Alternator Whine

Hello all, sorry for the long winded post but this issue is driving me crazy.

About a week ago I was driving down the highway and my amp driving my front speakers suddenly powered down and would not power back on despite having power running to the amp.

I took it into a local car audio store and they could not figure out why it happened or what was wrong with the amp so they installed a new focal amp. As soon as they installed the new amp there was alternator whine coming from the front speakers. The car audio place ran a new power cable and installed a new ground (into chassis of truck). They ran their power cable through the same route as I had my previous one (drivers side kicker panel along floor to amp under driver seat).

The took a look at my wiring job I had previously done on my head unit and cleaned it up a bit but could not find the source of the alternator whine.

I double checked their ground and tried it in other locations and the sound persisted. When I unplug the RCAs from the amp the whine stops. When I plug them into the amp and disconnect them from the head unit the noise stops. The car audio place also replaced the RCAs once (I think they thought that was problem) but it didn't solve anything. RCAs are running through the middle console which is where I had them previously running with no issues.

This would lead me to think that the issue is at the head unit (pioneer avic 6000NEX), but there were no issues before the new amp was installed so I'm not sure why there would be issues now.

The car audio place told me that there was a fair amount of corrosion on my battery and that I should replace the battery and get someone to check out my power cables to make sure they aren't corroded.

Has anyone had similar issues. Would it make sense for me to replace the battery etc if the whine stops when I unplug the RCAs from the amp? obviously I do not want to buy a new battery if it is not what is causing the issue.

Thanks for the help!

 

It isn't your battery...look elsewhere...sounds like the head unit or amp suffered some type of damage...


For your battery corrosion, clean the corrosion, apply battery gel anti corrosion stuff and reassemble. I use the stuff religiously, it keeps corrosion away for sure....

 

Is your RCA ran right next to your power cable? That can cause whine.

 

run it from another source like your phone using an adapter and see if the whine is there. that will either eliminate or confirm the HU is the issue.

 

the amp is brand new so it shouldn't be damaged, The RCA is running down the middle console and the power is at the drivers side door so they are not close. I will try running from my iPod and see what happens.

 

Check the alt output if one diode is bad it will still charge not full output but it will induce noise on the DC wiring.

 

Interested to find out what the cause is. I noticed a whine the other day after my battery died but went away after my battery got some power back in. Went to test the battery the next day and battery tested good but alternator came back as a fail. The guy that tested it said the 120+ temps were not helping either. Sorry to go off topic but maybe it's something in my audio system as well. Best of luck with the issue

 

Thanks for all the replies. After checking the ground at the head unit I decided to try running a second set of RCA cables from the deck over top of the centre console to the amp which solved the problem. When I took a look at where the car audio place had run the RCAs they installed it turns out they were being directly underneath and parallel to the power to the amp underneath the carpet under the seat. I relocated the RCAs away from the power and everything is all good now!