Kicker Key amp hiss sound

I installed a kicker Key amp on my stock 2019 sport non jbl entune and i'm getting a hiss sound from the speakers. I have the tweeters upgraded to the subaru tweeters and I have rockford fosgate 6x9 up front and 6.5 in the rear. I wired the harness correctly, I followed the guide from one of the members on here. The hiss gets louder when I turn up the gains. The hiss starts when the gains are about 1/8 of the way. I even tried running the ground and power directly to the battery. Any help or suggestions would be appreciated

 

When the gain is too high, you'll get a really noticeable hiss, when it's right you'll get a slight hiss but even my hyperfocusing self doesn't notice it anymore. It's only audible with amps on, volume off, engine off which is not a common situation for me.

I have 4ga cables to a blue sea block with a ground buss in the back with only the amps on it, for now.

I run a 200.4 and a 500.1 with focals and a kicker loaded 8" solobaric. Absolutely love the setup and if there speakers that would really show the hiss, these (focals) are definitely one of them.

 

I agree and also the hiss you are experiencing if wired properly and it sounds like you have done so then the most likely culprit would be the signal coming from the factory head unit.
They use lesser quality cheap components that are prone to cause noise

You don't knowtice it with factory stock speakers as much when powered off the factory head unit unless turned up high.
It all has to do with the sound to noise ratio.
Higher quality output transistors are much quieter but also cost more.
This can also be seen in lower end aftermarket head units.
Crutchfield.com has some really good informative articles about alot of it.

Also make sure you set the gains on the amp properly or you may end up clipping and overloading the amp "higher volume in a lot of cases with cheaper and factory head units" tend to clip the signal very easily and if the amp isn't gained properly your speakera over time can fry due to in a way being hit with a short every time the amplifier boosts a clipping signal.

 

Did you program the auto eq with the gains all the way down and the head unit is flat?

 

Oh yeah: pro tip regarding the auto setup: use the .wav files on a thumbdrive. Anything else is a less accurate baseline for the amp to work off of.

After steaming music from spotify (hq) and listening to 320k mp3s via Android auto and being able to hear that they didn't sound as clean as they should, I redid the process with .wavs on a thumbdrive and it was a noticeable improvement. So when you redo your setup, try that too.

 

Shorter solid clean ground is better. Make sure it’s not grounded with something else either. Does the whine change with engine revs at all?

 

I have the 180.4. It hisses pretty loud, very noticeable at idle, but it’s not louder than my MT tires and wind noise on the road. I think they’re just noisy amps, the signal to noise ratio on the 180.4 is 76db.

I’m planning on an aftermarket head unit and possibly replacing the key amp later on down the road with something else.

 

76db is going to be noisey the higher the db the quieter it will be.

 

It does not get louder with engine revs. I'll try a shorter ground

 

I will give that a try, thanks for the info. I will post update soon

 

I will say I do have a very low audible hiss/hum/buzz at zero volume. Turn the volume up just a little bit even from 0 to 1 it goes away.

Is the sound at no to low volume and you hear the sound? Does it not go away at any volume?

When I first installed the key I used the wrong audio file to set the auto eq and that gave me a very very noticeable hum at all volumes.

 

I am having the same problem with hissing and another problem with the accessories not turning off when I turn off the engine and open the door. It seems that the amp is back-powering the grey ignition wire and keeping everything on. I tried tapping into the cigarette lighter power source, but I get the same problem. I can only get the radio to turn off if i remove the blue remote wire and tap it to a ground.

I am thinking this is a grounding problem. I grounded the amp to the driver side seat bolt. Any suggestions on where else to ground without drilling a hole? I find myself doing a fair amount of water crossing and don't want to risk getting water in the cab. Can a bad ground also cause a hissing noise when no audio is playing?

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

 

I have the hiss also, very noticable since I summed everything to one channel (all using front signal, I basically have no fader adjustment). Can’t hear the hiss after volume 6, the only time I need low volume is when I have people talking in my truck. Other than that I listen to my music above volume 10.
My setup is LC7i, Rockford R2-500.4 for my mids and highs, Rockford R2-1200.1 for my sub. I set all my gains on the lc7i and amp with dd1+, also getting the distortion reading from the stock headunit.

 

Make sure you have a dedicated remote wire too, sometimes using signal sense to turn the amp on can do funny things

 

How did you hook up your 500.1 amp to the kicker key?

 

The hiss will remain as long as you keep the factory radio, I got sick of it and replaced the radio and poof hiss gone.

I replaced grounds, even did a test run to batt with extra wire. Used 3 different LOCs, one cheap two not so much. Moved power and remote away from everything. Entune just has bad feedback, turn gains around 1/4 up and it will minimize or replace radio.

 

I solder-spliced my LF/RF signal from the radio into two each- LF/RF to the 200.4 and LF/RF to the 500.1.

Yeah... may gains are about 25%, maybe a bit more. Since I'm pretty happy with my 2020 radio (AA and CP), I've been trying to think of ways to circumvent the noise. Kicker has been nice but their hands are a bit tied it seems. (for the record, they have been incredible about other issues, I couldn't be more pleased. Shoutout to Anthony on all that.) They are Pioneer radios after all, they are decent at the core of it. I've wondered if my entirely separate power and ground actually backfired or if there's another way to remedy the noise like run a small ground wire from the radio's chassis ground straight to the amp's ground or something like that. i also need to look into filters. We use them all over the cars at work but it's a little out of my realm. Maybe an EE can chime in on that one.

I have another 500.1 and a 12" L7T to add in but that's a project for later in the fall; custom box and all that. I'll need to figure out the cleanest way to wire all that so I expect to be heading into LOC territory shortly. I may very well go nuts and drop the 200.4 for something a few tiers higher. The 200.4 will have a home though, I've got the poor GC8 waiting for it's turn to be loved. I don't know how I'll do audio in the bronco yet. I did 4ch in my TJ and I'm not sure if I'll do the same or not. Opinions welcome on that.

 

I think its just the guts of the radio put off the signal, which is why its so low volume from the factory. The key amp is a great product and didnt produce this from the other car i tested it in which is why I just bought a radio. All gear is kicker in my truck including an older zx750. Good luck with install.