skar amp noise

i attempted to hook up my amp over the weekend and i ran into some trouble. i was hooking up the rear channel (channels 3 and 4) and it was making a clicking noise. See the video attached. once i unhooked it from the skar amp and back to the factory jbl amp, it sounded fine. Everything i am using is new. the head unit is an

$280 alpine ILX-w650 7" double DIN touchscreen digital multimedia receiver with bluetooth, apple carplay and android auto

alpine ILX-w650, the ground wire is hooked up directly to the frame, i am using new wire with a fuse, and the input is RCA cables coming off of the alpine radio. I also hooked the sub channel up and it seemed to be working fine but needed some crossover adjustments of course. I emailed skar and they said i needed to use an o-meter to set the gain, my response was i have hooked up over 20 amps in my life and I've never had to use an o-meter to set the gain. Is this amp junk out of the box?

any idea of what this could be?

 

A few things I would try

-Plug the rear RCA’s into the front channels of the amp and see if it clicks up front
-Plug the front RCA’s to the rear channels of the amp and see if it still clicks
-do you get clicks if NO RCA’s are plugged in?
-do you happen to have an adapter to plug your phone into it? (iPhone for example, would be lightning-to-3.5 headphone adapter, then 3.5mm to rca cable)
This would let you test the amp itself and not the radio. If you get no clicks with a phone plugged in, but you DO get clicks with the radio, then you can eliminate the amp and start looking at the radio and associated wiring.

If you get clicks from the rear speakers no matter what RCA channels are plugged in, you might have a defective amp.

 

i was planning to do what you mentioned tomorrow night. i have some spare RCA cables to rule a bad cable out if need be. I know for sure the 5th channel seems to be working ok. We shall see with some trial and error. But it did tick me off what the rep said about it was in the adjustments....BS!!!

 

I mean, to set them 100% correct, they’re right.
But that’s also assuming you listen to your music at the exact same volume on the radio with the exact same source being played, etc.
not to mention, most people won’t ever use all the power their (good quality) amp is capable of. My gains are set perfectly to my radio at 75% volume level. Want to know how often I actually listen at that volume? Virtually never. It’s simply too loud for my ears to handle and enjoy. So gains being perfect is completely irrelevant in most scenarios.
so while they’re right that you want an o-scope to set them perfect, then saying you “need” one to set the gains at all is laughable.

 

But back to the topic lol

just do some general troubleshooting like I outlined and see where you end up. Hopefully it’s an easy fix, but we’ll see

 

i spent about 3 hours playing with it but i figured it all out. The amp and all speakers are working without any noise. My problem was the directions from the

$37 PAC APH-TY04 Speaker Connection Harness

PAC APH-TY04 was incorrect for the 19 with the JBL amplified system. I had to take each door panel off to see what wires went where. The amp really woke up the door speakers, i can actually hear the dash tweeers now. I will replace all door speakers in time,but for now I have replaced the factory radio, amp, and sub and could not be happier. If i had to do it again I would now use the PAC adapter, running new wires to each door from the amp would have been easier.

 

Scoping your amp gains is completely unnecessary and anyone who tells you you HAVE to do it probably can't even tell you what the device does. It ain't rocket surgery.

Scoping the source to see where your waves start to square off is never a bad idea if you don't already have that information. That piece of data will let you set that ~75% point so you have some headroom for quiet tracks, but setting amp gains with it is only necessary if you're actually deaf.

 

Lol please do not send false information. Telling people they don’t need to set there Gaona with a scope is wrong. You could have a 100 watt speaker and give it only 50 watts and still blow it due to distortion whicj the human ear cannot hear, But a scope can and with that same speaker and a clean signal you could probably give it 125 watts and it be ok! If you don’t like to use them that’s ok but the real profesional technicians( myself included)will tell you it’s necessary. I hardly have blown speakers coming back to the shop I will set the Gaona with a scope and mark the amp so I know if it was tampered with.

 

M'eh. Most of the guys I know who have been doing this for decades set gains by ear. I used to be a professional tech too - moved up to engineer. And distortion does not blow speakers. There are 2 ways to do that - overexcursion or overheating. Distortion alone will not kill speakers.

 

1. IDK what a Gaona is.
2. If you marked on my amp I would fucking stab you.

I used a scope on my system once. I wanted to see where the HU started clipping. It didn’t, even at full volume. I was surprised. I did the same thing with the amplifier. It was fun, I hadn’t pulled out my oscope in like 12 years. I learned a few things so it was useful.

Then I proceeded to set it all up however I wanted because using a scope is totally not necessary unless you are either chasing down something strange, or have no other way to set levels.