speaker wires question asap :-)

[kittie]

hi there, im just replacing my front speakers today but have a question!

up front theres two wires, ones yellow+brown and ones red+brown - which is the positive and which is negative?

  thankyou!

[Agreeable Slick]

i would presume red brown to be the positive, either way just connect them up, they will either work or won't as they do not power them, they just send an audio signal to the speaker.

[kittie]

just a bit of a pain to switch the spade connectors round if I got it wrong first time that's all, thought someone might know!

I'll have a go with the multimeter instead.

Cheers!

[jezza16v]

That's right, you can connect them either way and they will work.......sort of.....
I don't know which of your wires is positive but if you want a good sound you must connect them properly. There is effectively a positive and negative for speakers, if you connect the speakers differently the sound signals become 'out of phase' and cancel each other out, the main symptom is lack of bass and the other is lack of stereo 'direction'. If you want the system to sound at its best all the speakers side to side and front to rear must be connected 'in phase'.  

P.S. How do you plan to use the multimeter to sort it?

[rwalker]

Fade to that one speaker and try it both ways round.  One way will sound better than the other.  If you turn it up, the wrong way around will be distorted and not as loud.

- Ross

[jezza16v]

Fade to that one speaker and try it both ways round. One way will sound better than the other. If you turn it up, the wrong way around will be distorted and not as loud.

- Ross

Sorry, not true I'm afraid. If you put sound to one speaker at a time you can not tell which phase it is and it sounds exactly the same connected either way. 

[Chugadub]

do them both the same ie. how u/we think (mine were red/brown+), then face them as close as you can together. if you can hear anything then its right if not you got them out of phase.
we do that to run in new drivers in big rigs we put together (15/20kw) and just leave them going all night, all you can hear is the air pressure changing in the cabs!

 

[Veedubgt18v]

pull the stereo out the dash and have a look at the connector on the back then compare it to the wiring diagram either with the headunit or in a haynes manual

[kittie]

The one with the red was positive in the end.

Couldnt look at the wires behind the headunit because some numpty has done a hack and stick job on them sadly, and they are a mess.

But hey, I now no longer have horrible door pods with 6x9s in them yey! It looks and sounds far, far better