Wiring speakers, positive, negative.... not working

[mustangaudio]

Ok I have a pioneer double din I put in my car, and wired new wires through the whole car. Now when I hooked up my new alpine speakers they wouldn't work. I found that the + and - wires for a speaker coming out of the pioneer both have a + charge. I also found that if I just forget one of the wires and ground out one speaker terminal directly, the speaker works. What's wierd is the old pioneer stereo was set up the same way... one grounded directly...

So my question is why is it this way? It doesn't seem right to me, and how would I deal with this issue, i want to put a 4 channel amp in, so how would I do this... is this common? What's messed up on it? Thanks...

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[Jepalan]

What model headunit and provide a link to the user's manual if you can please.

 

[mustangaudio]

Pioneer Avic-f700bt. Its about 5 yrs old.

http://www.pioneerelectronics.com/PUSA/Unassigned-Content/Manuals/AVIC-F700BT+INSTALLATION+MANUAL

 

[Jepalan]

OK, it is very difficult to understand what you did and what is wrong, but I'll give it a shot. You very likely have something wired wrong between the headunit and your new speakers. It is important NOT to ground any of the speaker output connections from the headunit and NOT to ground any of the speaker terminals to ground. The speaker outputs on a headunit are floating differential output signals and should NOT be grounded.

I'm not sure what you mean by both speaker wire having a positive charge - if you used a voltmeter set to measure DC volts then this would be normal - or if you measured between ground and each terminal this would be normal. You can measure speaker outputs by putting an AC voltmeter between the minus(-) and positive(+) speaker wire if you want - but don't ground anything.

Double check your connections against the color codes in the manual you posted - something is misconnected - hopefully you didn't fry the headunit. Do not ground any of the headunit speaker outputs and do not ground any of the speakers.

 

[keep_hope_alive Premium Member]

yes, both speaker outputs have a "signal" - consider modern head units as 8 channel amplifiers that are bridged down to 4 channels. this is completely normal.

you have new speaker wire direct from the head unit to each speaker?

you have the head unit grounded to the chassis (not using the harness ground)?

 

[mustangaudio]

Yes. All new wire to everything. I'm not sure how anything can be wrong, I looked it all over many times. The sub still works... I have the large yellow as the +, red as acc, black as -, and the green/black green, white/black white, gray/black gray, and purple/black purple hooked up to the speakers. I tested the connection at the speaker terminal, and both terminals are positive on all 4 speakers. I did buy the pioneer used, off craigslist, so it could be bad... but its odd because it works perfect if you directly ground the speaker, even though I know that is not right. Its also strange because the old single din pioneer was the same deal, it wouldn't work with the speaker leads, so they had directly grounded a speaker terminal out. I even pulled the radio from tbe car and set it on the workbench, and hooked it up to a battery, and its the same deal.

Also sorry for posting that other thread...

 

[Jepalan]

Interesting...

What model and year car?

What model of speakers?

Also, you say "the sub still works". Explain more detail how the subs are connected to the headunit. And tell us more detail about the other Alpine speakers - are you running front channel only, or front and rear channel speakers - and how are they all connected plus the sub?

 

[mustangaudio]

'87 Mustang foxbody 5.0 5 speed.

Running a component system up front (alpine sps-610c)

Running two speakers in back (alpine sps-517)

The sub is a fosgate 15" in bandpass box, it has two rca connectors connected to the radios rca style woofer output. Those are running into the amp.

I'm thinking about buying a Kenwood Excelon DNX9990hd double din, and just calling it quits on this one...