White Noise Question

So I've got a question about my system that I'm hoping someone can give me guidance on. Here's my setup. I have a Pioneer AVIC-Z140BH head unit, an Infinity 1600a and 475a amp, front and back infinity speakers and two 10w3 JL subs. Here's the problem I'm having.
Inbetween songs you can hear a fair amount of white noise, and I can also hear a little engine noise when I accelerate. Has this happened to anyone and what did you do to fix it. One thing I'm thinking is maybe the RCA and speaker wires aren't thick enough. Does that sound like it could be a possibility to anyone? Thank you very much for any help given.

 

It could be several items but the ground wire would be the first thing to check. Check ground wire on head unit and amp, make sure it's a solid metal surface with no paint. Most noise interference I've seen was always caused by a bad ground. Obviously the next item to check is your cables, make sure they are well insulated, no cuts in them, etc.. There could be a bad wire/cable somewhere. Perhaps you can buy a few cables, run them outside the car temporarily and see if that solves the issue. (I would buy decent cables too, don't buy the cheap walmart crap!)

I wish I could offer more help, but that's where I would start.

Good Luck!

 

hiss noise?

 

Check your amp gain as well. I installed a new amp and had all kinds of white noise and was worried that my ground was bad. Long story short, I checked the gains on the amp and they were maxed out. Turned them down and it disappeared immediately. The ground was fine.

 

Amp gain to high or bad ground and MAYBE bad RCA's. I've seen once where the RCA's that the customer brought in were just bad out of the box. Typically ground and gain causes 'hisssssss' noise. People think the gain on the amp is like a volume knob on the HU, its not the same.

 

While I don't have an amp in my taco, I have had many over the years. Most of the time noise like you are describing is ground related, like others have said.
One tip I could give you is up the size of the ground. If you are using 4 awg wire for power, use 2 awg for ground, make sure it is a separated from any other electronic grounds, and all paint is removed from the attaching surface.

 

This is the picture I took of what the grounds from the amp looked like. I'm gonig to the store after work to get a legit bolt and grind the paint down to make a solid ground. I had gotten the work done at a shop here on island before everyone told me not to go to that shop. Ugh. If that doesn't work I'll order RCA cables and rerun everything. The ones that it has on it seem thin.
Any suggestions on RCA cables to go with?

 

clean it super good

 

So I drilled in a new bold and grounded it, took off the paint, made it pretty, sorry no picture yet, and tested it, same thing. So then I looked at the amp after I did all that work and the gain was about 1/3 up. Well, I turned it all the way down and poof, it's gone. So, what I learned from this is that now I have a solid ground and always check the gain first.
Thank you for all your help!!

 

That pic of the ground you have is wow. Your screws have a coating so they aren't touching metal to metal.

Take out a seat bolt or seatbelt bolt, sand down paint and use that. Don't use those screws into sheet metal.

 

Agreed. The best bet is to use the nearest seat belt bolt. Sand down the bolt hole and use that. I had to adjust the gain to get rid of the white noise because the gain was maxed out. Right now I'm running around 1/3 or so gain without any background noise.

 

Races

 

check all engine and vehicle grounds that are not related to the stereo
check all plugs and wires and coils too...

bad grounds can emit RFI and cause hiss/noise

 

So the more I delve into the system I had installed in the truck, the more it looks like a 12 year old built it. And a very young twelve year old. The "custom" box the shop built is about half a cubic foot too small for both subs I have, the amp rack was pathetic and only used two screws per amp to hold my infinity amps in. All good components, but crappy work. So, I'm going to rebuild the box and move the amps under the seat. It'll probably take me a couple weeks to finish it since this will be the first one I've done, but I'll take pictures of the progress and see if I can't do a decent job with the plan I'm setting forth. So frustrating when you spend the money to get crappy craftsmanship.

 

you may want to make sure your component speaker wires are running near your power wire cable it can make a humming noise while you drive just an idea if you havent thought of that yet.