Audio question - ground interference

Soldato
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26 Feb 2009
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Exeter
Basically, the car has the usual 4 speakers connected to the head unit through the standard DIN connection, but also has a small Bose amp powering a sub and 2 tweeters in the boot.

I wanted to get this working, so pulled it apart and got the multimeter out and figured out the connection. It's connected via an EQ unit under the passenger seat, but I figured out that it was quite straight forward to bypass the EQ and wire in the amp - all the live feeds and grounds were there, leaving 2 pins for the input (its mono).

After faffing about with the line out, I figured out that it wanted a speaker level input, so fed some bog standard speaker cable through to the head unit from the boot. However, when I connected it to the speaker outputs on the head unit, all output cut out. Now I'm led to believe the speakers are fairly low impedance (2 ohms I believe) so it makes sense that wiring the amp in parallel reduces the overall impedance, probably too much for the head unit. Oddly though, connecting only the speaker +ve make it work. Odd, but wasnt going to knock it! Sounds brilliant for a standard setup

The only problem is I'm getting a fair bit of interference - a quiet whine in pitch with the engine speed, which isnt too bad because it doesnt increase with volume and it's not that loud. But I noticed today that having the lights on creates a louder high pitched whine.

So, what would be the best approach to eliminate this? Use a resistor or wire the amp in series at the expense of sensitivity? Disconnect both rear door speakers and rely on the fronts and the amplified setup in the boot? Replace the cheap speaker cable with something better? Any other suggestions?
 
Are you sure there wasn't anything important in the EQ?
I know some amps have both an input ground and an output ground, maybe you accidentally joined them when you bypassed the EQ? (i have no idea if this even applies to your amp)
 
Not sure, from looking at the wiring diagram the EQ unit seems to be there mostly for the 4 speakers, but the DIN adaptor bypasses that. There are 2 ground pins on the amp, but they're the same cable (they actually join together about 3" down the loom).

I connected an old head unit up, which didnt cut out when both speaker pins connected - with one wire connected the interference is there and with both it goes.

So I basically need both pins connected, but cant because of the impedance....I'm leaning towards just disconnecting the rear speakers and connecting the amp to the rear channel
 
Whining is normally an earthing problem, often caused by two different units earthed in different places...where is the amp currently earthed? Is the head unit earthed through the DIN loom or separately?

Amazed that the speakers work with only pos connected...!
 
The cage in your dash that you slip the cd player into make sure that is earthed that can cause whining interference. Probably had a earth cable bolted on to it maybe.
 
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