I have installed a Kenwood Sirius receiver and KCA-R71FM tuner. The tuner is in the bin below the Navi. I have routed the system to the audio auxilary using the Blitzsafe HON/SNY from Logjam. The power has been routed to the fuse panel on the drivers side, and the ground wire has been attached to the bolt located there.

I am hearing alot of engine whine through the system when listening to Sirius. I did some research and decided to add a Ground Loop Isolator from Radio Shack. This removed most of the noise, not all, but now I have very little bass and the signal sounds mono (both lines are connected and functioning).

Is it normal to loose sound quality when using the GLI? If I remove the GLI, would it make the ground better to splice the ground wire and attach it to a second location? Any other suggestions would be appreciated.

 

first you need to try moving the GLI out of the dash to see if the noise goes away. it has a transformer in it and is affected by anything electrical. it will actually generate noise into the system if it is close to anything electrical. i mounted mine way down under the dash to the right of the gas pedal behind the carpet. there is a perfect little cubby there that seems to be relitivly free of anything that will make noise.
you might need an extention to get it mounted there though.
also i have 2 of the same GLI units you have and i have 99.0 % noise free. i can only hear it if the volume is at 30 and nothing playing on the XM radio (dead silence) i cant hear any with music playing.

 

The Airbag ECU (the one with the yellow harnesses on the tranny hump, below the pcoket) has been observed to emit EMI that is picked up as noise on GLIs. Two or three different TSX's had noise when the GLI was on top of this ECU, and not when it was moved away from this ECU. Potentially the SHOND could pick up noise too, or the harness between the SHOND and the car, but the GLI is indeed the probable or at lest worst perp.

It would be a mistake to decide that Radio Shack GLI's are the epitome of QC - yours might be bad. Radio Shack might even use more than one supplier of GLI's to use as the same P/N - so Bass Mechanic may or may not have the same one. I have seen this problem you describe with GLI's (a long time ago) but I think it was a QC issue, not associated with a particular brand.

Personally, I would use the ground wire at the OE amp for your ground - just to share grounding points. I don't remember the pin location on the OE amp but the diagram is all over the AV forum, a search should find it OK.

 

oh yea, like Eldude said i forgot to mention i think your GLI might be defective because mine have perfect channel separation and no noticable loss of frequency responce. it could be that perhaps internally the connections might be reversed and that caused the channels to be 180 degrees out of phase.
try playing the system and unplug either RCA if the bass comes back then thats your problem.
i would see if they will exchange it for you.

 

Thanks for the replies. I tried connecting just one RCA line on the GLI, but the sound quality on that side did not change. Like you I am suspecting the quality of the GLI. It actually removed 90% of the noise from the system when connected, but the sound quality was too poor to live with. As it sits now, I have good sound without the GLI connected, but noticable noise. Would having the Blitzsafe and fm modulator tucked in the behind the Kenwood receiver be a problem, or should I really just try to find a working GLI?

 

i would try another one. i expected the sound to be degraded also but im using 2 because i have a line driver in between. but mine sounds perfect.

 

I had the same problem with engine noise when I installed my Sirius. I mounted the Sirius tuner in the trunk behind the carpeting. I put a GLI at the tuner in the trunk and that solved all my noise issues. For power and ground for the FM mod/controler I tapped in the main radio harness going to the back of the changer. It's just a standard 98-up Honda harness, so I just matched up the 12v constant, the Acc, and the ground.