Help!Running y splitters into new deck now I get a distorted signal at higher volumes

[2000nwxj]

My girlfriend got me a new deck for my birthday. My old alpine had 3 speaker outputs (front, rear, and subwoofer). My new one has 2 speaker outputs (front, rear or sub). Even though it didn't seem right the dude at stereo king told me I just needed to splice the rear into the front so I got 2 Y splitters and ran both red into red on the front speaker output and both black into black on the front output and my sub through the rear/sub output. I am assuming that I am running into some sort of impedance issue or I have to turn up the volume to high to compensate for the power loss of running 4 speakers through a 2 speaker output resulting in a blown speaker sound. I have an mtx amp powering my 4 infinities and a mono alpine powering my type-r. I assume that alpine wouldn't really make you choose between rear speakers or a sub if the deck was meant to run a subwoofer so there must be a way to solve the issue, do I need to bridge my amplifier?

Thanks for any insight

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[fly_marlin]

What is the new deck you got? I'm not totally clear how you have it wired, but to me it seems logical to split the front outputs into the mtx amp and use rear (sub) for the alpine. You said "to splice the rear into the front" - what does that mean exactly?

 

[2000nwxj]

It is an Alpine CDE-143BT. When I bought the vehicle it came with an mtx speaker amp, infinities, and an alpine stereo all wired up everything has always worked great. I used the same harness that was plugged into my old alpine took the four rca's that had originally each had their own output connection and ran them through splitters into the two connections. It seemed like the guy was thinking i could just t splice my wires or something but I figured I'd buy some actual splitters, the only ones they had of course were 20 dollars a piece so they ought to be good quality. Any volume setting over 23 gives me a blown speaker sound and it seems I need to crank it to 30+ to get the volume I had at 25 on my old deck.

 

[fly_marlin]

Still not exactly clear because your sentence is a bit long and I'm not sure what is splitting into what.

1. Are you only using the front RCA outputs from the HU for the MTX amp? Meaning, you have 1 front channel from the HU split for ch 1 & 2 at the amp and the other front channel from the HU split for ch 3 & 4 at the amp?

2. Then the rear channels are used only for the mono alpine amp?

 

[Umbra]

I'm not entirely clear on the wiring either, but I had a similar setup. I had a HU with only one set of preamp outputs, so I bought Y splitters to get "two" sets at the HU so I could have one for the speaker amp and a second for the sub amp. Start troubleshooting. Take the splitter out of the equation. If it works, then my guess is the splitter *****. If it doesn't, see if you can isolate it to the cables or the outputs by swapping things around. My Y splitters were like $5 on Amazon, but A) you could have gotten unlucky with a random bad item and B) **** at those shops are seriously marked up; it's probably only cost them a couple bucks.

 

[2000nwxj]

I'm not sure exactly how it is wired to the amp as I didn't change anything. All I know is I had 2 sets of RCA's running from the stereo to the mtx and 1 set to the mono sub amp. now I have those 2 sets running to the mtx going through y splitters into 1 set of speaker outputs(front). My mono sub amp is hooked up to the "rear/sub" output. I hope this answers your question sorry I really don't know my way around car audio systems. What does HU stand for?

 

[fly_marlin]

I'm not sure exactly how it is wired to the amp as I didn't change anything. All I know is I had 2 sets of RCA's running from the stereo to the mtx and 1 set to the mono sub amp. now I have those 2 sets running to the mtx going through y splitters into 1 set of speaker outputs(front). My mono sub amp is hooked up to the "rear/sub" output. I hope this answers your question sorry I really don't know my way around car audio systems. What does HU stand for?

HU - head unit. I think you just need to take out the HU and check what's connected to what. If look at it and not sure what's going on, take a picture of the HU connections and amp connections, then post here. I think this back and forth is just confusing anyone further and I think confusion (perhaps on installer's part) is what caused this to begin with.

 

[2000nwxj]

Cool thanks I'll have to post that tomorrow as I have to unbolt the mtx to get a look at the wiring and it is about bed time for me. thanks for trying to help sorry for causing any confusion I'll post some pictures of the wiring setup on the deck and the amp tomorrow.

 

[fly_marlin]

I'm not sure exactly how it is wired to the amp as I didn't change anything. All I know is I had 2 sets of RCA's running from the stereo to the mtx and 1 set to the mono sub amp. now I have those 2 sets running to the mtx going through y splitters into 1 set of speaker outputs(front). My mono sub amp is hooked up to the "rear/sub" output. I hope this answers your question sorry I really don't know my way around car audio systems. What does HU stand for?

HU - head unit. I think you just need to take out the HU and check what's connected to what. If look at it and not sure what's going on, take a picture of the HU connections and amp connections, then post here. I think this back and forth is just confusing anyone further and I think confusion (perhaps on installer's part) is what caused this to begin with.

 

[CrossoverOre 10+ year member]

see if the amp has a 2ch input option. if it does remove the splitters and use one set of rca's.

also pull the deck out and see if you still get that noise. You might be smashing the rca's behind the deck which could cause something like this.

 

[2000nwxj]

Here are some pictures of my wiring setup.

View attachment 26549125

View attachment 26549126

View attachment 26549127

 

[fly_marlin]

Is the problem with both speakers and subs? Both don't play loud enough?

 

[CrossoverOre 10+ year member]

did you re tune your amps when you put in the new deck? The 143bt has 2v output and the old one might have been 4v output which would explain the volume difference.