Crackling from components (1 Viewer)

[Erick P]

I have Alpine Type R (SPR-176A rated at 50 watts RMS) components up front powered by a Kenwood amp that puts out 60 watts RMS per channel. I get some crackling from the mids and highs at higher volumes. The old Pioneer components that I replaced with the Alpines did the same thing with this amp.

I have a 10 gauge power cable running to the amp, should I use 8 gauge? I know upgrading my sub amp's 8 gauge power cable to a 4 gauge cable dramatically increased the sound quality.

Or... is my amp a bit underpowered for the components, causing the crackling noise?

I'm using the crossovers that came with the speakers and the amp has a built in high pass filter. I ran 16 gauge speaker wire to the speaker crossovers

 

[Jack Daniel]

replace the speakers with elemental designs EDI's. super SUPER quality these things are amazing!

 

[MatthewKolden]

I had some crackling with some Infinity speakers I used to have. I found out (the hard way) that i needed to let the car warmup in the winter before playing anything on those particular speakers. One day I hopped in on a cold winter day, turned up the radio, and blew the speakers. Maybe it was just a fluke, but it sure wasn't cool.

 

[Jason Fulton]

Bah, theres better for the money. But that is beside the point, don't spend money on new equipment until you know its the equipments problem. Check the ground on the amp, is it tight up against bare metal? Are all the connections tight in the amp, are the speaker wires loose at all or oxidized in the speaker crossover or at the speaker connection points. Is your gain cranked too high?

Also when you say your sub increased in quality from an 8ga wire to a 4ga wire, its not possible . It can get louder, which in turn may mean sq to some people, but in reality all that happened is your amp is recieving more current and producing more power, something your components won't need.

 

[Erick P]

haha, yea, thats what I meant.. it got louder which made it sound better to me

The gain isn't cranked up all the way. It will do it at the lowest gain settings too... The speaker wires going to the speakers were were replaced when I installed these new speakers and the wires going to the crossovers from the amp aren't corroded and are thick enough (16 gauge I believe).

I ran the ground wire to a point in my car that already had some bare metal. Maybe I can try to relocate it to somewhere else...

Thanks for the suggestions

 

[Jason Fulton]

You're very welcome, if it doesn't seem to be the ground, which I have a feeling isn't the problem, see if you can get your hands on another amp and if that will fix the problem. Good luck.