QuestionI have a head unit for my car which has the RCA wires on the back for speaker output,but when I tried hooking one up,no sound was coming out of it and the other speakers((still hooked to factory wires)) got really quiet.
I wonder is this because the factory wires from the harness are still hooked up or do I need some kind of amp for this to work?
((RCA speaker wire works,tested off of home stereo))
AnswerHi Justin,
Sorry about the delay in answering this question.
The RCA outputs on the back of any car audio head unit are not intended to connect directly to speakers. They're meant to be used with an external amplifier. You'll occasionally see home audio equipment with RCA speaker outputs, but you'll never see it on a car audio unit.
On the other hand, I wouldn't expect the rest of the speakers to be affected by anything that you connect to the RCA output, so I'm not sure why the volume was reduced in your case. If you had a situation where a speaker was connected to both an RCA jack and to the speaker output wires, that could cause a problem, because the outside shield of the speaker wire is usually connected to the head unit's chassis ground. You never want to connect a high-powered head unit's speaker output to chassis ground in any way. However, that's not likely unless you have an older vehicle with a common-ground speaker system.
A typical head unit has enough outputs to drive four speakers. If you want to run more speakers, or add a subwoofer, you'll need to add an amplifier to the system. That's the purpose of the RCA outputs.
Hope this helps!
Brian
