Last night I installed Hawg Wired's Stage 1 DCS/DX amp with 5.25 speakers. When I turned on the ignition, there's a loud hissing/white noise sound. This hissing stays audible for a few seconds even after turning the ignition off. The audio sounds louder but the quality isn't as clean and clear as I expected, probably due to the constant white noise in the background.

This system uses HW's direct connect harness so it should be getting it's ground from the factory wiring harness, there's no ground lug on the amp that I could see. I reconnected everything back to stock and it sounded fine, so I think if I had a bad ground it would manifest itself either way. The only adjustment on the DCS amp is the High-Low switch. I'm using the factory radio so it's set to High.

I tried calling HW this morning but they said all of their techs are off today. So I thought I'd drop by here and see if anyone has any ideas.

Thanks.

 

I just installed a set of HW 6.5 speakers but did not use their amp, and instead used the Rockford Fosgate pbr300x2. It of course is not direct connect like HW is.
Since I read this post I had to go out to the garage to see if I hear the same thing you're hearing. Sure enough, white noise.
Are you sure the only switch on your amp is a hi-low, and that there is no gain switch or something? I used the write up found in the Audio section relating to my amp and was adjusting the gain today, and found that the higher the gain setting, the more white noise there was. So I left mine at less than half and it's not as noticeable.
The mods should move this thread to the audio section soon, so maybe it will get the audiophile's attention.

 

If that noise is loud enough to hear with the audio playing then I would wait to hear from HW about your inquiry. This is not normal. What is normal is playing an audio track and it ends and in between the previous and next you have a "little" floor noise.

 

Thanks for the replies. I don't really have a choice but to wait till Monday when I can talk to a HW tech. It's gotta be a bad amp or HW's harness. I hooked up the HW speakers to the stock radio and there was no noise at all. With the amp inline, the noise is constant, even with the volume all the way down. The weather is really nice weekend and I'd love to go for a ride, I don't want to button up the fairing just to have to remove it again. We'll see.