What is the best way to get the cleanest ground? Run a wire to the ground on the battery?

 

You want your grounds as short as possible. The entire metal portion of the vehicle is ground, so the shorter the ground path the better. Make sure your ground leads are the same size as your power lead, or larger. Also, be sure to tie all of your equipment to the same grounding point.

 

Totally agree with onecoolee - don't skimp on small ground wire. Make sure you use good quality and properly sized wiring and good clean connections. Consider soldering all connections as it will provide much better and reliable contacts.

Ja

 

If you make a new ground hole, make sure you use a good bolt, and thread the hole carefully, being sure not to strip it when tightening. Make sure that the bolt or screw you use will not corrode, and that the place where you locate your ground has no paint under the bolt/washer or is stripped of paint, to ensure a solid ground location. You want to do anything possible to eliminate the introduction of ground loops, especially if you are mixing new equipment with the factory head unit. If you are starting over with all new equipent, carefully route your speaker wires and rca cables away from computers, power wires, or any source of rf energy, as it may be coupled to the signal lines--this is BAAADDD, and needs to be avoided at all costs.

Clicks, ticks, thumps, alternator whine, etc. is all a function of improper signal running, and poor grounding. All good audio/video installers should carefully choose a quality ground, and ground all of your equipment so as to not introduce any unwanted noises into your system. If you get unwanted noises in your install, check your grounding, or consider using a line driver, like a Phoenix Gold PLD1 or TBA1, as they are designed to balance signals, and increase level output (more voltage on signal line), to increase noise immunity in your system. Your system will only be as good as your weakest link, so starting off with a balanced/nosie free signal can make a huge difference in the overall sound quality of your install.

Anyone curious about my nick ? It stands for One Cool EE (where the EE means Electrical Engineer)

 

Thanks for the info! There is alot of good knowledge in this forum.

 

Cool, another EE on this board

 

I have one thing to add. Try go to in a spot that it heavy metal. That is, if you push the metal and it flexes, try somewhere else. You want to get as close to the frame/unibody weld spots as possible, but dont get crazy about it... just try to get into thick metal.

Also, if you see semi-decent factory grounding spots, those should be tried first. In my system I used the factory ground spot in the rear compartments and I dont have whine or noise.