Thread: Car audio question - 2003 Audi A4 - how to power it?

I have compared the wiring diagram and the pinouts that Paul posted. The pinouts are correct, however not all of the pins labeled in those pinouts apply to your car. For example the rear speaker outputs are not available on your car, the BOSE wire, etc.

It looks like all of the wires that you need (audio signals to the amp, amp turn-on, front speaker connections) are available in the dashboard. Crutchfield has a wiring harness for some of the dashboard connectors, but it doesn't appear to have one of the connectors that you would need. Because you are only connecting to about 8 wires and this adapter would only help you with 4 of those, it is probaby best to just tap into only the wires that you need. Here is that adapter:

http://www.crutchfield.com/S-toLFoXn...sp?i=120701784

Peace.

Thanks for all the help fellas. I have never installed any car audio stuff myself (as you can probably tell). I may go with the wiring harness kit just so when I sell the car I can put it back to stock easier.

Next question... where should I try to install the amp for the front stage? How many watts should the amp be? Can I use a 2-channel amp and split the center speaker like it is from the factory (looks like the center uses one wire from left, one from right)? Thanks again...

Originally Posted by walky_talky20

I have compared the wiring diagram and the pinouts that Paul posted. The pinouts are correct, however not all of the pins labeled in those pinouts apply to your car. For example the rear speaker outputs are not available on your car, the BOSE wire, etc.

It looks like all of the wires that you need (audio signals to the amp, amp turn-on, front speaker connections) are available in the dashboard. Crutchfield has a wiring harness for some of the dashboard connectors, but it doesn't appear to have one of the connectors that you would need. Because you are only connecting to about 8 wires and this adapter would only help you with 4 of those, it is probaby best to just tap into only the wires that you need. Here is that adapter:

http://www.crutchfield.com/S-toLFoXn...sp?i=120701784

Peace.

I'm not sure wat your linking to but I only get a wiring harness that just connect's wire's, It's not converting anything

Yeah, the adapter he posted was just a wiring harness. All it does (as far as I can tell) is takes the ends of the wires that have come into the head unit and plugs in to give you raw wires again. This would be helpful if I ever put the stock HU back, I would just unplug the wiring harness and viola!

Any ideas on what size amp (power wise) I should be looking for? Will wiring the center channel of the right and left front channel work? It seems the factory front stage is 2-channel, and the center is just split of the left and right.

This interface converts your can-signal to a standart iso connection

This is used to connect an aftermarket stereo to the oem active sound sytem

@Paul - that's cool. Somewhere down the road I wanna find a way to use CAN to display data on my driver info panel. It would be so cool. I'm going to be pulling the stereo out next weekend sometime and looking at the wires and how they connect to the HU.

Originally Posted by Puffanug

Cool, that should work. I have not bought the soundcard yet, but it will be USB. I'll compare single channel vs. multi channel soundcards. I assume with a multi-channel card I would get better sound since i will not be splitting a signal.

Here is a simplified diagram of the factory audio (based of the .pdf that walky talky20 posted, thanks!). I will be making another version of this showing how it will connect to the computer. Then I will add it to the main diagram for my system...

look close to speaker wiring it's impotant to see the high-pass filter for the tweeter in the door(R27) and the other one is the full range speaker(R23)

I don't need to mess with any wiring near the speakers. All the wiring I will be tapping into is up near the HU. Still not sure the watts I need on the amp for the front...