# Major stereo upgrade (long post).



## crunch21 (Jul 16, 2018)

i really wish they made hooking up stereo mods more plug n play style. id really like to add some more low frequency sound from the hatch, as its sort of noticeable there are not 6x9s in the back of my hatch, it seems so front heavy with sound. im not looking to start ripping off panels and wiring cable across the car for thet. i envy your motivation to do this.


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## firehawk618 (Feb 24, 2013)

Very nice write up.

Keep in mind guys, if you have a Bose then this how to will not apply to you.

Bose systems use GM LIN from the HID in the dash to the amp in the back. It's data. You cannot tap into it for amp inputs.

At this time I know of no interface that will tap into the LIN to give you amp inputs. 

You have to grab outputs after the Bose amp unfortunately that means grabbing a signal that's already processed.


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## GraySkies (Feb 6, 2018)

Actually, Crunch, running the wiring was easier than I thought it would be.To do what I did, you need to remove the side panel on the center console, the rear panel on the center console, the back seat lower cushion, the side panel in the trunk, and the 4 door cards. The method of attachment for all these panels is user-friendly and I did not experience much breakage at all in doing all this. 

Of course, it's all about how much it's worth to you...

We benefit greatly from the fact that the battery is mounted in the trunk, so running power is super easy. That's often one of the complicated parts of doing an install like this.


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## firehawk618 (Feb 24, 2013)

crunch21 said:


> i really wish they made hooking up stereo mods more plug n play style. id really like to add some more low frequency sound from the hatch, as its sort of noticeable there are not 6x9s in the back of my hatch, it seems so front heavy with sound. im not looking to start ripping off panels and wiring cable across the car for thet. i envy your motivation to do this.



Do you have the Bose or non Bose?

I just upgraded my hatch 2 weeks ago and can offer advice maybe.


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## GraySkies (Feb 6, 2018)

firehawk618 said:


> Very nice write up.
> Keep in mind guys, if you have a Bose then this how to will not apply to you.
> Bose systems use GM LIN from the HID in the dash to the amp in the back. It's data. You cannot tap into it for amp inputs.
> At this time I know of no interface that will tap into the LIN to give you amp inputs.
> You have to grab outputs after the Bose amp unfortunately that means grabbing a signal that's already processed.


Yeah, that's unfortunate that they decided to go that route. Makes life more difficult. 

If I had the Bose setup, though, I probably would have just been satisfied with it and not attempted to mod the system. I had a loaner with Bose when I was getting my new engine, and while the system I have now sounds quite a bit better than the Bose (and is fully tuneable), the Bose system in my loaner was "good enough", such that I would have put these resources elsewhere if I was so equipped.

For what it's worth, most of the commonly available DSPs will handle the signal from the Bose system speaker wires as input, and will still be able to mostly do their thing.


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## firehawk618 (Feb 24, 2013)

GraySkies said:


> Yeah, that's unfortunate that they decided to go that route. Makes life more difficult.
> 
> If I had the Bose setup, though, I probably would have just been satisfied with it and not attempted to mod the system. I had a loaner with Bose when I was getting my new engine, and while the system I have now sounds quite a bit better than the Bose (and is fully tuneable), the Bose system in my loaner was "good enough", such that I would have put these resources elsewhere if I was so equipped.
> 
> For what it's worth, most of the commonly available DSPs will handle the signal from the Bose system speaker wires as input, and will still be able to mostly do their thing.



Yeah I agree that the stock Bose is pretty good in the hatch. I don't know how it sounds in the sedan. The little 5" woofer in the hatch really helps the lower frequencies.

I get why they did the LIN thing. It really saves wiring and eliminates any chance of electrical interference but as we know, it makes adding devices a lot more challenging.

If someone comes out with an interface that goes before the amp it will make upgrades quite easy and clean.


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## crunch21 (Jul 16, 2018)

firehawk618 said:


> Do you have the Bose or non Bose?
> 
> I just upgraded my hatch 2 weeks ago and can offer advice maybe.


non bose 6 speaker. this being my first hatchback car, i can actually notice the lack of sound from the rear due to the lack of the two speakers that sit behind the rear seats in a sedan. i actually think the stereo sound pretty good, but would like to get a small sub or 6x9 for the rear to fill the car with sound better. i actually looked up some slim fit 8" subs but then looked up how to install and im not about to spend hours ripping paneling up and routing wires through the whole car just to fill the car with sound a bit better.

really impress with your OP though, good posts like that are why i come here.


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## GraySkies (Feb 6, 2018)

So the initial step in this install was tapping into the stock speaker wires. There are not too many videos on youtube yet that show how to remove the factory head unit, and the ones that are there are not of particularly high quality, but here is the one I found the most helpful:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rKjT73u0skg&feature=youtu.be

The main thing I would mention about taking out the head unit is this: the open/close mechanisms on the vents that are on either side of the display are pretty fragile. Be very careful when removing those. I also highly recommend acquiring a set of plastic trim tools like this:

https://www.crutchfield.com/p_126CR6NGL/Bojo-Trim-Panel-Tools.html

These tools were very helpful to apply gentle prying pressure where needed, and they are very smooth and didn't scratch any of my dash or door trim in use. Using any metal tool is NOT recommended.

So once I had the head unit out, there were five plugs on the back. I removed them all so I could set the unit aside out of the way while I worked. As I pulled the unit out of the dash, this is what I saw (back of the unit, looking down from the top):








The brown plug, second from the left in the photo, is the one we are interested in. That is the one that carries all the speaker signals. Here is the pinout diagram for that plug, to get the wire color codes:







Once you have removed the display and unwrapped the black fuzzy harness tape, you can isolate the speaker wiring harness and get ready to tap in. The speaker wires are easy to recognize, even without the pinout, because they are the ones that are in twisted pairs:








Before I started cutting into the wires, I pulled the side panel from the console (on the passenger side), so I could run the Speedwire up into the area where I would be working. There are no screws on this panel. It's all held in by clips. Start at the forward top edge and gently pull your way around to get the whole panel out. You can see the blue cable here in the photo, which is the Speedwire:








After feeding it in through the side of the console, you can just reach up behind the display area and easily run it to the area you need:








The Speedwire is in standard auto aftermarket wire color codes:

  Blue with White Stripe....... Amplifier Remote Turn-on
Green............................. Left Rear Speaker (+)
Green with Black Stripe...... Left Rear Speaker (-)
White............................. Left Front Speaker (+)
White with Black Stripe...... Left Front Speaker (-)
Purple............................. Right Rear Speaker (+)
Purple with Black Stripe...... Right Rear Speaker (-)
Gray............................... Right Front Speaker (+)
Gray with Black Stripe........ Right Front Speaker (-) 
Unwrap each pair to access the individual wires:








The first splice:








All the wires spliced (again, apologies for the poor quality photo):








If anyone is interested in details of how I spliced these, let me know. I can go into that further if desired.

Once you reach this point, you can re-wrap the harness and put the head unit back in. I wrapped it with fuzzy black tape like stock. You can find this tape on Amazon:

https://www.amazon.com/Tesa-Wire-Lo...argid=aud-467599743108:pla-309634072467&psc=1

That's all the time I have at the moment. Next time I will post some detail about how I routed the Speedwire through the console and under the back carpet into the trunk. It was MUCH easier than I thought it would be, and I didn't have to take the carpet out.

Thanks for reading!
 


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## firehawk618 (Feb 24, 2013)

I cannot edit my past posts. When I reference the LIN I actually meant MOST bus lines. Most = Media Oriented Systems Transport.

in other words it's a data link from the "head unit" to the amp


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## GraySkies (Feb 6, 2018)

firehawk618 said:


> I cannot edit my past posts. When I reference the LIN I actually meant MOST bus lines. Most = Media Oriented Systems Transport.
> 
> in other words it's a data link from the "head unit" to the amp


Would be nice if they had a toslink port on those or something. Many amps and DSPs will take direct digital data, as long as it's a format they can read. GM would really help themselves (reputation/customer loyalty) I think, if they thought a little more about the downstream user...


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## firehawk618 (Feb 24, 2013)

GraySkies said:


> Would be nice if they had a toslink port on those or something. Many amps and DSPs will take direct digital data, as long as it's a format they can read. GM would really help themselves (reputation/customer loyalty) I think, if they thought a little more about the downstream user...


Agreed 100%. Give it time. Someone will create an interface that will extract the digital data and give outputs for audio and even a remote amp turn on signal.

GM and other manufacturers are using MOST for their audio systems and it's not going away.

From an engineering and manufacturing perspective it does make sense to use it. Much less wiring and virtually no chance of ingress into the system that would compromise sound quality.


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## GraySkies (Feb 6, 2018)

firehawk618 said:


> Agreed 100%. Give it time. Someone will create an interface that will extract the digital data and give outputs for audio and even a remote amp turn on signal.
> 
> GM and other manufacturers are using MOST for their audio systems and it's not going away.
> 
> From an engineering and manufacturing perspective it does make sense to use it. Much less wiring and virtually no chance of ingress into the system that would compromise sound quality.


I suspect that much less wiring was the main driving factor. If pure audio quality was more of a factor, the Bose system would sound better than it does. The Bose system I had in my Audi A4 sounded significantly better than the Bose system in the Cruze I had as a loaner.


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## Taxman (Aug 10, 2017)

Yes, all "Bose" car sound is not created equal. The Bose in my S420 is better than in my E320 is better than my ML350, and the ML is much better than the Cruze. 

The Bose audio quality tracks with the MSRP of the cars, and with the age of the cars (the S420 is 19 years older than the Cruze). 

I haven't experienced it, but the original GM Bose system in the C4 Corvette was supposed to be very good for its era.


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## firehawk618 (Feb 24, 2013)

Cost savings no doubt is the motivator. It always is it seems like.

FWIW the system in the hatch is pretty damned good. I was impressed with the system in my old 2010 CTSV and would put this a close second.


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## GraySkies (Feb 6, 2018)

Have a little time tonight, and thought I would post a little bit about how I ran the Speedwire through the console. This turned out to be one of the easiest parts of this whole operation. The side panel of the console was already removed, and the rear panel (which is also just held on by a few clips) is the only other panel that needs to be removed. 

So... coming down from the back of the head unit, as I showed previously, the cable goes down the passenger side of the console. Take a look at the circle in the photo. The gray object in the circle is the tip of a tool that I have inserted through the back of the console and down to the side area:








It's a "grabber" tool like this:








You push the red knob, and four little prongs stick out the end. It's intended for retrieving small objects from inaccessible places:








Having popped off the back panel of the console, I simply inserted this tool from the back and down towards the passenger side, and the location shown in the photo in the red circle is where it came out. With this tool, I grabbed the end of the Speedwire with the four prongs, and pulled it up and out the back of the console, feeding the whole length through. This is the back of the console:








You can see in the photo, that the carpet only extends a short way under the back cover of the console. There is a fairly large cutout area in the carpet under there, and it's super easy to feed the cable under the carpet on top of the center tunnel, and pop up in the area under the back seat. No carpet removal required!

Once you are that far, you can run the cable along the face of the footwell area for the back seat, and up the side into the area behind the side panel in the trunk:








It's possible to run many wires this way, if you choose to. I chose to run up the sides with the speaker wires, rather than coming back through this way, but it's one of the available options. Also a good option if you choose to run a wired remote for your DSP, or for the bass boost on your amp, if equipped. You can then place the remote inside the armrest compartment in the console. Obviously power is not an issue in these cars if your electronics are in the trunk, since the battery is there also. If you are putting the amp and/or DSP under the seats, though, running power up there this way is also an option. 

Next time, I'll start showing how I rigged up a mounting board for my amp and DSP in the trunk.

Thanks for reading!


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## Pdevore (Jul 8, 2018)

I am trying to follow how you wired back to the speakers. 
If you tapped into the signal off the head unit and ran to the DSP, how did you then get your new signal back to the speakers after the DSP and amp?

I am getting ready to start my sons build and was planning on running speed wire front to back and another speed wire back to front. My plan was to cut the speaker wire after the head unit, splice in the speed wire to get my signal to my DSP, go DSP to my different amps, then from the amp use the other speed wire and run back to the harness that I cut the wires and tap back into them to feed the speakers. Then just replace the speakers in the doors and dash.

Would love to hear your thoughts or how you achieved getting your signal back to the speakers.

Thanks
Peter


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## GraySkies (Feb 6, 2018)

Pdevore said:


> I am trying to follow how you wired back to the speakers.
> If you tapped into the signal off the head unit and ran to the DSP, how did you then get your new signal back to the speakers after the DSP and amp?
> 
> I am getting ready to start my sons build and was planning on running speed wire front to back and another speed wire back to front. My plan was to cut the speaker wire after the head unit, splice in the speed wire to get my signal to my DSP, go DSP to my different amps, then from the amp use the other speed wire and run back to the harness that I cut the wires and tap back into them to feed the speakers. Then just replace the speakers in the doors and dash.
> ...


Hi Peter. 

I am doing this build thread in installments, as I have time. I have not posted about the running of the speaker wires yet. 

I would NOT recommend using the Speedwire to run the speaker wires. It is 24 ga. wire, and this is barely big enough for the stock signal. If you try to push any power through wire that small, the resistance will be too great. Even if you don't melt the wire, you will get all kinds of wonky results with the frequency response, because the excessive resistance will effect different frequencies to differing degrees. 

I am only pushing 45 watts to the door speakers, but I ran my speaker wires in 14 ga. These go from the amp, back up the sides of the car to the speakers, and I have 10 ga going to the sub in the trunk. My plan was to detail this further along in the build thread. 

I ran the speaker wires under the side door sill trims, and went through an available gap in the factory Molex connectors and down into the doors. I can jump ahead and post this part of the build next, if it would be helpful to you. I probably won't have time until late Thursday evening, or possibly Friday morning, though. Let me know if that would be helpful, and I will plan on that.


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## Pdevore (Jul 8, 2018)

No need to change your schedule for me. Inunderstand what you are doing. Sorry for rushing you. I am running Metra’s version of the speed wire and that’s in 18g but as you mentioned it’s still not enough to support pushing 100w per channel back up to the new speakers and honestly until you mentioned it I hadn’t thought about the factory wiring and it not being able to support the amplified signal. 
I will plan on just the speed wire back and then running new from the back forward to each speaker. (I was trying to save time in the future when I was able to install the door speakers. 
Did you solder your splices or use connectors. It looks like they are soldered with as small as the heat shrink is. 

Thanks


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## GraySkies (Feb 6, 2018)

Pdevore said:


> No need to change your schedule for me. Inunderstand what you are doing. Sorry for rushing you. I am running Metra’s version of the speed wire and that’s in 18g but as you mentioned it’s still not enough to support pushing 100w per channel back up to the new speakers and honestly until you mentioned it I hadn’t thought about the factory wiring and it not being able to support the amplified signal.
> I will plan on just the speed wire back and then running new from the back forward to each speaker. (I was trying to save time in the future when I was able to install the door speakers.
> Did you solder your splices or use connectors. It looks like they are soldered with as small as the heat shrink is.
> 
> Thanks


Okay. I will continue as planned. I wasn't planning to continue the thread until next week sometime, and my time is pretty limited tonight and tomorrow. I would rather wait and do a more thorough job of it if I can...

I soldered the splices to the factory wires behind the head unit. Electrically, for the current being carried here, soldering is not really that much superior to a proper crimp connection. All the harness plugs the factory uses are crimp connections, of course, so they are quite proven if done properly. I soldered them mostly because there's not much space back there, and I was trying to make the splices the most space-efficient that I could. For the connections to the speakers in the doors, I used crimp connectors on the ends of the wires. The amp end of the speaker wires has screw terminals, of course. I did solder-tin the ends of the speaker wires that go into the screw terminals, just to make sure they got a solid electrical connection and didn't fan out in there and possibly short out. You can use ferrules on them too, rather than soldering, but it depends on the type of screw terminal whether ferrules will fit or not. 

The DSP has a harness/plug for the power and speaker input. I soldered the Speedwire wires and the power wires to the DSP harness and wrapped with Tesa tape, once again mainly to be space efficient (but also to keep it from looking like crap, since my DSP is exposed in the trunk).


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## Cocoabeans (Apr 18, 2018)

I really appreciate this post. You've given me some ideas and I just wanted to clarify some things: 
I already have the Bose system , but I wanted to add an extra sub-woofer in the trunk with an amp that I already own. I really like the DSP option (and I have heard a lot of good things about it), but since I already have a system in place with it's own amp and such, do you think I will need that as well? I just want a little bit more bass in the trunk, but it would be nice to have a few more musical options to be able to tweak...


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## GraySkies (Feb 6, 2018)

Cocoabeans said:


> I really appreciate this post. You've given me some ideas and I just wanted to clarify some things:
> I already have the Bose system , but I wanted to add an extra sub-woofer in the trunk with an amp that I already own. I really like the DSP option (and I have heard a lot of good things about it), but since I already have a system in place with it's own amp and such, do you think I will need that as well? I just want a little bit more bass in the trunk, but it would be nice to have a few more musical options to be able to tweak...


Hi CB,

As I said at the beginning, I am not a stereo installation expert. Just a mechanically inclined guy who wanted better tunes. There seem to be a lot of discussions on here about the Bose system and what you can do with it, so I would keep looking and keep asking. 

I suppose on some level, it just depends on what quality of sound reproduction you are happy with. I'm sure you could do better with the bass using a speaker level input adapter and adding another amp and sub. There are certainly add-on EQ units you could put in the line between the adapter and the amp also, to give some ability to tune. I was just interested in a little more tunability than that, not just with frequency response, but also with time alignment. Stereo imaging and separation are pretty important to me in my listening experience... 

With my base model system, it wasn't just the lack of bass that bothered me, it was the "holes" or "peaks and valleys" in the frequency response over all. That's why I went with the DSP. It gave me the extra tuning flexibility that I wanted. If you are happy with the sound reproduction in the other areas besides bass with your Bose system, there is no real reason to go to the extra effort and expense. 

I will get back to adding to this thread soon. I have been on a 50 mile backpacking trip in Olympic National Park this past week, and just got back yesterday. Stay tuned...


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## GraySkies (Feb 6, 2018)

Okay, so I finally have time to continue the build portion of this thread...

In the last installment, we ended up with the Speedwire running through the console and up beside the seat, to get into the trunk:








From there it goes up over the wheel well into the open area behind the taillight. You can see the Speedwire coiled up and tucked behind the body bracing in this photo. If you look closely, you can also see a bracket that I installed to a couple of existing studs in the trunk floor here (the black piece). This is the bracket that will hold my mounting board, so that it is flush behind the trunk interior trim panel. :








I will re-state at this point that if you don't care about your electronics showing in the trunk, you can just mount your board directly to the body brace and have it easy wiring and concealing everything. Most of the gyrations I went through in putting in this mounting board were because it needed to be flush behind the panel, so I could put mounting screws through the panel, into the board. 

In this photo, you can see the stand-off I mounted to the body bracing, to allow solid mounting of the board while still keeping it flush behind the trim panel (it's the brown cylinder). Also, if you look close on the right side of the photo, you can see the extra bracket I attached to the panel tab, to secure that upper corner of the mounting board:








Here is a more close-up shot of the bottom mounting bracket attached to the floor:








Now it was time to fashion the actual mounting board itself. I made a cardboard template, and cut and tinkered with it a little bit, until I had a shape that fit well, but also had sufficient area to mount both of the electronic components (DSP and amp), and allow room for wires to pass through as well. In the photo you can see the attachment to the bracket at the bottom, and the attachment at the upper right to the trim panel tab. Also, you can just make out the head of a single fastener through the board, just below the trunk hinge. This is a large flathead screw that goes through the board and threads into the stand-off mounted to the body bracing, shown in a previous photo:








So now I was ready to re-install the interior trim panel here, and lay out the amp and DSP to mark their mounting locations through the panel, into the mounting board. I used a long finishing nail, and had an assistant hold each component in place while I tapped the nail through the trim panel, into the board, to mark the fastener locations. Once this was done, I removed the board from the car, so I could mount the components to it and mark all the clearances and penetrations for wiring to pass through, and make sure my patch cables were the correct length:








I cut holes in the board for the wiring to pass through, and then I went ahead and used some plastic stock I had laying around to make trim pieces for the wiring, so the install would have a clean look. This is with the board installed in the car, behind the trim panel, and with the wiring installed and ready to connect:








And here it is with everything installed and connected:








So that's it for this installment. Next up: how I ran the speaker wires into the doors, routing through the factory boots and molex connectors. After that, the last installment will be how I ran the power and connected to the battery below the trunk floor. 

Thanks for reading!


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## nightfallgrey2018 (Nov 15, 2017)

Although I found the sound in my 2018 with base system pretty awful, I will endure it even if the torture is almost too much at times haha. Joking aside, I salute @GraySkies for the dedication on this project. I'm always amazed on how some people have determinations for going full length on a project. 

A big thumbs up to you for sharing this. I do not have the dedication you have and neither do I have the skills you have but I sure enjoy reading about this project of yours. Congrats!


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## GraySkies (Feb 6, 2018)

nightfallgrey2018 said:


> Although I found the sound in my 2018 with base system pretty awful, I will endure it even if the torture is almost too much at times haha. Joking aside, I salute @*GraySkies* for the dedication on this project. I'm always amazed on how some people have determinations for going full length on a project.
> 
> A big thumbs up to you for sharing this. I do not have the dedication you have and neither do I have the skills you have but I sure enjoy reading about this project of yours. Congrats!


I really found the base system to be quite intolerable. Listening in the car on the way home is an essential part of decompressing from my workday so I can sleep when I get home (I work nights). 

This is not a "thundering" system. I am not pushing that kind of power, and I only have the single 12. The bass still hits hard, though, and is tight and clean-sounding even at freeway speed.

That together with the Focal speakers in the doors and tweeters in the dash, provides clarity and accuracy of sound reproduction that is really rather astounding for the relatively low cost of this system (I have less than $1300 into it TOTAL). 

It was well worth the effort to me. I am only at about 80% of where I want to be with the tuning,and I need to keep playing with it over time to achieve what I consider perfection. Even at 80%, though, it sounds FAR better than any other stereo I've ever had, either at home OR in the car.


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## GraySkies (Feb 6, 2018)

I've got some time today, so I guess I will continue with how I got the speaker wires into the doors. Hopefully this will be a help or encouragement to someone in the future. 

Since my amp is in the the trunk, the speaker wires obviously need to get back to the doors from there. There are a number of ways to do this, and I simply went back up over the rear fenderwell and down into the back seat area. I removed the trim plates on the door sills, and just ran the wires along the sides, stuffing them under the carpet. After getting them up into the pillars for the rear doors, and into the kick panel area up front, I just snapped the door sill trims back in. I don't really have any photos of that part, but it was pretty simple. The door sill trims and kick panel/pillar trims all have to be installed in a specific order, but that will be obvious during the assembly/disassembly process.

So to get my wires into the doors, I went through a void that exists in the factory molex connectors, and through the factory boots that go between the body and the doors. I will do my best to string these photos together in a coherent way to explain what I did.

The molex connectors are essentially the same on all 4 doors. How you access the inside of them is different from front to back, but once you have accessed the inside, the rest is the same.

On the body end (right side in the photo), the door harness boots have a plastic frame tucked inside the boot, that snaps over the molex connector. On the door side (left side in the photo), they have a rubber molded shape that squeezes into the hole cut into the door. So here is a shot of what the door harness boots look like:








If you grab the tab on the boot at the body end, you can work the boot around and off of the black plastic frame that snaps onto the molex connector. This is what you will see (sorry about the blurry photos):








In the above photo, you can see the black hard plastic frame around the outside of the connector. This frame snaps off of the molex connector and on assembly it tucks inside the boot first, then the boot and frame snap onto the connector together. 

Here is the frame, removed from the connector. At the right end, you can see the hook that just hooks into the void above the connector, and the tab on the left that snaps in to hold the boot in place:








Here is a view from the inside, on the same connector. This is for the back doors, in the pillar between the front and back seat. These are very easy to access behind the plastic trim panel. You can see the end of the hook protruding through, where the red arrow is at the top of the connector. That void just under the hook, above the connector, is where my wires will pass through into the boot (you can also see my speaker wire at the bottom, coming towards us in the photo): 








So here's the photo again of the outside of the connector, with the boot pulled back:








To unplug the connector, you need to pull down the purple lever. It is a bit fragile, so be careful, but as you pull the lever down it will unplug the connector and allow you to pull the harness loose. Here it is with the lever pulled down. The connector pulls apart easily at this point:








And looks like this (I've reinstalled the plastic frame in the boot here, although it's upside down... oops):








And here is the body side of the connector, after removing the plug. Again, you can see the voids at the top and bottom, that we can make use of for passing our wires through:








At the door end of the boot, you can access the wires by first pushing the whole boot-end into the door, then kinda squishing the boot-end and pulling it fully through the opening:








Where the harness exits the boot into the door, it is fully wrapped with tape. You can unwrap the tape and bundle your speaker wire with the factory harness, if you choose to. I chose to cheat a little... I stuck a stiff wire through the boot, and poked through the rubber just before the start of the factory tape wrap. Here you can see the tape wrap, with my wire sticking through before it. After pulling the speaker wire through here, I dabbed the hole in the boot with a bit of sealant before reinstalling the boot-end to the door:








To reinstall the door end, just push the whole works fully back into the door, and then pull it back out just until you can work the slot in the rubber back in around the edges of the hole in the door. 

The only difference in the front doors is that the inside end of the molex connectors is much harder to access. You will have to do this by feel, rather than by sight. In this photo, I have removed the glovebox, and I am sticking my hand in at the right side of the opening, near where the HMI module is. The inside end of the molex connector is right at my fingertips:








The bit of speaker wire visible by my palm is the leg of this wire that will run up to the tweeter in the dash. To feed the dash tweeters, I once again just fed a stiff wire down through the top to poke out below the dash, and taped my speaker wire to it to pull it up through. 

The inside end of the connectors up front here is covered by a big piece of gray foam insulation. To get the wires through and into the void in the connector, I stuck a piece of stiff wire through to this area from the outside, through the void in the connector. I then just poked a hole through the insulation to the inside, and taped my speaker wire to it to pull it through. It's not too difficult. Here is the front boot, with the speaker wire in it, but the wire has not yet been fed into the door, or the door boot-end reinstalled:








The driver's side is similarly difficult to reach, and I used the same technique to pull the wires through the insulation. On the driver's side, the inside of the connector is accessible without removing anything, although it's tough to get your fingers in there. 

Once you have fed the wires into the doors, it's just a matter of opening the door panels up and installing your speakers and hooking them up. I used Raul Romo's youtube video for removing the door panels, linked here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cVVBwdUyv84

Here is a last photo of the door, with the door panel removed and the speaker wire trailing out through the speaker cutout. You can also see the factory speaker harness, with the white plug, also trailing out of the opening. I left all of the factory wiring in place, and it will be easy to return to stock if I ever want to:








I used the Scoshe speaker mounting brackets, and I applied NVX sound deadening mat to the insides of the door skins and door beam while I was at it. 

So that's it for getting the speaker wires into the doors! The next, and last, installment will be how I hooked up to the battery to run power for the electronics in the trunk. Stay tuned...


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## GraySkies (Feb 6, 2018)

So... final installment. Hooking up the power for this setup was relatively easy, being that the battery is in the trunk. I didn't even need to find a switched 12V line for this, since the DSP can use a speaker signal from the head unit for remote turn-on, and can then send out a remote turn-on signal to the amp based on that speaker signal. 

So All I needed to do was run a positive and negative wire directly from the battery to the DSP and from the battery to the amp. 

Running the negative was easy. I used 4 ga. stereo power wire, which is really flexible. Bought it on ebay. Used a ferrule termination on the ends, and then used a setscrew terminal on the battery end. The bolt on the negative terminal of the battery is already conveniently angled. I installed a longer bolt here, and once the setscrew terminal was installed on the wire, I just hooked it up to the bolt on the negative battery cable terminal:








The positive needed a little more attention, since this end needed to be fuse protected as close the battery end as possible. I ended up using the Blue Sea Systems terminal fuse setup, which is actually made for boats but worked great here. It provides an attachment post with a fuse integrated into it (photo is from their website, I used a 90A fuse on mine):








The tab on the left goes on the battery terminal, and the power wire for the amp attaches on the stud at the top. Then the protective red rubber cap can be pushed over the top. So here is how I installed that:








I did need to trim the factory battery post cover a little to fit over it:








I then installed the power wire onto the stud, with another ferrule/setscrew terminal setup. On the amp end, I just used ferrules and inserted them directly into the screw terminals on the amp. 

So here, again, is the finished installation of the amp and DSP. You can see the power wires at the bottom left of the amp, and attaching between them is the blue remote turn-on wire from the DSP:








And here is my sub with the protective grille installed:








All that remained was to plug in the laptop and start tuning:








My initial time-alignment was set using this method:

Audison bit ten tuning - time alignment | Audio Judgement

This method uses a freeware program called "Room EQ Wizard", available here:

https://www.roomeqwizard.com/

This worked great for me. The time alignment made a world of difference right away. 

For the EQ tuning, the real-time analyzer portion of the "Room EQ Wizard" freeware proved to not be very intuitive for me. When REQ Wizard graphs the octaves, it presents them not as even "bands" on the graph, but represented by the actual frequency spectrum bandwidth they take up. That means that each octave over on the right end of the scale is really wide, to the point that getting a meaningful bandwidth on the screen and still being able to read it, was difficult. Each octave on the left end of the spectrum is very narrow, to the point that you really had to zoom in on a small section at a time to be able to make adjustments. Very tedious and time consuming to make incremental changes for me, and I never figured out a way to represent the octaves in even-width bars in the display settings of REQ Wizard, to make it more intuitive.

I ended up ordering "TrueRTA" software, and it made the tuning process MUCH easier, and completely intuitive. I ordered the "level 2" software, which has a 1/3-octave RTA, with a nice, easy to read display. The Audison DSP adjusts in 1/3-octave intervals, and TrueRTA displays in 1/3 octave intervals with a nice, high-contrast, even-width bar graph that would all fit on the screen all at once. This made things so much easier for me that the $40 was money well-spent. Made it possible to see the whole curve together in real time. The display in REQ Wizard is more technically correct regarding how the audio spectrum is ACTUALLY distributed in the real world, but it required more "interpretation" and "translation" to adjust my 1/3 octave EQ to a nice frequency curve, and led to much frustration. I guess I am not a "natural" when it comes to audio tuning. TrueRTA alleviated all those issues, though, so problem solved. 

TrueRTA is available here:

https://trueaudio.com/rta_abt1.htm 

Initial pink noise tuning, with a Behringer ECM8000 microphone, gave a good starting point, and the rest has been done by ear, to my taste. 

So that's about it. It sounds GREAT. Over the last couple of months I have pulled out the laptop and tweaked that initial tune a few times, as I zero in on my "perfect" sound. Still some room for improvement where I am now, but for 90% of the music I listen to regularly, it has made up for ALL of the shortcomings of the stock system, and totally justified the time and effort. 

Thanks for reading!


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## jswish07 (Aug 27, 2018)

Thank you for the excellent post. I was able to follow your guide. Here is my set up. 

















Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk


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## GraySkies (Feb 6, 2018)

Looks sweet, JS. How does it sound? I had to tweak mine quite a bit to get it sounding good...


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## jswish07 (Aug 27, 2018)

GraySkies said:


> Looks sweet, JS. How does it sound? I had to tweak mine quite a bit to get it sounding good...


Thank you very much. It sounds good now, but you are right. It took a few days to tweak the sounds correctly. 


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk


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## Orangepeelmobile (Jan 9, 2018)

Wanted to say thank you to the OP for this thread. Started my audio build this weekend and found this very helpful!


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## GraySkies (Feb 6, 2018)

Glad you were able to get something from it! I certainly intended to try and be helpful to others, since there wasn't a lot out there on the interwebz for gen 2 Cruze stereo upgrades. I only check in here once a week or so, but if there's anything I can help with (clarifications on photos or whatever), let me know.


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## CACruze76 (Apr 27, 2018)

GraySkies, Thank you for this imformative post.

I am about to replace the four door stock speakers in my 2017 Cruze LT TD with Infinity Kappa 62IX 6-1/2" 2-way Speakers, add a JBL Stadium 5 five-channel amp, and a Kicker CompC Single 12" in a vented loaded enclosure. I just waiting for it all to be delivered. I am using the factory stereo, due to the fact that it just about runs everything else in the vehicle.

Just have a question about the Speedwire. In my case, I'm not understanding why it is being spliced into the speaker wires, if you have to run new speaker wire from amp to the door speakers. If I do need to run the Speedwire to my amp, what do I connect it to on the amp for input. Or is there a different way I need to be getting input to the amp from the factory stereo. 

So confused on that part. Thanks in advance!


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## Orangepeelmobile (Jan 9, 2018)

You are using the speedwire to feed to the line inputs of the Amp. If you don't have high level inputs on the Amp, you will need a line level converter to convert the speaker wires into rca jacks to run to the amp


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## CACruze76 (Apr 27, 2018)

OK. Thanks. Looks like the amp I purchased is good.


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## CACruze76 (Apr 27, 2018)

GraySkies said:


> Okay, so I finally have time to continue the build portion of this thread...
> 
> In the last installment, we ended up with the Speedwire running through the console and up beside the seat, to get into the trunk:
> View attachment 266093
> ...


GreySkies, Is there any way you can help me out with this part of the install? Schematics, parts needed and where you got them? I was thinking of mounting my amp to the back seat or to the sub enclosure, but this is much better, and cleaner looking.


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## GraySkies (Feb 6, 2018)

Sure. If you could let me know what specifics you need help with, I'll do what I can (links, better pics of mine, diagrams, etc.).

Just let me know.


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## GraySkies (Feb 6, 2018)

CACruze76 said:


> GraySkies, Thank you for this imformative post.
> 
> I am about to replace the four door stock speakers in my 2017 Cruze LT TD with Infinity Kappa 62IX 6-1/2" 2-way Speakers, add a JBL Stadium 5 five-channel amp, and a Kicker CompC Single 12" in a vented loaded enclosure. I just waiting for it all to be delivered. I am using the factory stereo, due to the fact that it just about runs everything else in the vehicle.
> 
> ...


Hi CA.

Sorry I didn't see this sooner. I haven't been spending a lot of time on the forums lately. 

The factory stereos in these do not have any "line level" outputs. No RCA jacks on the back. That means you need to pick up a speaker level signal from the back of the unit, and convert it as necessary to match the required input for your amp. I accomplished that by using the DSP on mine. It takes speaker level inputs and internally, as part of the processing, converts them to line level output for the amp. If you are not using a DSP, you need an amp with speaker level inputs, or a line converter like Orangepeel said.

I spliced into the speaker wires, rather than just cutting them, because I would like to be able to return to the stock configuration if I get rid of the car, without having to take the dash apart again. All of my stock speaker wires are still in place, and if I ever want to return to stock, I just have to reinstall the stock speakers and plug the factory harnesses back into them, and I'm done.


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## CACruze76 (Apr 27, 2018)

GraySkies said:


> Sure. If you could let me know what specifics you need help with, I'll do what I can (links, better pics of mine, diagrams, etc.).
> 
> Just let me know.


Good morning, thanks for getting back to me. Looking for links for what items you used, and diagrams/measurements for the board install. I plan on doing my install this weekend.


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## GraySkies (Feb 6, 2018)

I'll try to see what I can put together. I work nights, so it might be the weekend before I can spend more time on it.


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## Stolla (Jun 29, 2021)

GraySkies said:


> So the initial step in this install was tapping into the stock speaker wires. There are not too many videos on youtube yet that show how to remove the factory head unit, and the ones that are there are not of particularly high quality, but here is the one I found the most helpful:
> 
> 
> 
> ...


Do you perhaps have the wiring diagram and pinouts for the gray plug ? want to see if i can hook up my steering controls or a canbus.


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## Blasirl (Mar 31, 2015)

Stolla said:


> Do you perhaps have the wiring diagram and pinouts for the gray plug ? want to see if i can hook up my steering controls or a canbus.


Welcome Aboard!

Unfortunately the OP has not been online here since June of 2019.

Don't forget to introduce yourself and your Spark here.


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