aftermarket cd player help

[egesford]

Ive just tried to fit a kenwood cd player in my 2001 a3 (non bose rear amplified) using the pc9-404 adapter. Stereo works but still only the front speakers have sound.
There is a couple of wires not connected i.e. 1 red connector block with 1 wire going into it, 1 wire with spade connector that went to the factory headunit, and a blue and white wire coming from the same connector as the RCA leads.
I will put some pictures up tomorrow
any ideas would be much appreciated, cheers

 

[egesford]

 

[egesford]

pics dont seem to work, ********

 

[AndyMac]

You have to host the pictures somewhere else, like photobucket and then link them to here.
You need to connect the blue/white flying lead to the power antenna or "remote on" lead from the kenwood. This is the 12v trigger that turns on the rear amp. You will ave to fade to rear a lot to balance the sound as you now have more than twice the power going to the fronts and the feeble 2 x 20w rear amp will struggle to match it. Far better to rewire the rears directly to the HU and use the adapter just for the so called subwoofer.

 

[egesford]

nice 1 buddy, thanks

 

[egesford]

all wired up now but sounds crap, is it possible to bypass the amp without totally rewiring the rear speakers? was thinking of just running new wires from the headunit to the door pillar and joining to the old speaker wires where they come out of the door

 

[AndyMac]

You can pick up the feeds to the rear speakers from the red connector in the sub woofer (passenger side boot cubbyhole), so no need to pull the rear panels. Presume you have a 5 door?

 

[egesford]

ideal, take it i can just use 4 of the redundant wires from the headunit to the amp to wire the speakers directly? or are they connected to anything else? cheers mate
and yes its a 5 door

 

[miss_lucy]

ive had problems with my sony headunit, finally got the correct leads for s3 - fully amplified, but the base is **** i think its using the sub as a speaker, anything i can do? ive got PC9-408 leads, Thx

 

[AndyMac]

Yes the 408 adapter uses a sh!tty hi-lo converter to take perfectly decent hi level speaker level outputs back down to lo level pre-outs to feed the Bose amp. This process is useless at the best of times and usually introduces distortion and interference. You need the PC9-410 adapter (as long as your Sony has front & rear pre-outs (RCA's)) as this just uses the unamped output (pre-outs) to feed the Bose amp, so no buggering about with the quality of the signal. However you may get "popping" issues when changing cd track - loud pop from the speakers, which is even more annoying. This is dependent on the new HU, some get it some don't, and there's not really anyway round the issue apart from soldering small capacitors inline with the pre-out signal wire
http://www.audi-sport.net/vb/car-entertainment/26307-a6-bose-system-sony-headunit-problem.html

 

[AndyMac]

egesford - yes the 2 pairs of outside wires on the ISO harness at the HU are the left & right rear speaker outputs. You need to connect the new speaker wire to these observing the +ve/-ve polarities and connect the other ends to the corresponding wires on the red connector going to the sub. If you are leaving the sub working then you need to chop the 4 speaker outs on this connector as they are connected to the amp inside the sub, then use the feeds no longer connected to the sub connector and connect these to the new speaker wire observig the correct polarity.
If you are disconnecting the sub then you can plug the new speaker cable directly into the sockets on the red connector using thin blade terminals, as the sub/rear amp is no longer connected to anything.

 

[miss_lucy]

Thanks, Ill buy some and let you know how it works out!!!

 

[egesford]

nice 1, i replaced everything in the end as the eggbox speakers are crap anyway just ran new wires throughout the car (******** of a job) and fitted pioneer speakers front and rear, and gona get one of those 'stealth' subs which fit in where the standard one is. Sounds 100 times better already, and all ive broken so far is the trim that runs along the floor