Hello everyone. I am a new owner of a '12 TL (non-navi). Love the car but when I got it, all the speakers were blown. So, I decided to upgrade the entire system. I have install around 30 systems over the years but I have an issue I can't seem to fix. I laid all new wire to every speak instead of bypassing the factory amp. I am using a clarion 4 ch amp to power the 4 speakers. My issue is I am getting a static white noise from all the speakers. I have unplugged the RCA's from the new HU as well as from the amp's input. The noise is still there. I tried moving the ground, even sanded the chassis down. Still there. I ran the power on the drivers side and the speaker wires and RCA cables to the front down the passenger side, so I am pretty sure it's not noise from the power wire. The power wire is 4 AWG to the distribution block where it goes out to the amp with an 8 AWG wire. The amp isn;t a very powerful one, so 8 AWG is fine.

I have scoured this site as well as many others. Hopefully someone here and chime in.

 

Acura's audio system in the TL for some reason has a lot of white noise after it goes from 0 volume to 1 even with no audio playing. 3G TL guys ran into the same issue. Only way to fix it is to bypass the factory amp. You may need a line driver if the amp can't pick up the signals from the HU.

 

Thanks for the reply. Yeah, I was reading about that. I actually did bypass the factory amp. In fact, I unplugged it completely. Could a bad ground location cause this? I did sand the ground very well. I used the metal on the right side near the factory amp as the ground. Oddly, it didn't matter if I used a different location. I tried the back where the factory ground is and still got noise. Might just be a noisy amp. I couldn't find any noise complaints about the unit on using though. Sadly, I don't have gain adjustments on the one I have.

 

Wait a second, your amp doesn't have a gain adjustment?

If you disconnected the RCAs and the noise is still there, then the HU is fine. I'd suspect your amplifier. Did you gain match everything? You want to first maximize your head until gain to just below clipping (an oscilloscope helps), then start with your amp gain turned all the way down and increase is until the speakers outputs are just below clipping, then reconnect the speakers and decrease gain if needed to balance things out. But if you don't have a gain adjustment on your amp, I'd say get a better amp.