I Give Up!!!!

I just dont get it...

I rewired all of the dash connections for my Rio...re-ran the ground..put it all back

Ground loop was gone

it took only 3 days to find its way back!!!

I find it impossible to beleive that what works on one day does not work on another day!!

How on earth (no pun intended) can a ground connection work on Sunday and not work on Wendsday!?!?!?!?!?

the whine is audible and annoying to the point that soft passages are impossible to listen to!

I have tried various wiring configuration in the past and all have solved the problem only to find in a few days that the noise emerges once again!!!

To all you scientists out there...please think outside that damn box and offer any oddball solution you can think of!!

Thanks...Ed

Just a wee thought on what can cause differences one day to the next - moisture, perhaps.

Dampness or moisture may be able to affect conductivity in various areas - have you noticed any correlation between your whine and the weather.

a) What is grounded where?
b) Any pattern, including weather conditions? (Perhaps lights, defrosters, heaters, rainwater are changing the conditions.)

Good point.....im in NJ and this happend if the summer..winter..whenever!

I really cant find any correlation at all

However...I did use the stock radio wiring harness ground..which always works fine (at first) but the whine creeps back

i have a hunch that there is something amis within the Rio itself for I have a Sony player going into the AUX in on the Rio..and when i hook just the sony up i have absolutely no problem...ever..

what internal wiring in the rio might cause this?

i did have dome dry solder joints where the IDE cable hooks up to the motherboard and repared them.....perhaps a less than perfect soldering job would cause this (but then..why would it go away when i re-run the grounds?)

What about heaters / defrosters? It has been a tad cold in NJ recently...

I can have all the electronics off but the Rio and it doesnt change a thing.....

keep in mind...if i disconnect the Rio and just run the Sony there is absolutely no noise at all......i tried to isolate where it was coming from on the rio---perhaps the sled---so i disconnected the rear leads from the sled and hooked it directly to the Rio...no difference

i bypassed the harness from the rio to the wiring harness of the car (only for the ground wire)...no difference

get an extension cord and run the rio unharnessed, connected to the amp. try to see if the problem is the empeg or the amp.

Ahhhh good Idea.....I will give that a try

Get a ground loop isolater from Circuit City. I had to do that on another stereo install I did a while back and it fixed it. It connects into the RCA cable connections.

what i am experiencing is a which varies exactly with the rev of the engine

i have already installed one between the Sony and the Rio for i was getting a lot of noise there as well...but it was more like white noise than whine

if i get this where exactly would you recommend i install it??

That is going to be, pretty much by definition, an alternator whine. Search for that on Google or some audio websites and they'll give you some pointers on resolving it. There are also a lot of links in this FAQ.

One of the things I seem to remember that you probably haven't messed with is to check the ground of the alternator itself. This could have gotten dirty, especially is the car is older.

it took only 3 days to find its way back!!!

Hmmm. This is something like the third time that's happened to you, right? You mess with the wiring, the ground loop goes away, it works fine for a while, then it comes back. Right?

Question:

The wiring connections... All of them, everywhere in the system, every wire you connected...

Are they soldered or crimped?

Tony,

Thanks for remembering! Yes, this is probably the third time i have has this happen!

To answer your question...all of the wiring that was done for the installation was either crimped or wire-nutted (?)

nothing was soldered

all cables are monster cables and the hot wires for the amps are all heavy gauge

I have the output from the Rio going to an MTX..which then leads to an Alping (for the sub)

I have the hot wire in the dash, from the stock wiring harness, tied into both the sony and the rio

i have the sled, the sony and the rio tied together and grounded to the stock ground..which is a much heavier gauge wire than either unit has

between the sony and the rio i have a noise suppressor

and again...this is the killer


When i hook the sony up directly to the amp, thus bypassig the rio..i have absolutely no noise!!!

that is why i think there is something going on inside the rio

and FWIW...one time the noise came back just about the same time i was have a dry solder porblem with the ide cable....

all of the wiring that was done for the installation was either crimped or wire-nutted

Solder and shrink-tube everything.

Have you checked the sled for loose wires? The older Mark2 sleds had a problem where the pins could pull out. Perhaps you have a weak connection there?

Paul

I did check all of the wires on the sled

even took the unit apart and followed the ground wire from the rear connector to the connector on the mother board

late at night i can hear a small snicker from my beloved Rio....

An easy way to eliminate the empeg itself is to borrow a friend's or acquaintance's and try it out in your car. I can think of at least one other board member in NJ and at least one in New York if you don't know anyone that has one.

If you need to an empeg or car to test with, let me know. I'm in Rockland county.

Excellent point. At least you would be able to eliminate half of the equation.

Where r u located Paul? Unless I am totally wrong you should be not too far from where i am!

You have PM. During the day is really the best time to find me.

Sent you a PM Paul.

Well got in the car and the annoyance gnomes did their best for the whine is louder than yesterday....and i mean LOUD!

maybe this is one for the Twilight Zone....man commits sucicide as gnomes laugh in the background...

Dumb question: have you tested just the Rio alone without the Sony head unit connected to the Aux In? Edit: Checking to see if the aux in is part of the problem. I know you have a noise suppressor on it.

Edit2: Also, What happens if you have the empeg out/in sled and powered on/off when you have the signal lines connected to the Sony? Do you get noise?

Paul..I did pull the sony out and there was no difference

re#2..unfortunately the amp sensor is tied into the Rio (the amps wont turn on when the rip is not in and turned on as well)

however...when i do reconfigure the setup and have the sensor to the sony AND the line outs from the sony directly to the amp...crystal clear

strange..huh?

Hmmm... When you are in that reconfigured mode (amp control and signal from the Sony), do you get any noise if you plug the empeg into the sled? In this state, the empeg would be fully isolated from the signal path and the amp control path, so that would leave only power / ground off of that shared connector that could be causing the noise. If you did not get any noise with the empeg powered, that would only leave the empeg's signal path as the source of the noise.

What kind of amp do you have and how old is it? I know when I did my installation I had to debug a ground loop. Turns out that I had to resolder the RCA jack on the amp itself as they had faulty connections.

Perhaps, but the fact that there is no noise if the sony is directly connected to the amp makes me think that it is something with either the power / ground being shared by the player and head unit, or the signal connections of the player.

Paul,

I never tried that! I understand what you are saying so will give it a try this weekend..makes perfect sence....

I have an MTX 4 ch amp....2 years old

and an Alpine which i would guess within 5 years old

im just worried about what happens when he plugs any of your many empegs in and they all start whining. maybe its a personal problem, do you notice other things whine when youre near, ed? wife, children, small dogs perhaps.

..no..... i whine when they are around!!!!

Interesting development!

When I got in the car yesterday the whine was terrible...however...now listen to this..when i push the very top of the Rio in...with a bit of pressure...the whine pretty much goes away...so it seems like there is a bad connection somewhere within the head unit that when i put pressure on it it becomes better.....

i took out the HU and opened it up and checked the wiring on the rear connector and everything seems to be very tight took off the connector and checked the connector..very solid

perhaps its on the sled?

Grounding the hell out of the sled fixed my alternator whine, FWIW.

-Zeke

When you push, are you making contact with just the fascia? Is it at the left edge, center, right edge? Does it make a difference? (The left edge might show something in the docking connector, center or right possibly making contact in the body of the player itself.)

Paul,
I am pushing in on the facia on the uppermost corners..the harder i push it in the fainter the whine gets

Thanks!

I did ground the sled to the same grouding point as the HU and my sondy

I recall in a previous post you said you weren't using the grounding wire from the harness. What happens if you connect that wire to the sled?

Anyone with better knowledge of empeg wiring - is this a really bad idea? It sounds like he's not getting a good connection between the empeg and the sled, and moving it restores the ground to the sled. (I'm still suspicious of electro-chemistry degrading that point of contact.)

-jk

there is no difference....

this is the install from hell and one for a good case study in wiring!

u r probably right that at the point of contact there is some degrading...i will try to clean the contacts...maybe there is some corrosion on them.

btw..does anybody know how to get those pins out of the connectors on the back of the sled and the empeg?

btw..does anybody know how to get those pins out of the connectors on the back of the sled and the empeg?

Yes, there is a video of how to do it here.

Thanks tony!

I think i figured it out!
to start with...i have taken the sled out of the dash so many time that the tabs that bend to hold in in place have broken off on the sides....because of this the sled does not sit straight in the dash, but instead is lower in the back than in the front..

thus..when i slide in the empeg i am thinking that the connectos are not making the full contact needed for a good ground (this is because the empeg sits flush against the dash...not flush against the sled)

thus...when i do push against the top of the empeg..it seats flush against the sled...and therefore the connectors seat better against each other..and thus a better ground contact

this morning as i slid the empeg in i made sure i pushed the top of the unit in firmly...whine was almost eliminated...very very faint

what i am going to do is see if i can bolt the sled into the back of the dash so that the opening is flush against the dash to assure a perfect fit

will keep u posted!

I think what I'm getting from your post is that the empeg won't go far enough into the sled to make good contact because your dash trim is in the way. Is this correct? If so, a good solution to this problem is found in this thread. I had a similar problem in my car and after seeing this thread, I gave it a try and it did the trick. A good photo to show this is here.

If this isn't your problem, then just ignore me . Sorry, its been a long week.

Thanks for the input!

The problem it seems is that the empeg is not sitting squarely in the sled....i will try to straighten out the sled a bit and if that doesnt work then i will try inverting the sled connector.

Thanks again!

if that is the case, you may wish to try running the ground wire from the sled connector and attaching it to the sled itself, then to the ground wire on the miata. That way, as long as the player is plugged in, it has a solid ground through the sled.

Another thing to check is if you have one of the sleds that didn't have the top front lip bent back like it's supposed to be.

whine was almost eliminated...very very faint

Since it was already coming and going, it's probably having one of the "nice days". If it's there even faintly, it's still there, and you haven't gotten the root problem fixed. Wait a few days and it will be back just like before.

please think outside that damn box and offer any oddball solution you can think of!!

Start over. Get a lot of extra wires from the store. Yank all of your components (down to but not including the existing wire runs or the speakers). Bring the components into the car and lay them on the seat, making sure nothing touches metal. Use lamp cord, speaker wire, whatever and make all power and ground connections directly to the battery. Let the cord go through the window (or whatever you do with a convertible). Also use the battery to supply turn-on lead (just make sure to disconnect it if you go in for the night). Run short RCA cables to connect the parts. Again do not use any wires already in the car, only new stuff. Just like you would if you had no car, but instead only had a workbench and a spare battery.

Fire up the car. You should have no whine. If you do, you can be guaranteed that a component is bad, and you're simply screwed. Invest in a better amp / cd player, or another empeg. If there is no whine (not just faint, but none at all), then you have succeeded. Now you know that it was your installation. Put things back one by one. For example do not put the whole empeg back at once, but do it wire wire, connection by connection. Fire up the car between every solder you make. The inside of the car will look like a mess, but that's fine for now. Wire nuts are your friend for temporary fixes.

Eventually, one piece at a time, you'll get almost to the current setup, and the whine will be back. The connection that brought it back will be the source of your problem. Fix it.

Sounds like a real pain in the ass, but it will solve it. It would take less time than continuing to tinker with it. My opinion is that anything else you do is pissing in the wind and wasting time. Eventually you'll get lucky, give up, or realize that if you had pulled it all out you'd be done by now, but without the alternator whine.

My $.02 since it's what I'd have done a long time ago.

Fire up the car. You should have no whine. If you do, you can be guaranteed that a component is bad

Actually, if he gets a ground loop in the "Bench Test" mode, it doesn't necessarily mean a bad component. You can still induce a ground loop that way. For example, if a higher resistance wire (say, a wire that is too thin or has a loose crimp) connects the amp ground than connects the empeg ground, or vice versa, then you might get a ground loop.

True. I guess I'm probably incorrectly assuming he has an array of stereo installation wiring around his garage and would just use the right size off the bat.

Also, while the continued whine noise may not necessarily mean a component is broken, but just that it sucks! I had an Audio Control EQ / Crossover in my last car for about two weeks. Tried common troubleshooting and finally did what I called out above. Still got the whine. Went back to the shop and traded it for a new Phoenix Gold piece. Worked right away in bench test, worked perfectly once everything was reinstalled. Guy at the shop didn't seem surprised, gave me the impression it wasn't the first Audio Control piece that had come back in for just that issue.

So yeah, you're right, bench test + whine not neccessarily = bad part. Maybe 95% , but no guarantee. Sure would be a lot easier to troubleshoot a bench test though!

By the way, any luck with your install testing?

Paul,

With all the snow over the weekend i have to leave my car at the Arts Center for it is now a proven fact that Miatas and snow do not mix.....

thus...no

As noted above when i slid the empeg in (after i slid all the way home in my car) i made sure i initially pushed the top in firmly...started the car...and the whine is very very faint...I can live with it now..before it was horrible....

im going to give it a few more dayw without touching it and see if the gnomes once again have have a good laugh on my account

if it does not get worse i will assume that the empeg is not sitting squarely in the sled and will secure the sled better to assure a proper fit.......

although the 'wiggle room' afforded by the rear connectors should accomodate a less than perfect fit....it apparently is not the case here.


will keep u posted!...and thanks guys for your insightful responses!!!!!

hopefully i can return the favor some day!

The wiggle room is for the empeg-to-connector connection as the empeg moves around in the sled.

You've said that you're not using the ground wire from the connector, so I don't think that will make much difference (other than actually maintaining the connection, hence allowing music out of the empeg and into the rest of your car ).

If you're getting your ground wholey from metal on the empeg touching metal on the sled, the docking connector won't come into it. (As usual, I defer to those with more empeg-specific knowledge.)

-jk

I know this sounds strange, but could it be an issue of grounding the player to the sled? Perhaps pushing it in further is contacting the player to the sled... Easy way to test - drop a piece of steel wool at the back of the sled just to see if the added contact helps.

Easy way to test - drop a piece of steel wool at the back of the sled just to see if the added contact helps.

I like that idea - just don't use a pre-soaped (i.e., SOS) steel wool pad!

-jk

I will pass on the bad joke about "cleaning up the signal"...

actually i have pigtailed the empeg, the sled and the sony all to the stock wiring harness thus, the only weak link is the ground on the connector on the empeg meeting the ground on the connector on the sled....

will give the steel wool a try...non-soaped..to 'clean up' the signal

very clever paul!

Guy at the shop didn't seem surprised, gave me the impression it wasn't the first Audio Control piece that had come back in for just that issue.


I have a pair of 30-channel Audio Control EQTs in my car -- and after the first couple of weeks I installed barrel connectors to bypass them (left them in place, however, because they look cool as hell!) because, while I'm not getting alternator whine through them, I do get a completely unacceptable amount of floor noise whenever they are connected.

I just ordered a PPI 30-channel (1/3 Octave) stereo EQ to replace the EQTs.

tanstaafl.

Well, I had Paul come over my house with his Empeg to determine if it was my HU or something else...yet as I booted up my system..the noise was totally gone!!!!!

Just like when you take your car in to get fixed and the trouble cannot be replicated...the damn thing made a fool of me!

But..we did at least confirm that my HU is not the cause as it worked fine in his car....

What did happen, though, is that in an effort earlier in the day to rid myself of the whine i pressed as hard as i could, and i mean with force, pressing my back into the seat then pushing forward, i pushed in the upper left hand corned of the unit!

Noise gone! So I am guessing that given the small space behind the dash of the Miata that i must have pushed some of the wiring enough to rid myself of this noise!

Its been 3 days now and the noise has not yet come back...my usual run is a week...so i will keep u posted as the days go by!

Ed

It is the inverse of the Bugs In Demo law. Still...

As long as it is working. Hopefully it will stay that way. But it is also possible that the compressed wiring may force the dock back out and cause whatever loose end was grounding to ground again. We shall see. Good luck!

Meanwhile, to confirm with everyone on the board - this is an UNBENT sled. I do not know think that this has anything to do with it. During testing, we tried it with the empeg barely making contact with the sled connector and there was no noise then either.

Paul,

Very interesting.....the Whine now is definately intermittant...it will be gone...leave the car..come back..there it is!

Now..the miata is definatly a rough ride so my next step will be to pull the sled out and fiddle with the wires until i can replicate this situation!

BTW..it still minimizes when i press in that upper left hand corner of the HU!

Keep u posted!

Ed

At this stage, I would recommend a drastic step. Next time you have a lot of time, take it apart from the dash. Check any and all crimps for a loose connection. Insulate any electrical junction (RCA connectors wrapped in electrical tape, etc.). Wrap the sled itself with electrical tape. Verify that the wires in the harness are all secure. You certainly have a loose contact somewhere...

i agree! maybe this deep freeze we are having will keep me in this weekend!

I had this problem. I cut up a thin box and lined the iside of the cage (cut holes for cooling).
did the trick.

it's back........(sigh)

From my mouth to God's ear..this is the truth

Ok..so the whine got worse to the point of insanity...so..the temp today was in the 40's..went to the car..pulled out the Sony...pulled out the empeg with sled...booted it up..NO Whine!!!

Put the sled back in...bent the tabs..slid in the empeg...LOTS of Whine!!!

Take the sled out again..slide in the empeg..NO Whine!!

Hmmmm what is going on here...

So...with the empeg playing i slide the sled back in..NO Whine...Go Figure..but I am happy :-)

So i slide out the empeg bend the tabs to secure the sled...slide in the empeg...Whine is BACK..WTF!?!?!?!?!

So..to cut to the chase..and this is the interesting part of my tale....

when i bend down the lower left tab to secure the sled...Whine is there
When I leave the tab straight...Whine is Nowhere!!!

I dont know why or how..but for the present time it is working and i dont care to know why!!!

..and thats that

Let's just pretend this didn't happen and not ask any questions.... Walk away slowly...



Congrats!

Greetings!

a) What is under that lower tab? Something the player can be grounding on?
b) In bending that tab, did you pull the player back out / push it back in?
c) I still recommend wrapping the sled in electrical tape...

Assuming for a moment that the bent tab isn't touching anything else metal other than the player...

I wonder if there is a bad/intermittent contact between the player docking connector and the car sled docking connector. You know: the part that's supposed to dock and undock, the wiggly thingy in the back. And that the bending of the tab is changing, slightly, the positioning and pressure of that contact. Sometimes it makes good contact, therefore no whine. Change the angle that the player seats into the sled, it makes poor contact, you get whine.

Have you tried simply cleaning the contacts?

Another thing. Did you ever open up the player and look to see if any of the wires that went to the docking connector INSIDE the player were loose or if they were chafing on the sled or something?

Let's just pretend this didn't happen and not ask any questions.... Walk away slowly...

I tried that once. An intermittent contact problem in my TV set was fixed by putting pressure on one of the PCB boards. It seemed like that was the proper fix. I called it fixed and walked away.

Eventually, over time, I would have to change the amount and direction of pressure on the PCB board to get it to work properly again. Then eventually no amount of pressure was enough. Finally I got fed up and disassembled the innards completely to remove the main motherboard, found the bad solder joints, resoldered them, and the set's been golden ever since.

The dash is all plastic...with the tab bent it could perhaps be touching the metal cage that the sony attaches to..but i took that out so i would suspect no....

with the tab bent it does push the sled further in the dash..and since my sled does not have a curled upper lip, perhaps it is too far in so that the contacts on the connectors were not seating as well as they should..which is supported by my prior experience of pushing in that side of the empeg in order to eliminate the whine.....

but gnomes being what they are i will keep you posted in any changes in the situation

believe me i am as tired of telling you this as you are of hearing it..but...for the benefit of some useres that may garner even the slightest bit of information out of my saga..i will be back!!!

and since my sled does not have a curled upper lip

Aha. There you go. Not going into the sled far enough, connection points on docking connector are not making good solid contact.

I remember someone asking about the upper sled lip a long time ago, and I never saw you answer that question until now.

Ya..the dreaded uncurled upper lip syndrome! just by eyeballing it i can see that the top of the sled extends further out than the bottom...(this should be the worst of my problems!!)

I've seen a number of sleds with the erroneously flat upper lip and I've yet to see one interfere with the insertion of the player. In every case, the extended lip fit just fin into a recess on the back of the fascia. I'm sure that's not by design, but it happens nonetheless. I think blaming anything on that is premature. On the other hand, it may be worth looking at in case the happenstance fit doesn't occur on all players/fascias/sleds.

Yup, I had one for a while, and it never caused me any problems, the player always seemed to "lock" into the sled just fine. I felt guilty having david replace it as it worked just fine, but he of course did it happily.

Matthew