poping in speakers

i have 1 kicker 650x4 and kickier kmt6 on the tower when i turn on my blower or lights it pops through the speakers would that be the stereo ground or amp groud or something else.

It is as a result of the amplifier picking up the sound of the "static" that the tiny arc of electricity makes on opening and closing of the switch. It may be coming in at the amp, it may be coming in at the radio; it is a little too early to tell for sure.

The pop is always there, it is just that most of the time, we hear it as a result of the amplifier gains being turned up too high. What is the gain setting? You want your gains set as low as possible while still delivering max rated power to the speakers.

There are several fixes available to us, but let's check the gains first. If we can fix it by turning the gains down, we will be good to go.

While we are at it.... You are only using half of the amp to drive the tower speakers, right? Using a 4-channel amp in bridge mode to drive those speakers is a bad idea..


If re-setting the gains lower does not work, we can use some other remedies we have discovered. We have a lot of experience taking pops and whines out of boat stereos at the OEM level, (when you start studying the issues, you discover boats are really noisy from an electronics perspective) and I will be happy to share some of my tips that will help.


Let us know!

Phil
Kicker

i am using one side to power my tower speakers the other side bridgerd to power my sub the gains are both set 1/2 is that to high

Phil please share some of the experience you guys have over at Kicker with taking the noise out of boat stereos. Thanks.

Tony-

That sounds about right to me. That amp will deliver right around, or almost 150 watts per channel into the KMT6.

the gain setting does not sound unreasonable, especially if you have a head unit that is only putting out about 2 volts... Herer are a couple of things to try:

1. Remove the radio ground wire from the boat's harness. Re-ground the radio straight to the amplifier's ground lead. The brings the amp and the radio as close as possible to the same grounding potential. Additionally, there is a huge filter capacitor just inside the amp, and it will help prevent the pop from getting into the radio.

That will often take care of it.

2. If simply moving the ground does not work, you may want to move the radio's power wires to the amps as well. This is done by connecting the yellow memory power lead straight to the +12v connection on the amplifier. The red power wire for the radio is designed to be switched, typically by the ignition key or a dash/helm switch. If the red wire is connected to a dash/helm switch, just re-wire that switch so that it gets its power only from the +12v terminal of the amp. If your boat is using a keyed accessory switch, you will want to wire in a relay. The relay will be triggered by the accessory power lead, but will get its power straight from the +12v terminal of the amp.

The relay wiring can be confusing, but here is a crude schematic of the wiring for using the ignition accessory position as a trigger.

Disregard the relay on the right for this discussion; it is shown in this schematic for installations where we are using more than two amplifiers.

I agree with Phil's recommendations as to the first several steps.

Usually this isn't as much of an issue on a large cruiser with dual engine blocks and several hundred pounds of extra ground cables and equipment. But its prevalent on small craft, especially with IO trim and wakeplate controls, halogens and anything that creates a serious voltage surge or drop.

Next in line:
3.) Try a ground loop isolator between the source unit and amplifier.
A.) Place a 10,000 microfarad 16 volt polarized capacitor between the positive and ground supply of the worst noise offenders, ie; blower, lights, etc.

David
Earmark Marine

David went the capacitor route; that is my next step to answer nu bu. Good call out David!

Most of your switches make noise.
Placing the capacitor in parallel to the load allows the voltage to bleed to zero in the capacitor rather than sparking and causing the noise.

Valves and hydraulic trim circuits are real bad; the worst actually. There are little solenoids that operate these, and inside the solenoids there are coils that are energized to open and close. When you hit or release a switch that energizes a coil, there is a small pop from the RFI coming from the tiny spark at the switch. When you release the switch, the magnetic field in the solenoid coil collapses and creates a pretty big voltage spike which causes a spark.

This example is extremely close to what you find in an ignition system. The capacitor David recommends is acting like the condensor in an ignition, preventing the electrical sparks that would otherwise tear up the points. If you have worked on a distributor-based ignition, you will understand the analogy.

I have used a 400 uF non-polar electrolytic capacitor with extremely good results. Any car stereo shop will sell you this as a 100 Hz bass-blocker.




Phil
Kicker

turned down the gains just a hair that did the trick thanks