Audio help??

[gracee]

I just got my mom's 91' festiva and when I turned on the radio I heard a bit of crackling over the music. It does it whenever there is music playing. I figured it might be a blown speakers, since my mom is well known for blowing speakers, but I'm wondering if there could be any other reasons for there to be crackling. I don't really want to spend money on new speakers just to find out there's an electrical problem that I have no idea how to fix....if anyone could help me that'd be much appreciated

[cliferton]

My experience with something like that is non festiva related. My fiance grand prix use to get feedback through the speakers even when the radio was off. Didn't always do it. Then one day the altenator took a crap after that was replaced it never did it again

[tooldude]

Does the noise only occur when there is vibration from the car moving? It's hard to troubleshoot a noise you can't hear, but here may be some possible causes of noise. Connections to the speakers could be loose at the speakers or at the radio. The volume control is defective - see if you get noise when you jiggle it. Maybe a speaker wire has rubbed through the insulation and intermittently grounds out. Possibly something is lying on the speakers, under the grills, and is rattling on them. Another type of noise is from Radio Frequency Interference (like radio waves). There is supposed to be a suppression capacitor attached to one terminal of the ignition coil and bolted on the strut tower (driver side) which could be bad or missing. These typically stop RFI from the ignition. If the stock part can't be found, a type used on older cars, in a metal container for example, can be used. Another possibility could be that ignition spark is arcing to ground somewhere from bad spark plug wires or distributor cap, or someone replaced the plug wires with non-resistance metal core wires. If it's RFI that's the problem, another suppression capacitor attached to the radio may stop it. I've forgotten how that works. It may be that it's attached from the radio case to ground on the car framework. That may stop an alternator problem like cliferton mentioned above. The speakers are easy to get at, so one thing you could try is connecting another radio to them without the car running, or out of the car, and see how they sound. Hope this helps.