How to wire amp with dash speakers?

Some of us left the front squawkers alone. Even with amplified door speakers, you should still hear them.

I tapped into the speaker harness at the door-body connectors so I didn't have to pull the HU or fish new wire into the doors, was a little lazy but it worked. I cut the wires and ran the radio output to the LOC and then the speaker side from the amp. This link has a little info on the wiring at the HU but if you just search the forum for wiring diagrams, info is there.

Radio wiring diagram | PriusChat

Good luck and keep us posted on your progress!


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How you wire it up will depend on what your setup is. I assume you are going with a set of components with a crossover for the front? If so you are going with a passive setup. From the amp, you would run the front two channels to each of the crossovers (one per side) and then one output would go from the cross over to the woofer in the door and the other to the tweeter in the dash. If you are going active in the front, that is a whole different setup.

Does the amp accept speaker line outputs? If not, you will need a line output converter.

 

It will sound much better to have component speakers up front with real cross-overs, with coax in the back. With one each channel to the two cross-overs and one each channel to the two rears, then save the fifth channel for a sub later. Base blockers are just cost cutters for factory installations and sound like it.

 

What speakers did you get for the replacements?

Car manufacturers love to list out how many speakers the system comes with. 6 speakers is better than 4 you know. But really what they are saying is that they actually used component speakers for the front instead of a cheap single speaker, maybe with a whizzer cone. If they used component speakers in the rear, they would have called it an 8 speaker system. BUT, it's still a 4-channel system, 2 front, 2 rear. They use a very simple crossover system where they cut off the low frequencies (bass blockers) to the tweeters and let the natural response of the woofers to cut the high frequencies there. It's not ideal but it works.

I would recommend a similar setup. It's not helpful or at least is more difficult to tune with two sets of speakers coming at you from the front. If you want to use the door+dash, the doors should have a crossover themselves to cut the high frequencies and leave those for the dash speakers. Assuming you use the 300Hz high-pass cutoff for the dash, you would want a 300Hz low-pass for the doors and run both off the front channels of the amp. The door+dash is acting as one speaker at that point. But that's a bit of work. And it's easier if you get a good component speaker for the front to put the woofer in the door and tweeter in the dash. The crossover would already be tuned and you wouldn't have to try to do the same yourself. Again, this is what they are trying to do with the stock setup.

 

frodoz Stereo Upgrade | PriusChat

 

I think you should install the amp for the door speakers, listen to the sound, and go from there. Your door speakers are good choices and once amplified, they will definitely sound good. The 3 1/2's will still provide some front fill off the windshield but speakers that small aren't designed to be your main source for sound, leave that to the larger ones. You want to know they're there but they don't have to blast as much IMO.

If you don't like it in the end, then the choice is really up to you and what you want out of it. You could:
1) leave them
2) get a second small amp for them
3) swap them out for components or as mentioned, get passive crossover sets and wire them as a set.
There's a ton of possibilities.

I think the back door speakers definitely need to be amplified if your doing the fronts. If given a choice, do the rear doors over the dash ones.

Your speaker choices are good. What amp and LOC's are you using?


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I have a 5 channel amp and I am going to go with an active system instead of a passive. My plan is to skip the rear speakers altogether or just run off the head unit. Purists will say it messes with your front sound stage too much.

My planned setup:
The head unit goes into a DSP where it does the LOC, processing (cross over points, time alignement, etc). The DSP then goes into my amplifier. 2 channels on the amp will be used to run the full-range dash speakers (crossed at 300-2000 hz depending on the speaker). The other 2 channels will run the woofers in the door. The 5th is reserved for a subwoofer. This method is more expensive and complicated and may not be for you.

The alternative would be to go with the passive design. This would allow you to use 2 of the amp channels to power the 4 front speakers and then the other 2 channels to power the rear. You can acquire new crossovers to match your existing speakers. You may be able to pick some up used as they are often discarded in favor of a passive setup.

 

I'm not so sure on others' choices but I use and like my Audio Control LOC, LC6i. It's not packed with options but makes a nice signal to my amps. It takes 4 channels in and creates 4 plus a 5th sub out.

I ended up having a little noise at the sub amp so then threw a cheap Power Acoustic active crossover between the LOC and amps and am noise-free and pretty happy with the sound.

The Infinity's are nice speakers and I like that Alpine amp. I think you'll get some nice sound and it's so nice having 1 amp do it all, unless one of the channels gets an issue, then you lose the concept. I had an old Soundstream 5 channel amp I loved but then the sub channel went bad and smoked a woofer. :-(
Holy crap it stunk!

As for the dash speakers, I still think you could leave them. If you want an easy an flexible addition, maybe try the Alpine Power Pack; it fits under the dash and would take the dash speaker wiring as inputs. Plus you'd then have 2 extra channels to play with if you need.


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I put the LOC and X-over under the passenger seat. I broke into the speaker harnesses at the kick panel and rear door connectors so I wouldn't have to pull the HU and also run less speaker cable to into the LOC. My original plan was to connect the LOC to the amps and be done, but I ended up with noise on the woofer, a low periodic rumble. I did a little testing around and found it came from the LOC, so I then added a cheap Power Acoustic crossover into the mix and it cleaned up the sub nicely and gave me a better selection of things to tweak all around. I moved the sub RCA from the LOC to the x-over. Both units take 4 channels in and create 5 out with the sub.

I did nothing to the dash speakers, still stock. I waited until all else was done and realized they were fine for me.

I attached a drawing of my system and variations to it based on another wiring diagram I found on the Forum. You'll see how the dash speakers may be wired. My drawing is a little out of date and colors specified may not be accurate. I just need to insert the x-over between the LOC and amps and move the sub output from the LOC to the x-over.

 

I'm using the Alpine MRX-V70 amp myself and have been very happy with it. It has built-in support for high-level input which I am using currently. I haven't noticed any issue with it that would push me to look into getting an external LOC. That's just my personal preference. It's good enough for now and we'll see what I decide to do with the HU in the future.

As for Option 2, if you setup a passive crossover (speaker level inductors and capacitors), then you have the same 50W from the amp as you would with just a single set of speakers. It's just that you're splitting that 50W between two sets of speakers instead of just one. The lower frequencies will only go to the doors and the higher frequencies will only go to the dash.

So I guess you would be "wasting" the tweeters in the door speakers since they won't be used at all. But that's by design. The dash speakers should give you a better sound stage for the high frequencies than the doors. So that's where you want them. And doubling up on the high frequencies could make the sound too harsh or require equalization which is going to reduce the amount of power to the tweeters anyways. Just requiring more work to do that.

 

Yep, love to play in the cars. Each one is a new learning experience, especially this one since I had to make sure I can get the spare tire out. I only wish I had more time for better custom jobs.

I'm looking forward to seeing and hearing about your setup once it's all done.


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Sure, I've done this many times. You'll need something like this:
ebay link

Yes, these are not "matched" with the mid and dash tweet you have, but trust me it will work just the same.

My preference is that the front stage gets all the power and the rears are just for "fill", that's why they're called "rear fill". You can get away with not amping the rear speakers, but of course you get more control if you do. I'd say amp them.

Buy that passive Xover I posted above (or something similar) and wire your speakers as normal.

Front output from amp ----------->| Xover |-------------> Dash speakers & Door Speakers

Rear output from amp -------------------------------------->Rear Door speakers

 

Yes, the amp has a built in LOC so the speakers wires can plug right into there instead of using the RCA inputs. It's also able to use that for the remote turn on. So I don't have to run a wire for that. It turns on really fast with no thump. Only a small little chirp when turning off.

Currently I have just a pair of Infinity Kappa 62.9i speakers in the front doors and a shallow mount Pioneer TS-SW3001S4 sub in the hidden compartment with the amp. Dash speakers are disconnected. I haven't posted many pictures yet as it's still pretty rough and incomplete. I've posted a very little thing on CarDomain about it. The goal would be to pick up a pair of Infinity Kappa 60.9cs components with the woofers in the front doors and tweeters in the dash. Then I could move the 62.9is to the rear doors.

You would wire the front door and dash speakers in parallel, not series. With no crossover and just plugging both sets of speakers in, you would be running at a 2ohm load which could pull even more wattage from the amp. Possibly too much. (I'm simplifying here) The crossovers would act to split the signal so that it acts more like a normal 4ohm load instead of 2ohm