Car Stereos: Car Audio Installation, kenwood kdc, power antenna

Question
I just installed a pair of alpine type E Subs, I have a Kenwood kdc-x491 cd player. everything looks to be connected right, battery to capacitor positive to amp positive, ground to capacitor neg to amp neg. but the subs are only working when i turn the radio on but when i use the cd player or aux or usb they don't work, the amp doesn't turn on. Do you happen to know what is wrong with it?

Answer
Hi Eliseo,

It's actually a pretty simple problem, and has a simple fix:  you have a "remote" wire running from your amplifier to the back of the Kenwood head unit.  This tells the amp when to turn on and off.  Right now, the remote wire is connected to a blue wire in the Kenwood harness.  The blue wire is a power antenna activation wire; it's only active when you select "Tuner" as a source.  When you switch to another source, the blue wire loses power, and so does your amp.  You need to connect the remote wire to the blue/white wire instead.  This is the true remote output, and will activate your amplifier whenever the head unit is switched on.

Hope this helps!

Brian