4th gen Altima stereo install help (keeping stock head-unit)

[Atomic-S14]

*UPDATE*So I got the amp installed. Ran the power wire and the remote turn-on wire (tapping the violet/yellow ACC wire from the deck) on the driver side to the trunk. Since the Amp had the speaker line input, I just disconnected the rear speaker wires and used it on the Amp.

Now when the radio is on, I can hear this little buzzing NOISE!..... What could be the problem? Is it because I'm using the speaker line input? Or are the stock rear speaker wires running on the driver side and the power wire I ran on the same side is giving off noise?

Any input is appreciated.---------------------------------------------------------------------------

Okay, so I had a Pioneer 6x9's that was just laying around. so over the weekend, got bored and replaced my stock rears with the pioneers. After the new speakers were installed, I did a quick sound test and found out that the new rears sound much quieter. Now that I think about it, stock 6x9's were 2 ohms and the pioneer TS-D690R is 4 ohms rated at 80w RMS. Anyways, I wasn't happy with the sound after the hard work of removing of the back panels and putting it all back togehter.

I have a spare Amp and a spare sub that was from the old car.The Amp is a Kenwood KAC-929 2ch (says 150W x2 @ 4 ohms) and the sub is a JL 12W3D2 (version 1 - Do not know the specs for this ).

Now I have couple of questions for you Audio guru's on this forum.I'd like to just hook up the Amp to the rear speakers and not use the Sub.Would this amp work ok with the 6x9's I put in? Or would I be better off to just take the 6x9's out and just use the stock front speakers and a Sub in the trunk? The amp and the sub was working okay with my old setup but did not hit very hard. Maybe I didn't have it tuned right.

The Kenwood Amp has this thing called "speaker line input" and I was wondering if thats what I have to use to hook up the rear left and right speaker wires to the amp to get signals.

So please be kind and suggest some idea's for my setup.

Random craps from the old car:Kenwood Amp <http://manuals.kenwood.novenaweb.info/l ... EN).pdf>JL 12" in a Sealed box (Q-logic?)Pioneer 6x98 awg Power wire (about 17ft? with 50w in-line fuse)8 awg Ground wire

Don't haves:Remote turn-on wire (what size wire do I need for this? )RCA cables (don't need it since I have a speark line input?)speaker wires (what's a good size for these?)

Modified by Atomic-S14 at 12:14 PM 7/5/2009
Modified by Atomic-S14 at 6:31 PM 7/9/2009

[rjdmmfl1]

Okay, so I had a Pioneer 6x9's that was just laying around. so over the weekend, got bored and replaced my stock rears with the pioneers. After the new speakers were installed, I did a quick sound test and found out that the new rears sound much quieter. Now that I think about it, stock 6x9's were 2 ohms and the pioneer TS-D690R is 4 ohms rated at 80w RMS. Anyways, I wasn't happy with the sound after the hard work of removing of the back panels and putting it all back togehter.

I have a spare Amp and a spare sub that was from the old car.The Amp is a Kenwood KAC-929 2ch (says 150W x2 @ 4 ohms) and the sub is a JL 12W3D2 (version 1 - Do not know the specs for this ).

Now I have couple of questions for you Audio guru's on this forum.I'd like to just hook up the Amp to the rear speakers and not use the Sub.Would this amp work ok with the 6x9's I put in? Or would I be better off to just take the 6x9's out and just use the stock front speakers and a Sub in the trunk? The amp and the sub was working okay with my old setup but did not hit very hard. Maybe I didn't have it tuned right.

The Kenwood Amp has this thing called "speaker line input" and I was wondering if thats what I have to use to hook up the rear left and right speaker wires to the amp to get signals.

So please be kind and suggest some idea's for my setup.

Random craps from the old car:Kenwood Amp <http://manuals.kenwood.novenaweb.info/l ... EN).pdf>JL 12" in a Sealed box (Q-logic?)Pioneer 6x98 awg Power wire (about 17ft? with 50w in-line fuse)8 awg Ground wire

Don't haves:Remote turn-on wire (what size wire do I need for this? )RCA cables (don't need it since I have a speark line input?)speaker wires (what's a good size for these?)

Modified by Atomic-S14 at 12:14 PM 7/5/2009

OK, the factory 6x9's were designed to only produce low frequencies... sp essentially those were your "subwoofers" for the audio systrem. Your 6x9's are most likely full range coaxials... and on top of that, as you mentioned, they are 4ohms... for both reasons, it would be hard to really get those 6x9's to ever reproduce the sound in the factory car...

in a properly tuned system, rear 6x9's are pretty much pointless.... that's because I nicely tuned system (aftermarket) will make use of a subwoofer (even a 10" could do nicely) to reproduce the lower frequencies... and the front stage of your system can be tuned to do the rest... thus in this scenario you really don't 6x9's

so I could tell you to hook the amp up to the 6x9's , but that would only give them more power, and make them sound louder.. but most likely, it will not reproduce the bass better , the subwoofer would do that...

regarding the Jl W3's, the model you described could be either dual 2 ohm or dual 4 ohm... if it is a dual 2 ohm sub... , when wired properly, it must be wired either into a 1 ohm load, or to a 4 ohm load... your previous system may have been wired to a 4 ohm load as some amps aren't 1 ohm stable... that plus the fact that you had it in a Q logic box may be why you weren't impressed.... but , for what it is... in a proper box, the Jl W3 is a decent woofer... its never gonna win competitions, but with 300 watts of continuous RMS power... it can be a decently musical sub in a sealed box... but a custom box, not a standard one like the Q-logic box

OK, lastly, regarding your amp.. speaker line inputs allow you to run speaker wires from the stereo directly into the amplifier without using RCA cables... these are also known as high level inputs... so no, you don't need RCA cables, just some good quality speaker wire... regarding speaker wire... its always a better idea to go with the largest possible... so I would try to run some 14 wire from the deck back to the amplifier... you could always cheat and run the wire from the connections in the rear deck where the factory 6x9's were conected, but that would utilize all of the factory's cheap a$$ 22 gauge thin speaker wire... never a good idea IMO ..

hope this helps... chime back in if you have more questions

[Atomic-S14]

Maybe I should just take the rear speakers out and hook up the Sub to the amp from the speaker wires until I upgrade to a new head-unit.

This is JL 12W3v2-D2 (version 2) but it looks like the name D2 tells me that the sub is a dual 2 ohms. When I took out the sub from the box, I saw that the voice coils were wired in series. So I was at 4 ohms?

This is the spec for the amp. When it was hooked up to my old car, I ran it in Bridge mode. so was I over powering the sub with it?I do not know the proper way of tuning a sub with the amp.

It has the following options (old settings in BOLD): -BASS BOOST ( Off - 6dB -12dB) <--- which setting do I use?-EXPANDER (OFF ON) (When this switch is turned ON the dynamic range is increased.) <---What does that mean?-LOW PASS FILTER ( OFF ON) -OPERATION (STEREO MONO)-----------------LPF FREQUENCY: 50-200Hz <--- Where is the sweet spot some clean bass? I had it at 80.-INPUT SENSITIVITY (V): 5 (MIN) - 0.2 (MAX) <--- Not sure on what number to set this at.

Lastly, is the 17 ft of 8 awg power wire long enough for my sedan? also is it thick enough for this small setup?---------Oh and how could I set the amp to put out 300W continuous RMS so it matches the RMS for the sub?

Thank you again
Modified by Atomic-S14 at 10:03 PM 7/5/2009

[Atomic-S14]

noise problem!