Weird Audio Problem, Help!

Possibly something wrong with the H/U? Its odd that it only does it in a certain mode... A bad ground would do it in all modes I would think. Im not that smart with all this stuff, just installed many stereos and ran into that similar problem once with a bad ground, and another time with bad rca's. Try swappin in a buddy's H/U if anyone you know has another sony deck, and see if the problem persists...

There are high-pass and low-pass filters on your amp and in the sound menu of most H/U's. I dont know the scientific explaination of what they do, but they definitely affect the sound. Try adjusting those settings and listen to the sound difference and see if you can at least tone the noise down to the point of not being too noticable...

Still, I haven't read that you've run a new, independent power wire for the deck. Do that next and make sure it's away from the other harnesses. I ran mine from the distribution block by the driver side shock tower with good success. I can't remember if it was a 10 or 12gage wire though.



Many low to mid end H/Us will have idle noise and will pick up a lot of engine noise inherently. High end units will filter that out. If you have all the wiring done properly and you are getting some noise, it sounds like it's the H/U.

It should go without saying that the system levels should be set within reasonable limits. The article mentioned 80% to max. With EQs and gains, I keep that to 50% since I really hate to hear clipping. I like the decks to have high volt pre-outs to make up for that.

I have a $120 H/U in my truck that has terrible "system hiss" as the article put it. I attribute that to it being $120. When a CD is put in, you can here it thinking through the speakers which is to be expected from a $120 deck IMO. In the Stang, I'm running an older $800 Pioneer deck and it has almost NO audible hiss or feedback. It also has 6v preouts so it takes very little gain at the amp to get it to to where I want. I usually gage it by turning it on and turning it WAY up with no signal to see what gets through. It has about as much noise as my Marantz home audio receiver (almost none).

To put that into perspective, I installed both deck with the same wiring and grounding methods.

GreenStangGT said:

So this morning I hooked up another Sony H/U in order to see if mine was the problem. However, the new H/U I hooked up won't play! It turns on and acts as though it's playing, but no music can be heard through the speakers. I know for a fact that it is a working H/U, any idea what the issue could be? Wouldn't all the Sony decks use the same plug and should thus be plug and play?

Click to expand...

Again, I dont know a ton about all this, but all the sony decks that Ive played with have the same connector shape and size in the back, and have all been plug and play.