(Amp to Speakers) vs (Amp to Harness to speakers)

read the faqs here and some car audio sites and I'm ~70% sure about this situation, but want verification. My (planned) setup:

pc (1/8 headphone out + splitters) -> 4 channel amp -> factory speakers. (factory unit is removed; no other head unit)

here's my question: Can the speaker wire from the amp out (14 awg probably) connect to the factory harness + adapter? All the car audio sites talk about wiring to the speakers directly, but why duplicate the wiring effort from the factory setup?

I assume this is possible since the factory h/u was using speaker-level outputs. The only concern I see is whether the wire and the speakers are appropriately rated in the face of a proper amp. However, mine will be a mild setup so I'm not too concerned about blowing something out.

Both will work.

However you run the risk of a ground loop or audio noise. I am guessing your amp will be in the rear of the car right (trunk or back of back seat)?\

So you are going PC, to amp, to front of the car, just to go back to the back speakers and back less to the front speakers. Everytime you have signal on signal action, you create a chance for no goodness to enter to loop.

So "will it work, and be ok?": yes
Should you? Might as well try, but if you get whining or bad audio, you may want to try direct to the speakers. Or at least direct from the amp to the rear speakers.

Yeah, amp in the back. Definitely a lot of redundancy with back-and-forth wiring. I'll give it a go and worse-comes-to-worse and it's a fail <shrug> I'll rewire. thx 2k1.

if the amp is in the trunk, run the back speakers direct off the amp, and front speakers run the amp to the harness if they are in the doors, unless you really feel like pulling new wire thru to the doors.

at speaker level you shouldnt get any induction into the signal, but be careful not to run the speaker wires along with the line level input cables to the amp, that wll probably give you issues

You can run new wires direct to the back speakers. Then connect the front speaker outputs from the amp to the old factory wire harness near the back speakers. Then up front in the dash, jumper the back speaker wires to the front speaker wires. Mine is running that way now, until I get time to pull the front speaker wires all the way from the trunk to the dash.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by JimmyFitz

You can run new wires direct to the back speakers. Then connect the front speaker outputs from the amp to the old factory wire harness near the back speakers. Then up front in the dash, jumper the back speaker wires to the front speaker wires. Mine is running that way now, until I get time to pull the front speaker wires all the way from the trunk to the dash.

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That's a good idea. I will have to keep that in mind when I finally install mine.

There's no need to run new wires to any speakers. It isn't worth the hassle. Also, with speaker wires there's almost ne need to be concerned about the placement of the wires.