What causes noise from amp w/vol. @ 0???

[budahbuddy803 10+ year member]

OK, well after trying a few amplifiers out on my components run active i have noticed a huge difference in sound depending on the amplifier.

The biggest difference was from my Alpine 4 ch. to my SS ref. 405. When i was running my passive xover i had the alpine bridged and with the vol on 0 i noticed some "interference" it wasnt constant or going with the rpm it was just a small amount of noise. I got my "new" HU and ran each speaker off of one channel. The interference was not nearly as bad, but i could still hear things coming out of all four speakers.

I hooked them up active using my SS ref. 405 and it was BEAUTIFUL!! Absolutely no noise what so ever anytime. (although i noticed the actual amp itself made noise each time the mids would hit. It sounded on pitch with the note it was playing. IDK WTF that is and its still there)

My question is, can you tell whether an amp will put out that "interference" by specs? Is it the Total harmonic distortion, Signal to noise ratio, Damping factor, or the TIM distortion ratings that is causing my mysterious annoying noice??? Is it none of those?

The only time i could hear it was when the vol was on 0-2 after turning it up past that the noise is drowned out.

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[aturcotte127317 10+ year member]

try grounding the RCA sheilds. is it a pioneer HU?

 

[budahbuddy803 10+ year member]

nope its a bomb *** Alpine.... in the sig.

The fact of the matter is when running my SS amplifier it doesnt happen, when running my cheaper alpine it happens. It is something in the amplifier and i was wondering if you could tell by a spec. that most amps have.

 

[budahbuddy803 10+ year member]

try grounding the RCA sheilds. is it a pioneer HU?

also, the noise coming from the pioneer's grounding problems fluctuate with the RPM's of a vehicle.

 

[Louisiana_CRX 5,000+ posts]

amp gain may be too high

 

[Supergumby5000 5,000+ posts]

just sounds like signal interference. If you are able to drown out the interference at 2 volume on the headunit, i wouldnt worry about it too much. Between the equipment and how your wiring is ran and how the connections are made, everything has to be pretty **** perfect to have zero interference.

 

[aturcotte127317 10+ year member]

nope its a bomb *** Alpine.... in the sig.
The fact of the matter is when running my SS amplifier it doesnt happen, when running my cheaper alpine it happens. It is something in the amplifier and i was wondering if you could tell by a spec. that most amps have.

oooo.... hm.... idk about that //content.invisioncic.com/y282845/emoticons/tongue.gif.6130eb82179565f6db8d26d6001dcd24.gif sorry

 

[budahbuddy803 10+ year member]

amp gain may be too high

I dont think thats it because the gain is pretty low, but i will check that out.

just sounds like signal interference. If you are able to drown out the interference at 2 volume on the headunit, i wouldnt worry about it too much. Between the equipment and how your wiring is ran and how the connections are made, everything has to be pretty **** perfect to have zero interference.

If i could guess i would say that it is my speaker wire connections because all four speaker wires were short so i soldered and heat shrank additional wires...

I have only my tweets running off of the alpine currently because one of my channels on my SS works on an off and i wanted constant power because it was annoying. When that channel was working there was no noise what so ever. Now that i threw my alpine on my tweets and get noise from that amplifier.

Those are the only two amps i have used, but the alpine is the one with the noise "problem." If i run my tweets w/o mids on the SS there is no noise if i run the mids w/o tweets on the SS there is no noise. If i run mids on the alpine there is noise from mids if i run tweets from alpine there is noise. I have narrowed it down to it being the amplifier. The thing is like $150shipped new i believe so its not the most expensive thing in the world, but THAT AMP is deff. what is causing the noise.

Out of what everyone has said so far i dont think they understand that it is the Alpine amp that is causing the noise. Does THD or any of those others specs cover interference?

 

[Louisiana_CRX 5,000+ posts]

if you can't get it I have a brand new PPI Art Series noise gate for sale //content.invisioncic.com/y282845/emoticons/smile.gif.1ebc41e1811405b213edfc4622c41e27.gif

 

[budahbuddy803 10+ year member]

if you can't get it I have a brand new PPI Art Series noise gate for sale //content.invisioncic.com/y282845/emoticons/smile.gif.1ebc41e1811405b213edfc4622c41e27.gif

its not worth any extra gadget to fix the problem IMO. I know that i can find a decent amp that will not give me any interference. I just wanted to know if there was a spec. i could look at in order to determine if i would get any interference out of an amp. I guess there isnt because you guys are suggesting things that beat around the bush.

If the one channel on my SS didnt give me problems i would have absolutely no interference and a wonderful sounding system. Instead i have to run this alpine until my Crossfirevr302 gets here so i can run my mids off of the crossfire and tweets and sub off of my SS. I am almost confident that once i run those two i will not get any noise when the vol. is on 0. We will see and if i still do i am selling all of my amps to try and find a decent 5 ch. that works 100%