Learned the hard way? No audio after HeadUnit replacement

redder04

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I have the '16 Honda Civic Touring. I bought this radio. After I plug it in, I see that I get NO audio coming from the radio at all.....

What would I need to buy in order to make this work? I DO NOT want to buy an amp etc... thats an overhaul of the whole sound system when I just wanted a headunit upgrade, dont mind paying extra to retain factory amp. I heard something about this product but I'm SOOOO confused on everything.a


Any Help would be appreciated :)
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josby

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I have the '16 Honda Civic Touring. I bought this radio. After I plug it in, I see that I get NO audio coming from the radio at all.....

What would I need to buy in order to make this work?
Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but there's nothing you can buy that would make this work with the factory amp.

The factory amp only accepts a digital input signal on a non-standard plug. No one makes a headunit that has the proper output you would need for the factory amp's input, and no one makes an adapter either. There's too little demand for such a product to be produced.

Your only options are to install an amp, or go back to the factory headunit.
 
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redder04

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Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but there's nothing you can buy that would make this work with the factory amp.

The factory amp only accepts a digital input signal on a non-standard plug. No one makes a headunit that has the proper output you would need for the factory amp's input, and no one makes an adapter either. There's too little demand for such a product to be produced.

Your only options are to install an amp, or go back to the factory headunit.
So I can add a small amp and that would do?
Would I need a 10 channel one?? that just makes everything more complex
 
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Hasdrubal

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I'm running this amp, it's 8 channels with an onboard DSP-

https://www.crutchfield.com/p_109DSP4086/JBL-DSP4086.html?tp=78740

If you run component speakers with a crossover, you can run them on one channel for each, leaving one channel for the center speaker and one for the sub. Looks like your new head unit has 6 output channels, so you would have to figure out if you want to mix the outputs to run all the factory speakers, as there's no dedicated center channel output.

Or you could run two channels each side for the front, if you want to keep the factory door speakers. The rears run one channel each despite separating the mids and tweeters, must be some kind of filter on the tweeter. One disappointing thing is you can't bridge the sub channels on this amp, but I'm not sure the factory sub could handle much more.

For my car, this is all mixing the output signals from the factory amp. Sounds good to me, but I'm not a hardcore audio guy.
 
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redder04

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I'm running this amp, it's 8 channels with an onboard DSP-

https://www.crutchfield.com/p_109DSP4086/JBL-DSP4086.html?tp=78740

If you run component speakers with a crossover, you can run them on one channel for each, leaving one channel for the center speaker and one for the sub. Looks like your new head unit has 6 output channels, so you would have to figure out if you want to mix the outputs to run all the factory speakers, as there's no dedicated center channel output.

Or you could run two channels each side for the front, if you want to keep the factory door speakers. The rears run one channel each despite separating the mids and tweeters, must be some kind of filter on the tweeter. One disappointing thing is you can't bridge the sub channels on this amp, but I'm not sure the factory sub could handle much more.

For my car, this is all mixing the output signals from the factory amp. Sounds good to me, but I'm not a hardcore audio guy.
Wooo, Thank you for the response! Ok, so... I am intimidated with all the connections to an amplifier. So I would like to leave the stock tweeters aswell.
Could I use this? So If I have it correctly, 8 channels, 2 for front left, 2 for front right, 2 for back right, 2 for back left so I would be missing one for the sub?

Or can I send one channel and split them? so 1 channel FL, 1 channel FR, 1 channel BR, and 1 BL, 1 sub
Meaning I only need a 5 channel amp? Which looks like this? and then to split them use This?

Ugh... It's going to be a PAIN routing all those speaker wires too (or can I use the factory cabling?)!
 
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So adding these radios only work with vehicles without a factory amp? If so that sucks bad!
 

Hasdrubal

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I've never looked at a touring, but it sounds like you've got the same setup as the Si, with the amp in the passenger kick panel. I cut the wires coming out of the factory amp and ran the speaker lines I wanted into the JBL amp. Then I ran the speaker outputs from the JBL amp back into the factory wiring to avoid running new wires for everything. Amp sits under the seat.

There are many options, and I'm definitely not the best stereo guy here on the forum. Hopefully one of the experts chimes in.

The factory system has 10 speakers on 8 outputs. Front corners each get two, rear corners each get one. Center and sub each get one.

Yes, if you add crossovers on the fronts you can run one channel to each corner, so a 5 channel amp would let you run all four and then either the sub or the center dash channel. More likely the sub since your head unit has a sub output but no center. If you choose an amp that can fit under the passenger seat, you'd have a short wiring run to go into the factory harness, there are photos I used from other threads here to tell me what the pin configuration was.

Part of the reason I chose the JBL was that I wanted to keep the center channel for phone calls and such, and I was afraid there would be some processing lag if I left it running directly off the factory amp and had everything else through the JBL. You don't have any such limitation, so my choice might not be the best for you. I haven't tried anything else, though, so I can't give a good comparison. Last stereo I had was installed by someone else and had 3 channels for a very small cabin.
 


josby

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So I can add a small amp and that would do?
Would I need a 10 channel one?? that just makes everything more complex
Not exactly. It will get a little complicated. The new radio you bought has five outputs - front left, front right, rear left, rear right, and sub. Ok, technically six outputs since there are two sub outputs, but they're identical, so really just five.

So you have five outputs but 10 speakers. That means you're going to need some crossovers somewhere. For example, your new radio has a front left output, but you have two front left speakers - a mid and a tweeter. You can't just run the radio's front left output to both of them through an amp. You need a crossover, either built into the amp or an external one, to split the signal so high frequencies to go the tweeter and low frequencies to the mid. Same for the other three corners of the car.

Your new radio also doesn't have a center channel output, so there's no signal to run to your car's center speaker. So you can forget about that one - you really just need to run nine speakers. But nine or 10 channel amps are pretty rare, so you'd really need two amps.

But, maybe you don't care about running the rear speakers either. If so, you could buy a single five-channel amp that has crossovers built-in. Two channels of that would run your front mids, two would run the front tweeters, and the fifth channel would run your sub.

IMO, the least complex way to improve the sound somewhat is to keep the factory headunit and amp and replace the speakers. After that, adding a self-amplified subwoofer would be #2.
 

josby

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No
The factory system has 10 speakers on 8 outputs. Front corners each get two, rear corners each get one. Center and sub each get one.
This is a common misconception actually. The factory amp in the 10-speaker cars has 10 outputs, not 8. The two for the rear tweeters are on a separate connector from all the other speakers' outputs so people often overlook them.
 

Hasdrubal

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How is that? I'm not saying you're wrong, but as far as I've seen, there is no speaker level output from the touring/Si head unit, only the line into the kick panel amp. From there, the wiring harness has been documented elsewhere on the forum as follows-

wiring-1-jpg-jpg.jpg
wiring-2-jpg-jpg.jpg
img_0492-jpg-jpg.jpg
amp-detail-sheet-jpg-jpg.jpg


Courtesy of another member from a different thread
Are you saying that one of the other two connectors has rear tweeter lines in it? I'm certainly not going to dig in with a multimeter to find out, and I don't recall seeing any other pinout diagrams for the other connectors, but I'd like to know.
 

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Not exactly. It will get a little complicated. The new radio you bought has five outputs - front left, front right, rear left, rear right, and sub. Ok, technically six outputs since there are two sub outputs, but they're identical, so really just five.
The easiest way is to get a 5-channel amp (FL, FR, RL, RR, Sub) and replace all the front and rear mid-ranges and tweeters with aftermarket ones. The aftermarket component speakers will come with matching crossovers. The OEM speakers are crap anyway so you're really just spending extra to get the amps. You should get decent speakers for the front and can get ordinary ones for the rear to save some $.

You're gonna run into road blocks to keep the OEM amp. First you have to make sure the digital signal from your HU is compatible with the amp. Second you have to feed in a RS485 signal into the amp to keep it stay on. The RS485 controls the OEM amp's volume, balance, tones, etc... The amp will shut down if this RS485 signal is missing. If the digital signal is compatible, then it's doable to make something that will talk to the amp but you'll need to have some tech knowledge. But honestly if say someone sells a box for say $100 to interface with the OEM amp, then I think you're probably better off spending another $100 to go the aftermarket amp route. Because the OEM speakers are crap and the OEM amp is not bad, but proper good aftermarket amps do sound better.

This thread has lots of info. The frequency response curves might or might not be accurate so don't read too much into that. But everything else makes pretty good read.
https://www.civicx.com/forum/threads/2018-premium-audio-system.33835/
 
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redder04

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I started installing all my components... I woke up at 8am, and by 11pm I was so mad that I just gave up. Will go back at it tomorrow. I only hooked up the power cable so far (and I managed to drop the postive terminal screw and nut sooo no car for me until I find a replacment)
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