Car Stereos: Alternator whine, stereo installer, audio express

Question
QUESTION:

I just installed a new deck into my 08 Sonata. I just have the deck, no amp. After it was installed I started getting feedback through the speakers, alternator whine, gets a bit louder as a accelerate. The sound is present only when the car is on and on all, DVD, CD, Radio. The installers said they did not know what was causing it. I then took it to best buy and they suggested a noise filter so I bought a American International S-15A / S-25A off eBay and had best Buy install it. When installed the stereo would not power up. The technician said it was hooked up and looked as if it was working but had no idea why the deck would not come on. I then took it to a third stereo installer and they have suggested a noise filter from Radio Shack but RS had no idea what I was talking about. So, here I am.

ANSWER: Hi Roland,

Sounds like you're getting just a bunch of crap from a bunch of people.

I'd suggest first step to do is to disconnect the ground wire coming out of the deck from the harness, and ground it yourself to somewhere on the car's chassis.  Bare metal, unpainted.  Bolt it in place or something if you can.  See if that helps it.  There's no reason in the world why you should need to buy anything else other than maybe some wire to fix it up.

Justin

---------- FOLLOW-UP ----------

QUESTION: The one thing that Custom Sounds, Best Buy and Audio Express did check and re-check was the ground. All three are lost as to the cause because the ground is good. The kid at best buy grounded several ways. I guess that is why they has suggested the filters. I hate to think that three places all could miss a mess up with the ground

Answer
Hi Roland,

The fact that they were so quick to jump to band-aid solutions suggests to me they weren't very clueful in the first place.

Your next step, then, is to check the speaker wires themselves.  Remove the door panels, and disconnect all of the speakers (ensure that the terminal connections don't short to anything), and reconnect them one by one.  See if the issue is in all of the speakers.  If it's only in some of them, the issue might be poor shielding on the speaker wires themselves (aftermarket decks generally send more power to the speakers that would be more likely to be able to receive interference.)  If you don't want to or don't know how to take the door panels off, have someone else sit in the driver's seat with the car on and the stereo on, but the volume at 0 (the whine should be apparent regardless of volume).  Have them press the gas in random intervals and listen to each speaker very closely to see if you can identify which speakers are doing it.

If it's in all of them, then you know it's an issue at or before the source.  If it's in only some, then it might be the speaker wires themselves.

If it's in some, replace the speaker wire going to them with a higher quality, well shielded speaker wire.

If it's in all of them, then revisit your grounding issue.  It could be a case of the car itself having a not so great ground.  I'd suggest looking into hyundai forums on the Internet, see if anyone else has the same issue.  Some cars are grounded better than others.

Also check your battery to see how well it's grounded.  There at the very least should be a 4 gauge ground wire going to the chassis, somewhere on the engine's block, and somewhere on the transmission.

A noise filter is an option, but it's a bandaid, won't fix the original problem (if your car has bad grounding, other electrical sensors will be affected by it and your car might not even run as well as it should), and might not eliminate it 100%.

Justin