Well, I may have bit off more than I can chew, and I need advice from you guys who have done this before. Lucky for me, I know a few of you have done this recently, so I'm asking for advice.

I have just started a project to add an amp to my car. I took off all the door panels, side channel panels, and started running wires. I ran a mercman cable to get the audio to the amp from the factory harness, but before I put the amp in I want to add new 16ga for the speaker wires to all 4 doors and the 2 tweeters.

So, noble Acurazine members, how the hell do I do this? It appears the channels for stock wiring are actually harnesses, not channels, and thus there is no room to run additional wiring through there. I snapped some pics of my troubles. I'll upload them in a bit, but I wanted to get the help started. Its a long weekend, please help me have my car back in 1 piece by Monday.

 

Hi Reach,
With the exception of the drivers door it is a simple mater of disconnecting the (I can’t remember the name for it) rubber tube thing that protects the wires between the door and body pillar. It disconnects from the body side.

Open the passenger door and use your fingers to feel around the boot where it connects to the body. You will feel a plastic ring under the boot. The ring snaps into the body with a pair of ears (tabs). You should be able to feel this, just press them towards the center and the boot and ring will disconnect from the body. Don’t pull the rubber boot off the ring. It’s not hard to pull once you find the ears (tabs). With the boot off it’s an easy task to fish the wires thru. I pulled the plastic sheet back from the door so I could get my hands in. It doesn’t hurt to use a little petroleum jelly on the wires so they slide through the boot.

I just taped the harness for the driver’s door since there was no pass thru.

jeff

 

OK, I think I've figured out the front passenger door, and I'm trying to figure out the rear doors. Did you have to remove the seat belt tensioner to access the area behind it to run the wire? Where on these pictures you route the wire into the rear door channels?









This is proceeding sooo slowly. I keep accumulating additional trim pieces inside my house. At least my amp is mounted now... just got to get everything hooked up!

 

Additionally, I did get the driver's door channel off, and it appears to be occupied by 2 wire harnesses, unlike the other doors where there is room to run additional wire. Mercman, I know you just tapped the existing lines for it.

Rapmaster0, you said you got new wires into the driver's door, how exactly did you do that?

 

FYI - You all probably know this all ready, but be sure your battery is disconnected before disconnecting / reconnecting the yellow airbag related harnesses. Make sure that they are all reconnected before reconnecting the battery and turning the ignition.

We just did sound deadening in my wife's Element last weekend. While the seat was out (and a yellow cable disconnected) I turned the ignition on to test all of the rear electrical functions before reassembling the interior. (tail lights, brake lights, turn signals, etc...) Bad Idea. SRS indicator light came on. I had to do some digging to determine haw to reset it and just did about an hour ago. Wasn't that difficult, but would have preferred to not have to do it.

 

Thanks for the words of caution. I'll be extra sure about that.

 

I would not recommend running new wires into each door. The existing factory wiring is big enough to handle the increased power. Not to mention, it's already there. Are your tweeters in the dash or door?

You should be able to run a short 8 strand cable from the output of your XS6600 to the output harness of your OEM amp. This would feed all of your speakers with signal through your factory run wires.

BTW... that's a beautiful amp!! Move it up on that seat back a couple inches.

 

I am reconsidering the whole re-wire process as well. I always try to have my projects well planned out before I start them, and this is a clear instance of failure on my part. Not only do I not have the wiring figured out yet, but I do not have crossovers to drive my tweeters / woofers up front properly. I initially sourced the parts to work with the factory amp

Moral of the story: I'm heading back to home depot to pick up 15' of CAT6 wiring. That should be enough to run 4 channels to the front, utilize some as-yet to be sourced crossovers (hrm... speaker upgrade time?) and tap back into the speaker harness with IDC taps for output.

uncald4, what kind of wire do you source to run the return from the amp to the harnesses? I have heard of home theater wiring utilizing cat6 before. Oh, and yes, I mounted that amp in the dark a few nights ago, I will move it up a bit.



Am I ever glad I have both the Helm's service manual and the electrical troubleshooting manual. I never get lost with these trusty guides by my side.





MB Quart Q-Series look nice

 

I wouldn't attempt to install Q's in the front of most cars. Especially newer Acura's. Look at the Reference or Discus Series components. Your amp should have no problem with those.

I always use a "cased" 9 pin wire from either Streetwires or JL Audio. This is a sheilded cable with nine 16 gauge wires. 8 wires for signal and 1 remote turn on wire. This cable is about the size of 4 gauge and is well worth it's $1.30 per foot.

 

Reach,
Cat 6 is not speaker cable. It is used in home theater as low level balanced audio whole house distribution and some times for video. Just use speaker wire.
My xovers are up front (one is mounted to the factory amp and the other is in the pass kick panel). Just mount them close to the drivers where you can find the room and use the wire that comes with them. A word of caution, you need to make 16 IDC connections (if you include the tweeters) to your 20 pin harness in a very tight space. This will not be easy.

I did not realize that you were doing the rear doors. I do not use the rear door speakers in my system so I can’t help you with ideas on how to fish the cables. I just did the front doors and the passenger door actually had a wire race through the pillar so it was easy (once I found the route).

Keep at it and take your time before you know it you will be cranking the tunes.

jeff

 

Thanks for the advice guys, I love listening to your experience. I will reconsider the above plan... again.

uncald4, what is your reasoning against the Qs? What about the professional series instead of the reference?

 

Actually, a mere 12 IDC connections, as I will be utilizing a subwoofer and not the rear 6x9s.

I have to spend a while thinking of how I"m going to do this again. Merc, as you mentioned, the front passenger door looks easy (found the channel) and the front driver's door looks impossible. The rears appear to be do-able, but would require the removal of seat belt pretensioners and SRS components. I don't think I feel comfortable doing this, so I'm going to stick to tapping the factory connection. IDC, or cut/solder... dunno yet.

 

Can you please explain what "IDC" is?

I'm planning a TL install and it sounds like "IDC, or cut/solder" is a dilemma I'm facing too. I don't want to cut out my factory plugs, and my soldering skills are lacking, so I need some sort of solid way to tap my wiring without cutting. Maybe "IDC" is a solution?

Thanks.

 

Most people should not be reading into this thread. The tactics that Mikey and his cohorts are attempting are to fullfil his own journey. Nobody would need to do this much work to install an amp into a car.

The Q's are far to BIG and require too much power for your setup. You would need some major cutting into your metal door to get them to fit. Then you would need an amp that runs about 150x2 @4ohm. The "P's" used to be the Premium Series. And if they are anything like they were a few years ago.... the Reference components would blow them out of the water. I would also not recommend any of the newr MBQ's. About 5 years ago MB Quart was bought by Rockford Fosgate. It was immediately after that MB Quart products went to shit. The "E" Generation is the last of the good stuff. Ex...... RSE216, PKE316, DSE216.. etc.

FYI... The first letter in the model number is the Series (Discus, Reference, Premium and Q) The second letter is the style (S for Separate and K for Coaxial) The third letter is the Generation of the speaker (A is the first year, B, C, D and E for the last year of German handmade production) Now they are into the Americanized letters. I won't go into that because they all suck anyway.

 

Great info on reading the MB Quart products, thank you! I've been looking at all the different models available online and having some trouble telling the subtle differences, but now I've got the decoder ring, gratzi.

That being said, all I see now are RVF series available in my size... so I'll take a pass. Now I've got no idea what I want.



Back to the install... I got 4ga run tonight, remounted the amp up a few inches, and decided to go the IDC route (at least, for the moment) to get the signal back to the stock speaker harness wires. I stripped the factory electric tape and cloth tape away from the harness bundle and bought myself a lot more room to work with. Busy day doing memorial day family stuff tomorrow, but I should be able to wrap this up next free day I have.



Thank you uncald4 and mercman again.
And like he said, don't follow my install path, I like to make things hard on myself.

 

That's the ticket. Take a break. Enjoy a holiday! Drink a brew and come back to it laters.

 

Since you guys are saying his method is harder than it needs to be, what is the easiest way to wire the front speakers to an amp?

 

Like uncald4 said, utilizing a shielded set of wires and running straight into the stock wiring is probably the easiest way. In the end, what I did was use my 16ga cable I had bought and run it up to the stock harness, where I tapped in.

Now that I have completed the install... problem: noise

I have a fair amount of noise on the line. When the volume is low or off, I can hear hiss out of the speakers. Turning it up much drowns it out, but that's not the point. I tried a few different things, and at this point I'm ready to point the blame at a combination of balanced differential output from the TSX HU inputting to the unbalanced RCAs of the amp's input.

First, I unplugged the RCAs but left the amp wired to power and speakers. Turn on the car, turn the gains all the way up... no noise. This seemed to verify that the install is not at fault for me, and I"m not picking up the noise on the output side of the amp, its somewhere between input and signal processing.

Next, I got my iPod and a mini-stereo to RCA adapter and plugged it straight into the amp, to give it an unbalanced signal liks the amp expects. Results: perfect. Crystal clear and beautiful, what I bought the amp for in the first place.

So, with an unbalanced signal: good. With the TSX HU signal (supplied through a mercman cable, so I know the signal is good): bad. This is why I think I am right to point the finger at the input discrepancy.

Next steps: unkown. Mercman, how's that balum solution coming? That might solve this issue, correct? I would love to still be able to use this amp and not have to cough up another $500 for a JL 500/5.

 

Was the car running when the iPod was the input?

 

Running or not, it didn't seem to make a difference for either case. When I was running the car, I was just idling in Park, I didn't actually go anywhere. I'll log some road-time with it tomorrow and see how it is. I've got the iPod in on a long wire right now since that's my only good audio input, for the moment.

 

Obviously you aren't describing alt whine, but if you are receiving interference (opposed to the potential balanced to unbalanced issue) you may or may not with the engine running, as of course, not everything is powered in ACC. Only reason I asked.

 

Hi Reach,
The noise you are hearing is caused by the (-) side signal output of the HU being pulled to or near ground by the unbalanced RCA inputs of you amp. This is why I keep specifying the JL and Rockford amps because they have full differential inputs. A diff in can be used with any source but a diff output can only terminate in to a diff input.

The noise won’t go away until you provide a proper balanced load for the HU.

jeff

 

That being said, Rockford doesn't make a 5/6 channel amp. Does anyone know of any options OTHER than the JL 500/5 with balanced differential inputs? I'm looking for an all-in-one amp capable of driving 4 door channels (components + 3-ways) as well as a sub with 200+watts rms.

I might have a really sweet phoenix gold setup for sale soon

 

Would something like the Audio Control Matrix work? It appears to accept the balanced differential inputs.

http://www.mobileaudiocontrol.com/pr...49&l1=5249&l2=

Saw it online for around $200.

 

bullyx2, I think you're on to the right track. uncald4 convinced me to go down this path with the amp (I don't blame him) but he is also utilizing a Audio Control LC6i, a very similar line control unit which is doing the balanced converting.

The price difference for one of these units (nearly $200) is the same as what it would cost for me to upgrade to a 500/5 in the first place. I can either stick with my current setup and a line driver / converter, or upgrade. I'm heavily tempted to upgrade, but the reliability of the JL is questionable in my mind (that 1 particular unit, not the whole series... check reviews online if anyone is curious) not to mention all the setup work already done with the PG.

Uncald4, can you give me an idea of where a unit like the LC6i / matrix goes in the setup and how it is connected?

 

Oh Reach, one more thing.
I will be testing the BALUM in the car with a Blupunkpt amp this week. I have tested thus far with the O’scope and it looks good. I have to wire in the Blu amp and disco the JL. I think I have enough parts to make you one but I have already promised the first two (if they do the job). I’ll let you know.

jeff

 

mercman, can you tell me (and anyone else listening) more about your balum... what it is and what it does, what it looks like, etc. I for one am clueless.

I've heard of a "balun" before which is a generic term for a converter, but baluns are also used as balanced to unbalanced signal converters and noise eliminators.

Is it a box that does a conversion procedure? Some different kind of RCA cord that terminates in an unbalanced connection? etc. answers to my uneducated questions will help me make a decision about whether to pursue a line driver that can do the job (expensive... but with added benefits) or wait for the balum.

 

OH WOW....


:surrender

 

Never surrender, never give up...

Some more info on your thoughts other than your sarcasm would be nice

Tho I do enjoy sarcasm.

 

I'm the gas can on your forest fire right? I hope you get everything in with success. Do you wish that you had not taken this route? You're going to have the same outcome as if you would have used the EASY button. Assuming that you get it done. (Sorry... OK... I'm done with the wise cracks)

If I lived closer I would help you untangle that mess.

 

The BLAUM is a small box with 4 RCAs on the input and 4 RCAs on the output. It takes the balanced line input and adds the two phases together to create a single unbalanced line. When the two out of phase signals are combined one of them is inverted so the two signal lines are in phase and the common mode noise (picked up by the cable and grounds) is canceled. My design also gives each channel complete ground isolation for multi amp installs.

A BALUM can be a passive or active device (needs power) and just like anything else there are pros and cons to each system. I went passive because for several reasons because in our application the pros out weighed the cons.

I’ll work out the price shortly.

jeff

 

uncald4, you fail to provide me with insight into what the "Easy" button is in this case. Take it to a professional installer? Of course, but that wouldn't give me the fun of DIY. I'd rather it take me a week and 5 trys to get it right than pay someone else to do it. I learn nothing by taking that course of action. Even tho there is some noise currently, I have isolated the problem and have identified 3 decent courses of action:

- Get a new amp that supports the appropriate input type ($$$)
- Utilize a line driver which will convert the signals ($$)
- Wait for mercman's balum solution ($)

None of them are free, but the only reason I'm in this predicament in the first place is because I cheap'd out on the amp I bought, opting for a lower spec than what I was told is necessary and hoping for positive results. Lesson Learned. I do appreciate the good nature of your insults, but you got my manties in a bunch at the moment.

If any observer gets anything out of reading this thread, I hope it is that. Take it to a professional installer, or come correct on the first attempt.

 

Thanks for the insight jeff, I'll look forward to hearing more about your final balum solution!

 

I'm not understanding why the amp doesn't work for you. I would have just piped signal from the OEM deck to the amp. Then ran back to the OEM amp with the outputs on the XS6600. There are a few different ways to get this done. All of which might have taken 6 hours or less. Don't be sore with me. I'm trying to understand why and how your project went so sideways.

 

What you are describing is exactly what I ended up doing. I utilized the oem harness adapter mercman built and several people are using without any noise, and ran the cable thru some split wire loom to the amp. I then used 16ga brand new monster home theater wire (shh... it was cheap on ebay) to take the signal straight back to the speaker harness at the factory amp. I IDC tap'd back into the factory wires, but I have noise.

When I change the input on the amp to an unbalanced signal (analog out from iPod) the sound is flawless. I even tried it with a standalone DVD player today, same results, even while driving. Thus, I'm blaming the difference between what the HU is outputting (as mercman has been stating over and over and over again) and what the PG amp is expecting as an input.

I know you have a new accord which has a very similar audio system. I believe it is the audio control unit you are utilizing which is eliminating the noise from the balanced inputs on the way to the amp. Thus, why I am also considering going for a line driver. I took the time today to read the manuals for them online after bullyx2 pointed it out, and they perform this balanced -> unbalanced conversion as a part of their functionality. The Matrix one looks nice.

I hope this answers any questions as to how I routed it. I would be happy to take some pics and post them later. Oh, and yeah I used 4ga for the power too.

 

Reach,
I believe mercman was right about your problem. (-) signal from HU is being connected to the AMP's gnd which is likely 12ft of cable away from battery. you've likely created an ugly ground loop where (-) signal is at a different voltage than GND. With an accurate DMM, you might be able the measure the difference between amp's (-) input (outer ring) and (-) signal from the HU. If this is the case, that loop needs to be broken. My guess is mercman's balun will cure your problem assuming the gnds of the input and output are not tied to together. probably transformer coupled, which would probably be your best bet.

I'd wait in line for one of mercman's baluns. its likely a cheaper and simple solution and you can keep your pg amp.

my

 

You can’t connect that amp to the TSX HU no matter how you try.

It all a mater of electronics and system engineering. The HU in the TSX outputs its audio using a balanced line. Simply put it has two output stages for each channel or two live (hot) signal wires for each channel. If you look at the pinout for the TSX audio system you will see each channel has a (+) and (-) pins and a shield. The shield does not carry the audio (or any part of the signal) only the + and – wires are used. Since a normal car audio amp uses an unbalanced (or coaxial) line input where one wire is the signal and the other is ground you can’t use it in the TSX. This is because doing so would short one live output from the HU to ground when it is connected to the amp. Much in the same way that you wouldn’t connect the (-) speaker output of a high powered amp the chassis ground you don’t connect the (-) side of a balanced line output to ground. But this is what the inputs on most car amps do, so they absolutely can not be used in the TSX.

Some newer amps now feature balanced line inputs because they offer advantages for ground loop isolation when used with balanced and unbalanced sources. I won’t go into all the advantages of balanced lines in a car audio environment but it looks like it is the future for car audio.

Balanced audio is not new technology; it has been around since the vacuum tube days. It is used in pro audio; data communications and it is also is how the telephone system works.

Judging from all the past posts on this subject it seems like most of the “car audio pros” are completely baffled by this, everything is blamed from the installer to the quality of the HU. The truth is it is a simple mismatch of technologies and no amount of the “professional touch” will fix it.

An amp (or interface) with a balanced input is what the TSX needs.

I have preformed a boat load of tests on the audio system of the TSX with my electronic test equipment. This is the same equipment I use to repair pro audio equipment and its not the sound check installer stuff. I know what I am talking about when it comes to electronics; I cut my teeth on vacuum tubes.

 

I did notice a small difference. -10mV while on and at 'idle' signal wise, and between -13 and -20mV while playing a CD at volume 12.








That seems like a pretty small difference, but really, if there is any difference that's a problem, right? There is only a little noise on the line, but any noise at all is going to bother me until I've got it out.




To what you state here about providing a proper interface for the balanced input, what do you think about utilizing this audio control line driver unit which states that it has balanced differential inputs and "Low Impedance Outputs" which I read to mean unbalanced. I believe this could work for me, would you agree or disagree that this could provide a proper interface for the input from HU and output to my amp?

 

It's odd that you're the only one that has run into major problems with this audio system. We've turned an amp install into rocket science. Why? The TSX, TL and CL all a similar BOSE amplified systems. I have installed amplifiers in every single one of these cars for years and not had these drawn out problems. I'm not a genius but this install didn't require one.

I'm sorry for the rant but you don't need a variable speed, high rpm, orbital jig saw with a laser sight to cut a stick of butter.

 

That’s correct,
A pre amp (or EQ) with balanced differential inputs can be used to connect the TSX HU to your aftermarket amp. Just make sure that the outputs are standard unbalanced line outputs (I’m sure they are or it would be useless driving most aftermarkeyt car amps). Low impedance does not imply balanced or unbalanced its just impedance.
You don’t need any gain since the TSX HU has a good strong signal and the balanced audio lines won’t give you near the improvement that an unbalanced line will give you when you crank up the level. In other words a fully balanced line already has excellent S/N so cranking up the signal level won’t yield much of an improvement.

Back to your find, it looks like it will do the job and you would mount it close to your amp to minimize the distance that the unbalanced signal travels. How much do they want for it?

jeff