playing with RCA's

[BILL*69]

i read somewhere (cant for the life of me remember where), that if you plug in and unplug your RCA's at your head unit or amp while the unit is on, you run a high risk of doing the RCA ground track or whatever its called, hence why they begin to pick up engine noise, as their ground is blown. (most common on the pioneers, coz they have a week ground track or something like that) hence pioneers being the most problematic.

if this is the case, that would be the source of my engine noise, and also the reason that its apparent now and not before when i had my old sub and speakers. only started happening when i changed sub/speakers, and when i was playing around with it i disconnected RCA's while it was on.

anyone know anything about this?

[BILL*69]

no ideas guys? no theories on this theory? lol

[rathies]

not in my experience..ever.. applicable to stage and car audio lol.
if you've got a whine then yes its most probably a grounding issue. it can either be a deck grounding (the deck is trying to ground through the rcas) or it could be an amp grounding issue. Its been mentioned on this site before that earthing the rca to the chassis of the deck seems to fix the problem..

If none of these fix the problem then it could be poor quality rca's.

[FloridaStanza]

If i remember correctly pioneers have a micro fuse for the rca outputs, and if you remove the rca's while it's all running than it can blow the microfuse and cause massive ground loop. There was a wrightup on some car audio website about a way to fix the problem, ill see if i can find it.

[tazza255]

its the rca trying to ground the deck make a new ground wire for the deck if not that then try a new set of rca

[Jono]

i read somewhere (cant for the life of me remember where), that if you plug in and unplug your RCA's at your head unit or amp while the unit is on, you run a high risk of doing the RCA ground track or whatever its called, hence why they begin to pick up engine noise, as their ground is blown. (most common on the pioneers, coz they have a week ground track or something like that) hence pioneers being the most problematic.

if this is the case, that would be the source of my engine noise, and also the reason that its apparent now and not before when i had my old sub and speakers. only started happening when i changed sub/speakers, and when i was playing around with it i disconnected RCA's while it was on.

anyone know anything about this?

Yes, yes and yes.

The biggest cause of ground track failure is a dodgy ground at the amp.