mshedden
Junior Member
I have a 2002 Subaru Outback with a not bad McIntosh (Clarion) factory system (for the time!), consisting of a 6 disk cd/am/fm headunit, under seat amplifier, 4 door speakers, two tweeters in the front and a sub in the back. Recently the headunit died, so I replaced with a Kenwood Excelon DPX792BH (double din). Crutchfield recommend by-passing the factory amp and run speaker wires directly to the speakers, but as it was previously OK (and free!), I wanted to use the factory amp anyway.
The factory headunit was non-standard. It had a 13 pin DIN connected to a 13 pin DIN from the amp (no RCAs). I removed the cable from the old h/u and did a bit of googling and found the cable spec. Pretty impressive cable - it had an outer braided sheath, then 4 inner braided sheaths, and within each of those braided sheaths were a pair of line level wires (LF, RF, LR, RR). There was also an amp trigger and a ground for a total of 10 wires. I soldered in 4 RCA plugs, connected the amp trigger and the ground to the appropriate wires on the crutchfield provided interface to the car wiring. I soldered all the braids together and ran them also to the ground on the car wiring.
Fired it up - everything worked perfectly. Except... HORRENDOUS alternator whine. Worse than that, just turning on the ignition produces a certain noticeable amount of noise. Took everything apart, installed a filter on each of the yellow and red power wires - made no difference (or made it worse). Ran a ground wire from the h/u chassis to ground on the car body (this may have helped a very small amount, but not much).
Ideas? With the original h/u there was never a hint of noise whatsoever.
The only possible error that I have made would be that I think the original outer braid on this DIN cable was attached to the chassis of the old h/u - tying the h/u and the amp together in some way? Thats probably something I'll try next, but getting desperate here since I'm really not sure what's causing the problem or what to do to fix it... Google tells me that others who have tried this with the McIntosh system got a similar result, but no clear indication of a solution.
Cheers!
The factory headunit was non-standard. It had a 13 pin DIN connected to a 13 pin DIN from the amp (no RCAs). I removed the cable from the old h/u and did a bit of googling and found the cable spec. Pretty impressive cable - it had an outer braided sheath, then 4 inner braided sheaths, and within each of those braided sheaths were a pair of line level wires (LF, RF, LR, RR). There was also an amp trigger and a ground for a total of 10 wires. I soldered in 4 RCA plugs, connected the amp trigger and the ground to the appropriate wires on the crutchfield provided interface to the car wiring. I soldered all the braids together and ran them also to the ground on the car wiring.
Fired it up - everything worked perfectly. Except... HORRENDOUS alternator whine. Worse than that, just turning on the ignition produces a certain noticeable amount of noise. Took everything apart, installed a filter on each of the yellow and red power wires - made no difference (or made it worse). Ran a ground wire from the h/u chassis to ground on the car body (this may have helped a very small amount, but not much).
Ideas? With the original h/u there was never a hint of noise whatsoever.
The only possible error that I have made would be that I think the original outer braid on this DIN cable was attached to the chassis of the old h/u - tying the h/u and the amp together in some way? Thats probably something I'll try next, but getting desperate here since I'm really not sure what's causing the problem or what to do to fix it... Google tells me that others who have tried this with the McIntosh system got a similar result, but no clear indication of a solution.
Cheers!
