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Old                03-09-2005, 6:39 AM Reply   
I finally got around to putting in my amp, sub, and tower speakers and I'm pleased with the sound except for the engine noise that comes through the tower speakers.

The amp is in the under-dash storage compartment of my malibu v-drive and I've run the power and ground cables straight back to the battery terminals. Yesterday some clown at Tweeter (electronics store) told me that the problem was that I was running the ground to the battery and the cable was too long, causing the excess noise -- he claimed to have done installs in "malibu boats" all the time and said he always grounds the amp to the "steel beams" in the boat -- well, we all know that is b.s. -- anyone got any real advice on what to do?
Old     (clubmyke)      Join Date: Aug 2004       03-09-2005, 7:24 AM Reply   
what type of rca cables are you using ?
do they have a metal rca terminal ?
are they any where near the +/- cables?

are you running a seperate power amp for the towers ? (this is more than likely the culprit- if the noise is showing up in the tower speakers only and not the rest of the boat)
Old                03-09-2005, 7:28 AM Reply   
I've been doing a little online research on this since I posted -- you're probably going to laugh now!
Mike,
The tower speaker amp is seperate, I'm using the speaker level imputs because my head unit doesn't have RCAs, AND my power and ground cables are running through the same conduit as the speaker level imput cables -- I still can't understand why I'm getting noise!!! J/K!
Old     (chas)      Join Date: Feb 2002       03-09-2005, 7:44 AM Reply   
try running a ground wire from the battery straight to the head unit. Most boats have weak grounds at the dash source.
Old     (clubmyke)      Join Date: Aug 2004       03-09-2005, 7:55 AM Reply   
shawn,

speaker level inputs with adapters are a pretty touchy...that is more than likley the problem..

however, charles did come up with a good solution. i would suggest running your ground from the battery to a terminal box and having all the grounds go to the terninal box ( hope that makes sense)
Old                03-09-2005, 8:01 AM Reply   
The speaker level imputs are going straight into the amp, no adapters (though the guy at Best Buy suggested to always use them).

I am, however, wondering about the ground to my head unit as I was "screwing around with" a lot of the wiring under there, near the end of the "project" and, therefore was getting pretty impatient and tugging on a lot of stuff. I may have loosened the connection -- and I like the idea of a central ground, though to get from my head unit to my amp requires going all the way around the back of the boat which makes for a lot of cable routing! (which sucks!!!).

I found a pretty good diagram on the Crutchfield website that gives ways to try and isolate the problem ( http://www.crutchfieldadvisor.com/S-hi3wV4rXzpF/learningcenter/car/amplifiers_noise.html ) that I'm going to try and see if I can figure out where the noise is being introduced before I undertake a lot of "redos"!

Thanks for all of the help and input guys -- I appreciate it. There's nothing worse than listening to your new system with the boat on the trailer and saying "damn, this sounds pretty good" and then cranking the engine and hearing ... "whinnnnneeeeee" the whole time!
Old                03-23-2005, 3:54 PM Reply   
You have a bad ground... find a new ground. Before you hook up your new ground use some rough sandpaper to clean the new ground location. Never, ever run you RCA cables parallel with any power cable.
Old     (liveoz)      Join Date: May 2002       03-24-2005, 9:18 PM Reply   
I have to agree with the others. I have tried to help others with this problem and the first step is to run a ground straight to the battery. It almost always fixes the problem or makes it a lot better. It has nothing to do with whether or not you can get a secure ground on the common ground, it is the fact that you pick up interference and noise from everything else plugged into the grounding bar. Is the sound clean with the engine off? If so, this means that only fixing the routing of your amp wires and your line level inputs will not eliminate the problem. My prediction is that a direct ground to the battery will get you close to where you want to be. This may not be what you want to hear, but with my first system, I tried everything to eliminate noise, I got close but not all the way. I learned to live with it. When I upgraded to a better (more expensive) head unit that would allow me to add a wired remote, the noise went away completely.

To help you with your first concern, just ground the head unit to the battery by running wire right over the seats, just to see if it works.

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