First time LOC user and looking for suggestions on tapping into the factory wires!

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fatboytyler

CarAudio.com Elite
My new power and speaker cables come in tomorrow then I'm going to begin my actual install in my new truck, but I'm keeping the factory head unit. I've got 95% of the build already planned, but am looking for suggestions on the best place to tap into the factory wiring.

My original plan was just to tap into the factory harness at the head unit, running the cables back to my Lc7i. But, would be it easier/advisable to just tap into them right before they go into the door grommet so I don't even have to worry about getting behind the head unit?

 
tap in to the shortest/easiest full range signal.... no sense in running more wire than required, more than likely you will upgrade the hu anyway in the future when you realize how ****** a loc sounds compared to a real rca signal from HU...factory processing *****

 
tap in to the shortest/easiest full range signal.... no sense in running more wire than required, more than likely you will upgrade the hu anyway in the future when you realize how ****** a loc sounds compared to a real rca signal from HU...factory processing *****
I certainly do believe I will upgrade eventually, but I've been systemless for about a year now and its killing me lmao. The headunit I want + the dash kit + steering wheel control adapter + sirius adapter was going to be well over $600. So I just screw it and paid $110 for the LC7i. Now I can slowly save up for a HU on a Black Friday/Cyber Monday deal. Plus, until I learn how I can get the trucks built in phone book voice recordings saved to a different device I won't consider replacing it (even if I've just got to record it on a phone...).

 
This very well may be a disaster, but there is only one way to find out. I may regret it, but I think I can get it to work well enough as is. If the rain would stop today I could report back tomorrow, but I'll likely have to install it tomorrow...

 
This very well may be a disaster, but there is only one way to find out. I may regret it, but I think I can get it to work well enough as is. If the rain would stop today I could report back tomorrow, but I'll likely have to install it tomorrow...
another thing you can do is skip the head unit completely. get a rockford dsr-1 dsp for 200 bucks, a bluetooth to rca dongle for 20 bucks and tune everything on your smartphone and play everything digital vial bluetooth. Would be 10000x better than what you are planning with your LC7i. squeaky clean signal with no fked up factory processing. No need to cut into any wires or anything.

LC7i is one of the worst solutions out there, you are just due for garbage sound and disappointments.

 
another thing you can do is skip the head unit completely. get a rockford dsr-1 dsp for 200 bucks, a bluetooth to rca dongle for 20 bucks and tune everything on your smartphone and play everything digital vial bluetooth. Would be 10000x better than what you are planning with your LC7i. squeaky clean signal with no fked up factory processing. No need to cut into any wires or anything.
LC7i is one of the worst solutions out there, you are just due for garbage sound and disappointments.
Like I said I'm not expecting perfect, its gotta be better than straight factory. Plus its a helluva lot cheaper than the whole 9 yards needed to replace the headunit and maintain XM radio and full steering wheel controls.

I like the idea of the wireless RCA's other than you loose BT connectivity to the truck for hands free operation.

I keep telling myself the LOC's have an unjust bad name. Suppose I'll found out the truth soon enough.

 
Like I said I'm not expecting perfect, its gotta be better than straight factory. Plus its a helluva lot cheaper than the whole 9 yards needed to replace the headunit and maintain XM radio and full steering wheel controls.
I like the idea of the wireless RCA's other than you loose BT connectivity to the truck for hands free operation.

I keep telling myself the LOC's have an unjust bad name. Suppose I'll found out the truth soon enough.
does the truck have center or dash speakers? you can leave those stock and it'll work for your bluetooth calling. Literally the past 2 years i've fixed 4 different setups with audiocontrol LOCs sounding like sh*t because of the factory EQ and built in agressive high pass crossover. The audiocontrol accubase is just a glorified 45hz bass boost, nothing more. It wont counteract the aggressive high pass crossover and all you get is just a distorted boosted bass signal. You are also stuck with the garbage built in factory EQ and low quality/low resolution dac the factory unit has too.

What you are trying to do is amplify a garbage signal. What you get is just louder garbage.

 
This very well may be a disaster, but there is only one way to find out. I may regret it, but I think I can get it to work well enough as is. If the rain would stop today I could report back tomorrow, but I'll likely have to install it tomorrow...
I hear what the rest are saying, but I totally get where you are also. While the Audiocontrol may not be the best, I have had pretty good luck with them. I usually will tap the wire before the speaker when using any LOC. I have tried getting the signal from behind the head unit with mixed results, because depending on the system and the presence of a factory amp the signal may be too low to use. I have not had that issue when getting the signal from the speaker location. They mentioned the factory crossover settings and signals sounding messed up, but I have found that if you ensure you are getting a full range (as much as you can anyway) signal, you should be fine. I am running an LOC and I have installed several for people in your situation. While it is not ideal, the sky doesn't fall and sound as horrible as what is being said here. Will you ever win a competition with that setup, no; however I doubt that is your end goal using an LOC anyway. Hope that helps you.

 
I hear what the rest are saying, but I totally get where you are also. While the Audiocontrol may not be the best, I have had pretty good luck with them. I usually will tap the wire before the speaker when using any LOC. I have tried getting the signal from behind the head unit with mixed results, because depending on the system and the presence of a factory amp the signal may be too low to use. I have not had that issue when getting the signal from the speaker location. They mentioned the factory crossover settings and signals sounding messed up, but I have found that if you ensure you are getting a full range (as much as you can anyway) signal, you should be fine. I am running an LOC and I have installed several for people in your situation. While it is not ideal, the sky doesn't fall and sound as horrible as what is being said here. Will you ever win a competition with that setup, no; however I doubt that is your end goal using an LOC anyway. Hope that helps you.
Yea its just a temporary thing until I can afford a new head unit and the whole 9 yards much later in the year. I don't have the tools to see what my front and rear channels are out putting, but simply by isolating sound to front and rear I believe the front is full range whereas the rear is more mid-bass range.

Probably going to go ahead and tap front and rear channels (only installing front speakers for the moment -- will put something in the rear later) and run the front channel into the LC7i's 2nd channel so I can feed my sub stage what I believe to be truly full range.

Looking like the rain might actually hold off enough for me to do this here in a bit. Will report back with my results!

 
Yea its just a temporary thing until I can afford a new head unit and the whole 9 yards much later in the year. I don't have the tools to see what my front and rear channels are out putting, but simply by isolating sound to front and rear I believe the front is full range whereas the rear is more mid-bass range.
Probably going to go ahead and tap front and rear channels (only installing front speakers for the moment -- will put something in the rear later) and run the front channel into the LC7i's 2nd channel so I can feed my sub stage what I believe to be truly full range.

Looking like the rain might actually hold off enough for me to do this here in a bit. Will report back with my results!
Throw a sub frequency test tone (40, 35, etc) on it and see which speakers you are hearing it out of. If you can't pick that up, the factory filtering has it blocked and it is no good for a tap.

 
Throw a sub frequency test tone (40, 35, etc) on it and see which speakers you are hearing it out of. If you can't pick that up, the factory filtering has it blocked and it is no good for a tap.
Both front and rear played a 30hz tone "well" for a factory system. Will play 25 just a wee bit so I'm hoping the LC7i will help boost that a decent bit, but most of my regular music is 30+ unless I'm playing Decaf or something. Will certainly be saving for a HU, but this has been a good learning experience so far.

I can now say that I don't like installing an LOC... Since I didn't tap into the wires behind the stereo, but rather at the speakers themselves I had to run a lot of extra speaker wire... I got power ran and the driver side wired up. SHOULD have it finished and at least playing a little bit tomorrow evening. The Crewmax Tundra is sooo awesome with running cables and hiding them, holy hell. Was able to easily hide 2 0 gauge wires along the side perfectly. This will hands down be my prettiest install of all time.

Toyota's wiring once it gets away from the headunit is horrific. None of wires match up to wiring diagrams and they've got adapter into adapter into adapter, etc.

 
Both front and rear played a 30hz tone "well" for a factory system. Will play 25 just a wee bit so I'm hoping the LC7i will help boost that a decent bit, but most of my regular music is 30+ unless I'm playing Decaf or something. Will certainly be saving for a HU, but this has been a good learning experience so far.
I can now say that I don't like installing an LOC... Since I didn't tap into the wires behind the stereo, but rather at the speakers themselves I had to run a lot of extra speaker wire... I got power ran and the driver side wired up. SHOULD have it finished and at least playing a little bit tomorrow evening. The Crewmax Tundra is sooo awesome with running cables and hiding them, holy hell. Was able to easily hide 2 0 gauge wires along the side perfectly. This will hands down be my prettiest install of all time.

Toyota's wiring once it gets away from the headunit is horrific. None of wires match up to wiring diagrams and they've got adapter into adapter into adapter, etc.
told you you should have just run a dsr-1. Its literally just power, remote ground then plug the bluetooth dongle to the dsr-1's aux (rca) connection and viola full range signal to 8 channels of output clean. All this tapping into speaker wire nonsense is literally archaic and backwards thinking in my honest opinion.

I hear what the rest are saying, but I totally get where you are also. While the Audiocontrol may not be the best, I have had pretty good luck with them. I usually will tap the wire before the speaker when using any LOC. I have tried getting the signal from behind the head unit with mixed results, because depending on the system and the presence of a factory amp the signal may be too low to use. I have not had that issue when getting the signal from the speaker location. They mentioned the factory crossover settings and signals sounding messed up, but I have found that if you ensure you are getting a full range (as much as you can anyway) signal, you should be fine. I am running an LOC and I have installed several for people in your situation. While it is not ideal, the sky doesn't fall and sound as horrible as what is being said here. Will you ever win a competition with that setup, no; however I doubt that is your end goal using an LOC anyway. Hope that helps you.
even if it can play bass, you still have the whole factory EQ curve built in. Factory head units have sh*t speakers, they use heavy EQ boosts and cuts to make up for it. You wont see it because its invisible. However now you use aftermarket speakers that was meant to be put on a flat signal but no, its subjected to the factory EQ boosts and now you amplified it. What happens when there's a lot of EQ boost and a lot of amplification? Clipping and distortion. also your new speakers will most likely not like the factory built in EQ curve.

This is exactly what i meant by if you have garbage and amplify it, you'll only get louder garbage. it might sound okay to you but you need to remember, people have different ears. Others might throw up after hearing the same system.

I literally cant stress enough on the importance of a good high resolution quality signal with actual audio controls such as EQ, time alignment and crossovers with a quality 24 bit or higher dac. Literally makes or breaks your setup.

 
Again, if I'm using my phone's BT to play music over it, I can't use it for hands free calling. Plus, I listen to my Sirius XM a lot on shorter drivers and would be unable to ever listen to it using a DSR-1.

I've already stated that going aftermarket HU is BETTER, but I took the route that costs 1/5 of that option rather than wait another 6 months as a new HU is low on my list of priorities for spending over the summer. I'm not trying to win any competitions here.

 
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