Center Dash Speaker Not Working

So I am at my wits end with this one. I purchased the JL center tweeters from Tech12volts to replace my center factory speaker. Before I replaced I held the speaker up to my ear to make sure I was getting sound and then did the same after installing the JL’s and they worked.

I also got the sail panels to move my focal tweeters from the dash to the doors, and then started really hearing engine noise coming trough them as they were now being run by the amp instead of the HU. Today I was trying to get rid of the engine noise and tried several things with grounding before I removed the HU to install GLI’s for the RCA’s. Nothing was disconnected but when I was putting things back together I was checking all the speakers and the center was not playing, so in rechecked all the connections twice and everything seemed in order. To test l, I hooked them up in one of the corner dash plugs and they worked in that location and from my understanding all 3 dash speakers run from HU power so how can the corner dash hook up work but the center now doesn’t all of a sudden?

the engine whine is still there so need some advice on that as well please if anyone has any insight on this please share.

 

Are you talking about alternator whine?
http://www.caraudiohelp.com/newsletter/alternator_whine.html


Check your grounds. Most likely the culprit.
For what it’s worth I got a prewired harness from James and it was wired wrong. I had to get him to send a new one.

 

the 4 channel amp is wired directly into the factory amp harness under the passenger seat for speakers with separate power, ground, and remote. I tried scraping a spot to bare metal and creating a new ground - didn’t help. I tried grounding the HU and the same spot as the amp - didn’t help.

but what really weird is after do that, and trying different RCA’s I went ahead and installed the GLI’s and there was still an amp hiss but the alternator whine was gone so I tested and listened for several minutes and it was gone so I put everything back together, started the truck and it was back! Obviously could be my amp that’s causing the noise but I have no clue why it was gone while the head unit was out but came back after re-installing.....nothing was disconnected and reconnected, just put the HU back in its location.

 

It’s being introduced into your system somehow. Did you install crossovers?

 

I’ve seen multiple guys have to run a drc-200 knob to get rid of the hiss.

 

no crossovers. Focal components have in line filter for the tweeters, amp crossovers are set to full and using the Kenwood HU for crossover settings.

 

There is no hiss with amp gain set to zero....turn the gain up just barely and the hiss returns, also gets louder with more gain.

 

When you grounded the HU to the amp ground, did you bolt directly to the chassis of the HU? Or just the negative wire? Same with the amp(OEM amp negative wire or new wire form amp to truck chassis)? The reference for the audio path will be the chassis ground of the HU run a nice 10g wire from the HU down to the amp and reground the amp and HU. There is a threaded nut in the passenger sill close to the B pillar, I think it's an 8mm. Bare the metal around the hole and bolt both grounds together. That's where I grounded mine and I have zero noise. I also use Japan's Mogami ultra performance studio wire for my RCAs. You can pretty much wrap the wire around the alternator and not get noise. But the reference for those fancy cables is still the HU's ground. Hope this helps, I know you tried some of this already but it can very tough to track noise down.
Also check the battery ground and possibly improve that? The battery is a natural filter for alternator noise, if it's got a bad cell it will show as noise too.

 

No did not ground the chassis, just ran the ground wire to the same location as the amp. And at the time I had also scraped to bare metal and tried a new grounding point for them amp that what it was previously.

 

Is the amp mounted on a wooden mount or metal? If it’s on metal then you need to get it off that.

 

It’s under the passenger seat on top of the carpet not screwed into metal.

 

If it’s the stock HU you can’t get rid the whine. It’s caused by the BT module and it can’t be turned off.

 

kenwood DMX905S is the HU I’m running. Any ideas on the center speaker not working?

 

did you talk with james? i'm sure he's seen just about every issue ever with the tundra stereo.

 

If I'm following this correctly, you moved your dash tweets to the sail panels leaving the dash speaker connection unplugged? Supposedly the center channel pulls signal from the corner speakers so if there are no longer speakers connected to the corners I believe that is the reason you have currently have no sound in the center.

I ran my JL component tweets in the sail panels hooked to the door speaker and put some Kenwood 3.5" in the dash corners and the same JL C1 center speaker you are using and have no issues.

 

I'm just putting this out there, but the audio gods are sending you a sign!
The first thing I did when I got my truck was disconnect the center channel. You are not in a Atmos theater. There is no place for a center channel in a vehicle, as you do not have an ear where you're nose is. You have two ears and that's exactly how many tweeters should be in an audio system, Left and Right just like your ears. If you're watching video ALL the time then maybe. But, ultimately when properly tuned, a component set in the doors, with the tweeters in the sails, will outperform any multiple tweeter array. If you have more than 2 tweeters up front, you should set your system to mono, otherwise you'll have phase issues too.

This is just an opinion about the center channel, not any criticism of anyone or what they do with their trucks.

 

Yes that’s exactly what it is, spoke to James just a while ago. I knew they were connected but didn’t realize they corners had to be hooked up for the center to work.....so mystery solved on that one. James also seems to think my head unit is causing the noise so I am looking into warranty options for that.

 

Yeah probably not going to make a huge difference but just figured I would use the dash locations for a little fill in sound since it is hooked up. The rest of my system does really well, just read about those who had done it and figured I would try it.

 

alrighty then

 

Appreciate the help fellas! center speaker issue solved now just have to work on this engine noise issue.