How do you wire an amp to speakers?

Question

i want to add a 4-channel amp to my system. do i have to rerun all the wires to the speakers, or just run the wires from the amp to the wiring harness behind my receiver?

the vehicle is a 2002 dodge ram 1500 ext. cab.

receiver is a panasonic cq-c9700u

speakers are Sony XS-V160HP (100W rms)

no amp yet, just seeing whether or not to buy one.

but it is possible to wire the amp into the wire harness, even though quality may be lost?

Answer 1

In theory, your sound quality will be better if you run new speaker wire, because it's typically thicker than the factory wiring. In practice, it doesn't really make much difference in most cars.

You can connect your wires to the harness behind the factory radio IF your truck is not equipped with an Infinity sound system, or if you've already replaced the stock speakers and bypassed the factory amps. The Infinity-equipped Dodge trucks have factory amplifiers attached to the front speakers; if you connect your amp wiring to the harness in these trucks you'll just send your new amp's output into the factory amp inputs, which won't do you any good at all. Otherwise you can just run the speaker wires from the new amplifier to the head unit location and connect to the speaker outputs there. Make sure the head unit's speaker wires aren't connected if you do this.

Answer 2

I would run new wires.