Monster Cable RCA's?

[joshpoints 10+ year member]

Well I've decided to try and find a high quality rca cable because I'm getting noise through my rca's and I've grounded everything at this point and still have a whine. Do any of you run monster cable rca's? If so have you had noise problems?

Or do you have a success story where you had whining and noise with a different brand rca and then switched to monster cable and noticed the noise is gone?

Click to read more...

 

[audiolife 5,000+ posts]

for everyone that will tell you to run sheilded you will have 1 or two say unshielded. best way i can tell you to isolate the problem is have a set of super long rca's and run them outside the vehicle to the amp and see if the noise goes

 

[joshpoints 10+ year member]

for everyone that will tell you to run sheilded you will have 1 or two say unshielded. best way i can tell you to isolate the problem is have a set of super long rca's and run them outside the vehicle to the amp and see if the noise goes

At this point it doesn't really matter to me. I can't isolate the problem inside the car anyway. I've grounded the headunit, grounded the amps to 1 grounding point and grounded all rca cable to one point. I just want some rca's that will eliminate any interference. The set of knukonceptz rca's I have don't seem to be working. It's extremely frustrating considering I have to take my sub out to get to my amps. This requires removing the trunk latch thing and then lifting my heavy sub and box out and then unscrewing an access panel to get to the amps.

What brand rca's do you run?

 

[joshpoints 10+ year member]

I bought these rca's from knukonceptz around 3 years ago. I'm guessing I bought their cheapest ones. I recently broke a set of rockford fosgates that were running to my amp and replaced with knukonceptz krystal series. Maybe I'll hook this rca cable up and see if I get noise through it when I use it for my mid and high's amp.

 

[audiolife 5,000+ posts]

you can do that point is sometimes you get cold solder joints on the rca joints in the amp, some times wires start picking up noise to a few other things. sounds like alot of work but if you are replacing the rcas anyway getting an elcheapo set of 20m just to see if there is an improvement saves time and can actually help determin where the problem is. you might laugh but trying hit and miss ways of doing it can take alot longer and be even more work and wasted money

 

[squeak9798 5,000+ posts]

No point in spending the money on overpriced cables (such as Monsters) without first knowing why you are getting noise.

What have you done to isolate the problem, with than regrounding?

Tried muting plugs?

My advise is to first go through the proper steps to isolate why you are getting noise, and where it's being picked up from.

And, beyond that, I would advise you not to waste money on Monster cable //content.invisioncic.com/y282845/emoticons/wink.gif.608e3ea05f1a9f98611af0861652f8fb.gif Same quality wires can be had for much less.

 

[joshpoints 10+ year member]

you can do that point is sometimes you get cold solder joints on the rca joints in the amp, some times wires start picking up noise to a few other things. sounds like alot of work but if you are replacing the rcas anyway getting an elcheapo set of 20m just to see if there is an improvement saves time and can actually help determin where the problem is. you might laugh but trying hit and miss ways of doing it can take alot longer and be even more work and wasted money

EDIT: Ignore info below. The reason why it was picking up a signal is because I grounded all the rca's to one point; what an idiot lol.

Well I have new news hopefully this will help you guys help me. I found that when I disconnected all rcas from the cd player somehow the amp would still get a signal if one of the rca's was hooked up to the amp only. It won't play loud but you can hear the songs still. Sounds strange to me.

Next thing I noticed is if I hook up one set of rca's to the 4 channel amp there is no whine. When I hook up the 2nd set of rca's to the amp (EVEN if disconnected at the CD PLAYER) the whine comes back. Any ideas? The whine isn't channel specific. So if for example I hook the rca's up to the front channel on the cd player and the front channel on the amp and then hook up the rear channel only to the amp I will get a whine. If I do this same process but instead have the rear channel be the one that is hooked up at both the cd player and the amp I'll get the whine in the rear channel. Hopefully that makes sense if not please let me know and I'll try to explain in some other way.

 

[joshpoints 10+ year member]

So after ungrounding the rca's I found that the only way to get the whine is when all four channels are hooked up. For a test I ran the rca's so that I would run front left and rear left to see if crossing front and back channels together would cause whine and it didn't. So no matter how I run 2 channels even front left and rear left together I don't get a whine. It only happens when I run all 4 channels at the same time. When all 4 channels are ran then I get a whine in all 4 speakers as well. Now I'll go and see what happens when I run 3 channels.

Okay I ran it with 3 channels hooked up and there was no whine. I don' t think it's the amp because when I ran one set of rca's off a portable cd player with rca's from outside the car and the other set off the h/u and there was no whine.

I guess I could go to radio shack and get another adapter that goes cd player to female rca connection and use the pre-existing rca's that are running through the car (one getting a signal from the h/u and the other set powered by portable cd player.

Do rca's need to be ran away from each other? All mine are ran down the passenger side near door touching each other. Maybe I'll run one set down the driver's side door up against a power wire and one down passenger side? Do you think this would help or no?

 

[joshpoints 10+ year member]

you can do that point is sometimes you get cold solder joints on the rca joints in the amp, some times wires start picking up noise to a few other things. sounds like alot of work but if you are replacing the rcas anyway getting an elcheapo set of 20m just to see if there is an improvement saves time and can actually help determin where the problem is. you might laugh but trying hit and miss ways of doing it can take alot longer and be even more work and wasted money

If it's a solder joint at the rca's in the amp how do I fix this?

 

[JimJ 5,000+ posts]

Open the amp and fix the connector...

 

[joshpoints 10+ year member]

Open the amp and fix the connector...

I'm starting to think this isn't the problem.

 

[bimma85 5,000+ posts]

And, beyond that, I would advise you not to waste money on Monster cable //content.invisioncic.com/y282845/emoticons/wink.gif.608e3ea05f1a9f98611af0861652f8fb.gif Same quality wires can be had for much less.

I thought for $10, my monster cable was well worth it //content.invisioncic.com/y282845/emoticons/wink.gif.608e3ea05f1a9f98611af0861652f8fb.gif//content.invisioncic.com/y282845/emoticons/biggrin.gif.d71a5d36fcbab170f2364c9f2e3946cb.gif

http://i51.photobucket.com/albums/f383/smittyk323/1d1da384.jpg

 

[joshpoints 10+ year member]

Okay I ran it with 3 channels hooked up and there was no whine. I don' t think it's the amp because when I ran one set of rca's off a portable cd player with rca's from outside the car and the other set off the h/u and there was no whine.

I guess I could go to radio shack and get another adapter that goes cd player to female rca connection and use the pre-existing rca's that are running through the car (one getting a signal from the h/u and the other set powered by portable cd player.

Do rca's need to be ran away from each other? All mine are ran down the passenger side near door touching each other. Maybe I'll run one set down the driver's side door up against a power wire and one down passenger side? Do you think this would help or no?

 

[thatsgonnahurt 10+ year member]

what you're describing is loop area noise. when all four channels are connected a large loop occurs between the channels allowing noise on the chassis to easily couple into the signal path. this is a situation where twisted pair cables excel over coaxial. by twisting all of the conductors together you reduce the loop area and lesson the pick-up of noise.

i agree with squeak, do the mute test. make muting plugs by shorting the leads of a male rca plug. make one for each input on your amp. if the noise goes away your amp and all wiring, crossovers and speakers are fine. next move the headunit on top of the amp using short rca cables or male-to-male gender changers. if the noise is not present this points to the interconnect cables being the problem. use twisted pair cabling.

 

[joshpoints 10+ year member]

what you're describing is loop area noise. when all four channels are connected a large loop occurs between the channels allowing noise on the chassis to easily couple into the signal path. this is a situation where twisted pair cables excel over coaxial. by twisting all of the conductors together you reduce the loop area and lesson the pick-up of noise.i agree with squeak, do the mute test. make muting plugs by shorting the leads of a male rca plug. make one for each input on your amp. if the noise goes away your amp and all wiring, crossovers and speakers are fine. next move the headunit on top of the amp using short rca cables or male-to-male gender changers. if the noise is not present this points to the interconnect cables being the problem. use twisted pair cabling.

I don't get what you mean by shorting the leads of a male rca plug. How do I do this?