Running speaker wire through doors on 07 suburban

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Jason in DLH

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When I installed my Kenwood head I didn’t touch the OEM amp, OEM speakers, or OEM speaker wire as they sounded great to me...I simply ran RCA to a mono amp that drives two 10” subs. It sounds fantastic in my opinion.
 
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lee.solorzano

lee.solorzano

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When I installed my Kenwood head I didn’t touch the OEM amp, OEM speakers, or OEM speaker wire as they sounded great to me...I simply ran RCA to a mono amp that drives two 10” subs. It sounds fantastic in my opinion.
I put speaker ring adapters on the door and speaker wire adapters on all the speaker I have full steering wheel controls working. 067644b871aa1185455a2870af53323a.jpg

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Doubeleive

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that's why it sounds bad right now, the oem speakers and the aftermarket speakers are different ohm's and power rating, essentially you are way under powering the system until you get your amps installed. the factory speaker wire is fine for what you are doing.
 

Joseph Garcia

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The folks here have stated many times in the above reply posts that you do not have to change the OEM speaker wires for your door and post speakers, and that is definitely a fact. The OEM speaker wire gage is more than enough to handle any speaker that you could possibly fit into a door or post. And, if you have some sound coming out of all of the aftermarket speakers, even if the sound is crappy, then that would strongly suggest that you have no breaks in your OEM speaker wires. So, take the speaker wire wattage capacity and condition question out of your sound quality issue analysis.

It looks like your aftermarket speakers from the photos are 4 ohm impedance speakers, and this is a very common impedance for 80+% of all door speakers. Your OEM speakers (non-Bose I assume) may have been 4 ohm impedance, or perhaps 8 ohm impedance. In either case, the possible difference in the impedance of the speakers is not the cause of your issue.

Your aftermarket speakers are rated at 60 watts nominal (total for both the midrange and tweeter speakers in each coaxial unit), which means that they will have full sound and good volume at that wattage power output. Your aftermarket speakers are rated at 120 watts peak (total for both the midrange and tweeter speakers in each coaxial unit), so your aftermarket speakers are not some special or exotic high power speaker that needs a huge amount of watts of power, just to generate sound out of the speakers. Your Kenwood head unit has 40 RMS watts per channel, and that should be more than enough power to run your aftermarket speakers at good sound quality and reasonable volume. Adding an external power amp will allow you to increase the volume output of the aftermarket speaker, but it won't make a major improvement in the sound quality, over the Kenwood's 40 RMS watt per channel power output.

If your aftermarket speakers sound crappy when connected to your Kenwood head unit, the source of your issue is somewhere else in your system. Please give us some more details on what 'crappy sound' means to you, so that we can help you identify the source of your issue. Is the crappy sound meaning distorted sound, and if so, are both the low frequency sounds and high frequency sounds distorted, or is only one sound frequency band, say low frequency or high frequency, is distorted? Is the sound equally distorted for all 4 channels, or is the sound distorted in only one or two of the 4 channels? Is crappy sound meaning that the volume level is not as high as you expected to to be?

For direct Kenwood head unit to speakers connection (no external power amp):
Connect your speaker wires to the High Level (speaker) Output connectors on the Kenwood head unit, and these are usually individual colored wires coming out of a connector supplied with the head unit that need to be connected to the truck's speaker wires. If you are going through a pigtail type connector adapter connecting the speaker wires to the Kenwood head unit (most common scenario, if you are not cutting into the OEM wiring in the dash at the head unit connection), make sure that the wires are properly connected, as they go through the pigtail type connector. This should be obvious, but sometimes folks connect the speaker wires to the wrong wires on the pigtail type connector adapter, and that will definitely cause sound issues.

For Kenwood head unit to speakers connection, with an aftermarket external power amp in between:
Connect your speaker wires to the speaker output lugs on the power amp. If you are going through a pigtail type connector adapter, follow the same precautions on connecting the correct wires as stated above. Connect your Kenwood head unit to the power amp using RCA low level wire jumpers, being sure to connect each RCA plug to the correct matching RCA jack on both the Kenwood head unit and power amp (left front channel to left front channel, etc.). Your aftermarket power amp should have an appropriately sized 12v power wire, with a proper amperage sized fuse, running directly to your truck's battery. Your aftermarket power amp should have an appropriately sized ground wire (usually the same gage as the power wire) directly and solidly connecting to the truck's chassis, as close to the power amp as reasonably possible.

Once the Kenwood head unit, external power amp, and aftermarket speakers are all connected and powered properly, you will need to tune the system, so that pre-amp output and power amp input signal levels are properly matched. This step is important, as improperly matched signals will definitely cause crappy sound, and may damage your new audio components. Since you do not appear to have an aftermarket sub installed at this time, you will have to make sure that the frequency filters on the Kenwood head unit are properly adjusted to that configuration, so that the full sound frequency spectrum (lows) is being passed to your door and post speakers. I strongly recommend that you review your Kenwood head unit instructions and carefully follow then through the tuning process. The Kenwood head units have very good tuning capabilities.

I trust that this will be helpful to you. As requested, please give us a more complete explanation of what you mean by crappy sound.
 
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lee.solorzano

lee.solorzano

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The folks here have stated many times in the above reply posts that you do not have to change the OEM speaker wires for your door and post speakers, and that is definitely a fact. The OEM speaker wire gage is more than enough to handle any speaker that you could possibly fit into a door or post. And, if you have some sound coming out of all of the aftermarket speakers, even if the sound is crappy, then that would strongly suggest that you have no breaks in your OEM speaker wires. So, take the speaker wire wattage capacity and condition question out of your sound quality issue analysis.

It looks like your aftermarket speakers from the photos are 4 ohm impedance speakers, and this is a very common impedance for 80+% of all door speakers. Your OEM speakers (non-Bose I assume) may have been 4 ohm impedance, or perhaps 8 ohm impedance. In either case, the possible difference in the impedance of the speakers is not the cause of your issue.

Your aftermarket speakers are rated at 60 watts nominal (total for both the midrange and tweeter speakers in each coaxial unit), which means that they will have full sound and good volume at that wattage power output. Your aftermarket speakers are rated at 120 watts peak (total for both the midrange and tweeter speakers in each coaxial unit), so your aftermarket speakers are not some special or exotic high power speaker that needs a huge amount of watts of power, just to generate sound out of the speakers. Your Kenwood head unit has 40 RMS watts per channel, and that should be more than enough power to run your aftermarket speakers at good sound quality and reasonable volume. Adding an external power amp will allow you to increase the volume output of the aftermarket speaker, but it won't make a major improvement in the sound quality, over the Kenwood's 40 RMS watt per channel power output.

If your aftermarket speakers sound crappy when connected to your Kenwood head unit, the source of your issue is somewhere else in your system. Please give us some more details on what 'crappy sound' means to you, so that we can help you identify the source of your issue. Is the crappy sound meaning distorted sound, and if so, are both the low frequency sounds and high frequency sounds distorted, or is only one sound frequency band, say low frequency or high frequency, is distorted? Is the sound equally distorted for all 4 channels, or is the sound distorted in only one or two of the 4 channels? Is crappy sound meaning that the volume level is not as high as you expected to to be?

For direct Kenwood head unit to speakers connection (no external power amp):
Connect your speaker wires to the High Level (speaker) Output connectors on the Kenwood head unit, and these are usually individual colored wires coming out of a connector supplied with the head unit that need to be connected to the truck's speaker wires. If you are going through a pigtail type connector adapter connecting the speaker wires to the Kenwood head unit (most common scenario, if you are not cutting into the OEM wiring in the dash at the head unit connection), make sure that the wires are properly connected, as they go through the pigtail type connector. This should be obvious, but sometimes folks connect the speaker wires to the wrong wires on the pigtail type connector adapter, and that will definitely cause sound issues.

For Kenwood head unit to speakers connection, with an aftermarket external power amp in between:
Connect your speaker wires to the speaker output lugs on the power amp. If you are going through a pigtail type connector adapter, follow the same precautions on connecting the correct wires as stated above. Connect your Kenwood head unit to the power amp using RCA low level wire jumpers, being sure to connect each RCA plug to the correct matching RCA jack on both the Kenwood head unit and power amp (left front channel to left front channel, etc.). Your aftermarket power amp should have an appropriately sized 12v power wire, with a proper amperage sized fuse, running directly to your truck's battery. Your aftermarket power amp should have an appropriately sized ground wire (usually the same gage as the power wire) directly and solidly connecting to the truck's chassis, as close to the power amp as reasonably possible.

Once the Kenwood head unit, external power amp, and aftermarket speakers are all connected and powered properly, you will need to tune the system, so that pre-amp output and power amp input signal levels are properly matched. This step is important, as improperly matched signals will definitely cause crappy sound, and may damage your new audio components. Since you do not appear to have an aftermarket sub installed at this time, you will have to make sure that the frequency filters on the Kenwood head unit are properly adjusted to that configuration, so that the full sound frequency spectrum (lows) is being passed to your door and post speakers. I strongly recommend that you review your Kenwood head unit instructions and carefully follow then through the tuning process. The Kenwood head units have very good tuning capabilities.

I trust that this will be helpful to you. As requested, please give us a more complete explanation of what you mean by crappy sound.
Yes. Thank u. Since I. Got the truck the rear doors kept cutting in and out. But now not at all. I will recheck everything


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okfoz

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I just replaced the wires in my 2007 Drivers door because it would cut in and out when closing and opening the door. Easy job to do, especially on drivers side... Open the door, remove the kick panel on the left, and remove the cover for the Panel on the left and remove the door panel. Remove the speaker, and then stuff some new wires through the rubber tube loom..
 
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lee.solorzano

lee.solorzano

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I just replaced the wires in my 2007 Drivers door because it would cut in and out when closing and opening the door. Easy job to do, especially on drivers side... Open the door, remove the kick panel on the left, and remove the cover for the Panel on the left and remove the door panel. Remove the speaker, and then stuff some new wires through the rubber tube loom..
W
Hat about the door wire plug. ?


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