*Please Help* Horrible noise coming from speakers

[CaptCrawfish]

So I decided to redo my wiring, really just reorganize it. I began doing all this without disconnecting the negative on the battery because I was fairly confident that I wasn't going to short anything out and didn't want to have to reset all my settings on the headunit. Before we begin, it's important to note that when I plugged the positive wire into the amplifier it gave a spark, I however didn't think anything of it and continued on. I have 2 amplifiers, one for my subwoofer (MB Quart) and one for my 4 speakers (Rockford Fosgate). I simply began binding wires together and what knot until it looked to be finished. Eager to hear my system again I turned the key to the ACCESSORY SETTINGS, not actually running, only to be greeted by a nice, loud buzzing sound. This is not engine noise, because I know what engine noise is because I have that too, but I have a ground loop isolators to solve that...bla bla bla needless to say I did my best to get rid of that problem but simply couldn't so I decided to try ground loop isolators which did the trick. That however is another story for another time.

So... I was greeted with a brand new buzzing sound (very loud too, something you can't drown out by cranking up the volume) even when the car isn't actually on. Adjusting the volume does absolutely nothing, it's the same loudness at all volumes. I began to unplug the RCAs and plugging them back in. The noise is only present when I have the RCAs plugged into the headunit and not when they are only plugged into the amplifier which means they aren't picking up any noise along the way. I tried plugging 2 speakers into my other amplifier for my subwoofer and plugged the same RCA's into that one... the buzzing was still there so I don't think it's an amplifier problem. I tried a different set of RCA's. This too did nothing to solve the problem. I then began to look to my Kenwood headunit. I started to mess with the fader and balance controls. Those are completely out of whack. For example, when I'm messing with the fader and begin setting it to R "rear" it starts to go to rear, but the begins going to front all of a sudden when it should be completely in the rear of the car. Also when music is played through the speakers, it sounds really weird. It fades in and out and the bass line is almost completely missing. The rear speakers are the worst of the two, they don't sound remotely right. They are extremely quiet no matter what volume I crank it up too. The left rear speaker doesn't even seem to work at all. My system is so messed up I don't even know where to start. I've tried everything I could think of, but nothing works. It was working fine before I reorganized the cables, but now it is a complete mess. I'm getting to that point where I just wanna tear everything out of the car and burn it in the fire pit out back. I've spent countless hours trying to fix this, but to no avail. I really need some help guys...please help!

*EDIT* It's actually really random. Sometimes only my front speakers get power while other times no speakers get power. I also tried the grounding trick where you ground your RCA's to the head unit. This actually worked to get rid of the buzzing sound. I also decided to try grounding my antenna to the head unit and RCAs. This too worked. I have no idea why it did, but it did. This however didn't solve the random power problem. I have no idea why only some speakers would be getting power while others didn't.

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[CaptCrawfish]

I don't know how you are supposed to close one of these or mark as solved, but I actually figured out what the problem was. After hours of troubleshooting and testing thing after thing, it turned out to be a simple issue. It wasn't immediately apparent to me because I have a Kenwood Headunit not a pioneer, but the issue did come down to grounding. The thing that was improperly grounded was actually the RCA's themselves. My deduction of what happened, don't know if it's even reasonable, is that when I plugged in the power wire (p.s. I had already had everything hooked up to the amplifier at this point, which is what leads me to believe this) you'll remember in my original post up above that I said it gave a fairly decent spark, very noticeable. What I believe happened was that this discharge actually surged through the amplifier without damaging it and then proceeded every which way it could which happened to be RCA's. This ultimately blew the pico fuse inside my headunit which is responsible for grounding the RCA's it self. Because this had not been previously blown, I had never experienced this noise before. Now, I along with many others have heard of the plague for Pioneer headunits, that is that the Pico fuse blows often enough to have the issue widespread. Since I had a kenwood headunit, I foolishly thought that this couldn't be the problem and completely over looked the fact. Now I know and any of you out there that had the same mindset as me know that every headunit is prone to this happening. It may not happen as often, but none the less can and will happen if the conditions are right. I don't know if my explanation of how this happened even makes sense, but nonetheless I was able to solve the issue. I was finally able to put everything where it needs to go and reorganize all the wiring to make the ride look clean, and finally have a noise free system. I'm happy! //content.invisioncic.com/y282845/emoticons/cool.gif.3bcaf8f141236c00f8044d07150e34f7.gif

As a side note, what led me to believe it was a grounding issue (as many noise issues are) is that I accidentally hit the windshield wipers and noticed that the noise increased with the motion of the wipers. Lucky break for me I guess //content.invisioncic.com/y282845/emoticons/wink.gif.608e3ea05f1a9f98611af0861652f8fb.gif . So moral of the story is that noise usually means grounding as many of you guys and gals already know.

 

[CaptCrawfish]

Oh... and also about the whole speakers not working and what knot. I'm not really sure what caused that, but maybe the huge amount of interference messed with the signal enough to completely get rid the desired sound itself. Again though, I really have no idea. All I know is that the problem is solved.