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Need help: installing portable sub Kenwood KSC-SW11. Connect to front or rear speakers?

AzNightmare

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#1
I'm going to install my portable sub soon.
I've read various install tutorials, and some recommend to connect the wires to the front speakers, while some tutorials recommend to connect to the rear speakers.

Which method is correct?



This is the instruction from the manual.
What is DSP? "Do not connect to the rear output" ?

Can someone please help me clarify.
 


saifster

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#2
If I understand it correctly, DSP refers to Digital Sound Processing (might be a reference to the Ford "Driver" vs "All Seats" options which focus sound in the car accordingly).

It would be preferable to tap into the front driver side speaker, albeit, having a left and a right speaker paired together would make the sub more balanced.
 


danbfree

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#3
If I understand it correctly, DSP refers to Digital Sound Processing (might be a reference to the Ford "Driver" vs "All Seats" options which focus sound in the car accordingly).

It would be preferable to tap into the front driver side speaker, albeit, having a left and a right speaker paired together would make the sub more balanced.
It comes with a speaker level stereo into 1 input adapter, so definitely left and right channels both... And that manual remark definitely means to splice in off the front speakers and not rears, OP... The rears will have bass cut (attenuate) depending on stereo settings, the front speakers do not, so your bass will be consistent using the fronts.
 


OP
AzNightmare

AzNightmare

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Thread Starter #4
Can anyone give me some advice....

I've removed the panels around the driver side to expose all these cables:




I understand I'm looking for the these wires:

Fiesta ST Left Front Speaker Positive Wire (+): White
Fiesta ST Left Front Speaker Negative Wire (-): White/Brown
Fiesta ST Right Front Speaker Positive Wire (+): White/Violet
Fiesta ST Right Front Speaker Negative Wire (-): White/Orange

The audio cables are the twisted ones, but I cannot find these colors.

I can't find the white one. I can't find the White/Violet, or the White/brown one.
I see some gray/brown ones twisted, but I don't think gray = white.

I also don't understand why some the twisted wires are twisted together. I would assume there's some logical method to the twisted pairs of wires, like the +/- wires of the same speaker are twisted together. Or left front and left rear speaker are twisted together, but it seems like the colors are just randomly selected and twisted together, making me doubt which are the correct wires I'm looking for...

Are there more wires for the speakers on the opposite side (passenger side)?
 


alexrex20

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#5
Those are the wires that come from the back of the car. You're looking for the wires that come out of the door. They will enter the cabin further forward and above where you're looking now. Find the wiring loom that passes from the door to the cabin and that's where you'll find the speaker wires. Another option is to remove the door interior panel and then the speaker and you'll easily find the wire. You can tap right there. Then just feed your wires alongside the factory wires into the cabin.
 


OP
AzNightmare

AzNightmare

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Thread Starter #6
Those are the wires that come from the back of the car. You're looking for the wires that come out of the door. They will enter the cabin further forward and above where you're looking now. Find the wiring loom that passes from the door to the cabin and that's where you'll find the speaker wires. Another option is to remove the door interior panel and then the speaker and you'll easily find the wire. You can tap right there. Then just feed your wires alongside the factory wires into the cabin.
So are you saying those twisted wires aren't even the audio wires?
 


alexrex20

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#7
No idea but I highly doubt those are the speaker wires for the front driver's side door
 


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#8
I would try checking the wires on the door side, rather than under the dash.
No experience with this, but I'm right behind you.
My subwoofer will arrive any day now this week.

I will connect it to the rear speakers, just so if I mess up, missing sound from the rear speakers will be less of a hassle than having the front speaker fail.

I suspect that DSP is Digital Signal Processing, in this case meant to amplify certain frequencies or low frequency response compared to a regular sound signal; or run the audio digitally over wire, instead of analog.
Like, you can't tap a wire off of another wire that's meant to run to a subwoofer.
It runs best when it's ran off of a full range (regular analog) speaker output.

The rear speakers on the Fiesta ST, are regular door speakers, full range. No subwoofers.
The only way your sub can be affected, is if you change the occupancy mode setting from "driver" to "all occupants" (or something), or reverse.
It might affect the sound a bit, but it'll still run fine.

I assume, I can run a wire straight from the rear door speaker, to the subwooferamp under my driver seat.
I won't tap the wire from the location you mention, but will try to solder it straight on the rear door speaker.

You can test the wires by using the radio 'fade' and 'balance' options.
Run the radio on the speaker you will want to tap off only, and then test the signal wires (you can do this with another speaker).
You can also check to see if you can remove the rubber protection hose connecting the body to the door, to see if you can see the wire color.
I haven't tried this method before, but it'd be something I'd try first.
 


Intuit

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#9
Along the pillar behind the seat belt ribbon on either side, there's a plug. I was able to pull the plug strip-away the wire and solder on my twisted-pair extensions there.

Rear Right Negative is Brown with Blue stripe.
Rear Right Positive is Brown with White stripe.

Left Rear Negative is Brown with Yellow stripe.
Left Rear Positive is White with Green stripe.

Connected my old Alpine unit to the rear and the volume has been more than sufficient. Gain and bass boost has gone back to zero/flat until I get more time to tweak it.

Sound focus sets longer delays for the right-rear and right-front speakers, than the left-front and left-rear speakers. Sony tries to mimic the Alpine tuneability with "Driver" and "All Passengers" presets. The closer the speaker to your ear, the longer it's sound output is delayed. In theory that provides for the best sound staging. In practice I kind of went with an inverse of that logic, setting the subwoofer, the farthest speaker, for the longest of the delays. Don't know if it was due to cancellation or what, but it just seemed significantly more audible at the lower frequencies.

Got my wiring from the factory manual. I can vouch that this matches the rear. You'll need to verify the rest.
http://qa.answers.com/Q/What_are_the_wire_color_codes_in_Ford_Fiesta_radio
In a Ford Fiesta, the radio constant 12v+ wire is yellow/red, the ground wire is black/blue, and the illumination wire is blue. For the front speakers, the left front speaker wire (+) is white, the left front speaker wire (-) is white/brown, the right front speaker wire (+) is white/violet, and the right front speaker wire (-) is white/orange. For the rear speakers, the left rear speaker wire (+) is white/green, the left rear speaker wire (-) is brown/yellow, the right rear speaker wire (+) is brown/white, and the right rear speaker wire (-) is brown/blue.
 


danbfree

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#10
Sound focus sets longer delays for the right-rear and right-front speakers, than the left-front and left-rear speakers. Sony tries to mimic the Alpine tuneability with "Driver" and "All Passengers" presets. The closer the speaker to your ear, the longer it's sound output is delayed. In theory that provides for the best sound staging. In practice I kind of went with an inverse of that logic, setting the subwoofer, the farthest speaker, for the longest of the delays. Don't know if it was due to cancellation or what, but it just seemed significantly more audible at the lower frequencies.
So if you set it for "all passengers" do you get less bass attenuation then if you set it for "Driver" when you wire to the rears? I'd personally just follow the guide and tap into the fronts even if it means running a bit more wiring...
 


Intuit

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#11
Haven't changed it from "Driver" focus. As mentioned, it's more than enough output for the amp with it connected to the rears. Besides turning the bass all the way down, I could use the fader to reduce the volume on the rears as another way of controlling bass output. There hasn't been any need for me to go up front. If you connect to the front, you loose that other option of using the fader to control bass volume. From a DSP focus delay standpoint, you want your subwoofer to inherit the delay of the speaker set that is farthest from your ear. (which given the forward placement of the rear speakers and my seat being all the way back, ironically, is not necessarily the rear)
 


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#12
Yeah, a distance difference between speaker to ear of 3.5 Ft, can cancel out door speaker frequencies of 150Hz. More for lower frequencies.
Where is your sub located?
 


OP
AzNightmare

AzNightmare

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Thread Starter #13


I decided to just take out the screen and audio unit. One guide I read did it this way and initially I thought it would require more work, but it turned out to be easier than I thought. And behind the audio unit, everything suddenly made sense. The twisted wire colors (for front and rear, + and -) matched what I was looking for, so I knew I was on the right path.. Electrical tape was on the rear speaker wires, and front speaker wires didn't have any tape, just to make it even more easier to understand.



I snipped away and added butt connectors.



I tucked everything through the center console. Lots of room and there was conveniently bare metal here for the ground wire.



Wired my sub remote through the handbrake and velcro'ed it here. Hopefully, this will also help prevent things from falling into that infamous "blackhole".
 


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