Hi everyone,

I just bought my 04 s2000 2 weeks ago and am loving it, all except for the stereo which is why I decided to upgrade.

I decided to start out with the alpine 305s, modrify dci and pnp adapter, and spr-17s component speakers.

I started installing the head unit and speakers tonight but was only able to get the head unit and driver side speakers installed before it got dark.

So I was playing some music and decided to a/b the left and right using the fader and noticed that the stock speakers actually sounded better to me (louder, more pronounced highs, overall punchier if that makes sense).

I feel like the installation went pretty smoothly considering it was my first time.

The biggest thing that worried me during the install was the speaker polarity. The harness that went into the stock woofer had a green and yellow wire and a red and black wire. I didn't know which was positive and which was negative. So I took a guess and wired the rest accordingly.

Could this be the cause of the difference in quality and volume?

Thanks for any help.

 

+ green/yellow - gray/red left side
+green/black - lt. green right side

the tweeters wont matter since your replacing them with the alpine tweeter.

 

make sure your using the packaged crossover for proper audio as well..

 

From the chart on MacGyver's site:
Left Front + is Green/Yellow
Left Front - is Gray/Red
Right Front + is Green/Black
Right Front - is Light Green
That said, if you mix up polarity between speakers it can badly screw up
your sound, but it won't have an effect on any individual speaker, and since
by moving your balance all the way right or left you are basically reducing
your system to a single speaker, I don't think that is the problem.
I suspect the real problem is that those Alpines are really designed to be used
with an amp, and are less efficient than the OEM speakers, so you'll need
to turn up the volume to get comparable sound levels from them, and in fact
the headunit may not produce enough power to adequately drive them.

 

Wow, thanks. That site is great.

So I think given my 50/50 chance I chose wrong and got the polarity backwards. That said it may be a combination of polarity and the fact that the speakers aren't amped. Tomorrow I'll try reversing it back inside the door (hate that I have to pull everything apart again).

Because these are component speakers with both a woofer and a tweeter does your comment about polarity and only one speaker still apply? I'm new to almost everything related to car audio, so you'll have to forgive my ignorance.

Thanks again for the help.

Also I am indeed using the alpine crossovers, and didn't monkey with the settings on the crossover itself.

 

Assuming you hooked up the woofer and tweeter to the xover per the
instructions, they should be in phase with each other. You then need to
make sure the left and right xovers are hooked up to the speaker wires
the same way. If the polarity varies left to right, then the signals are 180
degrees out of phase with each other, so one will be canceling the other.
If you are only listening to one speaker at a time, as in your test with the
balance control, it doesn't matter that they are out of phase because the
one that is turned off can't cancel the other one.
Here's a useful site for learning.