jruss9819

I went in to the local audio place and did some taking to the guys about putting in a aftermarket head unit. I was told that with the nav system that I couldn't put in a new head with out interfering with the nav system. The guys there don't seem to have a lot of experence working with acuras w/ the nav system. I'll try a couple of other places over the weekend but if I could get some help that would be helpful.

I have noticed plenty of folks with after market head units but I can't recall any with nav. Has anyone ran into this or put in a head unit without messing with the nav?

LiQiCE

The NAVI sends out a 12v signal when it wants to "take over" the front speakers. I believe that the head unit in the car is what decides to switch the front speakers over from the CD/Radio/etc to the navi.

If you get a new headunit, you'd need to buy something like this:
LINK

But then that means you'd also need to be able to connect your speakers using RCA jacks, which I think requires you to replace your speakers and get an amplifier.

Alpine also makes a dedicated speaker that you can have plugged into the NAVI and it would be used anytime the NAVI talked to you... but then it wouldn't mute the front speakers first.

bl^5

I have no idea what the guy liquice is talking about but it sounds incorrect, completely incorrect.

Alpine makes the navi. The newer Alpine headunits have an input for navi that will mute the headunit and give out audio from an alpine navi system. The factory headunit has the output that should correspond with this input. I am 90% sure that you should be able to connect a certain wire from the factory headunit to an alpine headunit and not lose any functionality. Do a search in the AV forum to see if anyone has done this.