrical field generated by a 12v power wire that is too close to them, or you are picking up alternator noise. You can get alternator noise if your grounding system is not done right. Did you have a car audio shop install it? The reason I ask is because if they do not do many boats they may have grounded the stereo wrong. In a car you have the frame to ground things to and avoid alternator feedback but with a boat many shops ground the stereo straight back to the battery. This is not a bad way to do it if done right but I rarely see a car shop do it right. If I was you I would take it back to the shop and have them try again. One question they will ask you is "does the distortion increase when you throttle up?