jarnbarnjum

hello acurazine.

this is my first post ever, and i can tellyou that im glad i found this website, just loaded with good information! anyways lets get to the question.

ive recently purchased a 2006 acura tl with no navigation. my first upgrade will consist of adding an aftermarket amp for a jlw3v3 i have lying around. i will be keeping the stock head unit, and i wish to keep the subwoofer controls via the headunit, which leads me to my question.

the amp im hooking up is a alpine mrp-m500, and i plan on using the speaker level inputs for signal. now the speaker level input harness in this particular amp has a 4 pin setup, made to get signal from a right and left channel; i only want to use the sub wires for the connection for the independent sub control. how exactly would i do this?

thank you in advance to whoever replies, ive searched for the last few hours and cant find a straight answer.

boxmanryan

Hi I'm a loudspeaker engineer with some background in car audio, so I'd be glad to knock this one out for you.

Your factory radio's subwoofer amplifier output is an excellent way to send hi-level signal to your aftermarket amplifier, and retain your stock subwoofer level controls. You can connect the factory subwoofer leads directly to your Alpine MRP Hi-Level input. You'll see 4 pins (L+ L- R+ R-), but you'll only need to use 2 of them (Left or Right, it won't matter). Just connect positive to positive, negative to negative.

Here's some additional extra credit info you might find useful:

- You don't have to remove your factory subwoofer, you can keep it along with your new subwoofer, if you'd like. Simply solder + and - wires from the factroy subwoofer leads to your Alpine MRP Hi-Level input.

- If you do remove your Factory subwoofer, it will leave an 8" hole in your rear deck, which would be a great place to mount your new subwoofer (if it fits), run a bandpass port through, or just leave empty and have it be a great way to allow the bass from the trunk flow better into the cabin.

- The signal you get from your factory subwoofer leads will be crossed over at 80Hz. This means the sound coming out of your new subwoofer will play all musical notes that are 80Hz and lower. This is suitable for most people so you may not need to worry about it. Just be mindful of this when you go to set the crossover settings on your Alpline MRP. If possible, I would recommend that you disable any Low-Pass crossover settings on your amplifier. It will likely have way to select between Hi-Pass, Low-pass and Full-Range. For a subwoofer, you'd normally have Low-Pass, but in your case you should leave yours at Full-Range. You don't want to cross over a signal at the amplifier when it has already been crossed at 80hz by your factory radio.

So there's more info than you asked for. Good luck, and feel free to PM me if you run into trouble.

Blessings,

Ryan