Recently picked up a sony CDX-g3150 hoping to run an amp

[jgi420]

I just picked up this unit. I paid like $5 for it. Plus I had to buy a wiring harness for it. So I've got around 10 bucks into it. I don't think it's too bad of a deal. It says it can do Pandora and a few other things, but I don't really know for certain. I don't think it's Bluetooth so far. I can't see any indication of it. I thought maybe it was. It looks like you can hook up a phone to it it. However, it seems to mention iPhone mostly. I don't see any reason why I couldn't hook an Android up to it and still get it to control Pandora maybe and play some of my own music. Maybe use a flash drive if I have to. 

 

 

It seems like a fairly decent unit however the lack of Bluetooth support is kind of annoying and another thing that I noticed is it appears like it's only got two preouts in the back and one of them says sub out and another one says rear.

 

Now I know that Sony and other brands that are good tend to be flexible with settings and this seems like a good model, not the bottom of the barrel one of the time. Hopefully there's a way that I can hook up a 4-channel amp My intent is to run just door speakers in this small car I don't really want to do anything crazy like have to upgrade the alternator and install. You know a 15-in in the back or anything like that. 

 

I do realize however that you won't get much bass with 6x8 speakers or even 6x9s but like I said, I don't know if I really want to modify the car too much. I want to make it kind of look like it's stock and maybe sell it Just get it good enough to sell if I decide to. I mean right now it kind of looks cool with it. Lit up and everything the way the radio lights up and has different colors and stuff. It's got a nice equalizer in it and stuff. 

 

 

I'm sure as you all know though Even with a fancy head unit, you don't necessarily get enough sound to make listening enjoyable.

 

The factory systems that typically come in a Ford, especially in early 2000 were something like 25 w possibly peak. I would assume that is most of the time so you're getting maybe 12 w RMS. I would say out of each speaker. So now, even though the head unit is more modern, you're still lucky if you're going to get maybe 24 or 26 w RMS out of each speaker I've never seen a head unit that would produce 55 w of clean power to each speaker. So yeah that's out of the question so basically I might have doubled the clean power but as we all know, if you want to notice a difference you really have to produce double the amount of RMS of what was already there. So as you can tell, I don't notice much of a difference in sound. The qualities is a little better maybe. Theoretically you would want around 40 w each speaker for a noticeable amount of difference. 

 

So anyhow, I guess with the point of this topic is I'm trying to figure out if anyone knows if this type of radio would allow me to use rcas on both pre outs for use on a 4 channel amp. Now I understand you can use splitters which would only really work or be efficient if you had a four or a 5 volt preout which I don't know the voltage of these pre-outs. But if you're dealing with 2.5 or 1.5 or whatever for voltage on the pre-outs, then the signal wouldn't be that strong I would imagine so that option probably wouldn't work for me

 

Like I mentioned I see on the back of the radio sub out and rear out and that's it I do know that sometimes you can use all of them with different configurations.

 

[Joe X]

Congrats a mainstream branded $10 head unit if it works is a good deal, you can get a four channel amp and run two channels to speakers and two channels bridged for a sub, that would make a nice minimal system.

 

If you don't even want a sub and the head unit amp is not powerful enough for your speakers you can get one of those new micro amps that will fit almost anywhere to power your speakers.

[jgi420]

4 hours ago, Joe X said:

Congrats a mainstream branded $10 head unit if it works is a good deal, you can get a four channel amp and run two channels to speakers and two channels bridged for a sub, that would make a nice minimal system.

 

If you don't even want a sub and the head unit amp is not powerful enough for your speakers you can get one of those new micro amps that will fit almost anywhere to power your speakers.

Yeah but the question is how am I going to run four speakers off of an amp If it states it only puts out for a subwoofer in rear channel, you know what I'm saying. It's on the verge of where Bluetooth came out, not quite a Bluetooth stereo. 

 

And I tried everything out today. I tried to get it to do USB to Pandora and it didn't really work. It works on an iPhone but not on an Android so I really can't hook my phone up to it except to charge it. It didn't seem to work with a pixel phone. Don't know what the deal is but apparently it doesn't know what I'm trying to do.

 

I picked up a  usb-c cable to the 3.5 mm stereo Jack and It seems like I was able to get audio to play out of there pretty clearly but it's factory speakers so I'm maxing out the front speakers. Pretty much the rear speakers were JBL which came from a Ford premium system. Those don't seem to have a problem I believe they can almost handle the power from the head unit, however that's just speculating.

 

Like I said, my goal was to try and get four speakers that are brand new that can put out at least 50 to 75 w RMS. So the listening would at least be enjoyable. 

 

Yeah I scored a decent stereo for his time for dirt cheap and I didn't have to go to Walmart to get one and pay top dollar but at the same time it's not a Sony ES and it does not do Bluetooth I thought maybe it would work for what I wanted to do because it mentioned Pandora. However, it seems like it only connects with Pandora on the iPhone. Unfortunately, I don't know why manufacturers did this. It says something about Android but it doesn't seem to want to work with my phone.

 

As mentioned before, I would like to get four speakers onto a 4 channel amp. However I do not know if that is possible with this head unit I would like to use low level input which would mean two sets of rcas. However, like I mentioned It is listed as rear and sub.

 

I know kind of what you're saying. I already have a taramps which is kind of like a micro amp. It's really small and it Powers my door speakers in my other vehicle. However, that head unit has three sets of pre-outs is what I'm getting at here. 

 

Not really sure how I would be able to hook up my door speakers to an amp with only one set of rca

[EricM9104]

You could use RCA Y-Splitters...Though you're losing pre-amp voltage power creating a weaker signal... The issue with the USB to Pandora support is going to be super limited on a head-unit that's over 10yrs old. A $70 JVC from Wal-Mart will be much more compatible with today's smartphone systems. 

IMO, not really worth trying to make a antiquated head-unit try to "work" with todays tech.

[jgi420]

23 hours ago, EricM9104 said:

You could use RCA Y-Splitters...Though you're losing pre-amp voltage power creating a weaker signal... The issue with the USB to Pandora support is going to be super limited on a head-unit that's over 10yrs old. A $70 JVC from Wal-Mart will be much more compatible with today's smartphone systems. 

IMO, not really worth trying to make a antiquated head-unit try to "work" with todays tech.

That's pretty much what I figured now. I'm pretty much stuck with using it until I can get something different. 

 

So far it works with the headphone jack the aux port and I can listen to anything that I want so it isn't super terrible. I should have known better because it's something I knew about already some of the older head units or whatever they were. iPhone capable and that was about it. They didn't work with Android so well. I don't know what the deal was but back in the day most of them had ipod support and nothing else.

 

I was able to get it to charge It's quite possible that I can use a USB drive, but still like you said it's limited. I just saw the brand and the model number and thought that it was fancy because it was a good brand. 

 

Now that I think about it, it doesn't have the capability of running a 4-channel amp without y splitters. 

 

But I'm sure as you know, like I mentioned in the last post, if you have a 5 volt preout you can split it successfully and you would still have a decent amount of signal so that would be one way for me to go If I wanted to continue using this head unit. 

 

The Walmart specials as you say, most of them if you don't spend at least $100, you're not going to get the three sets of pre-outs that you would need to run a complete system So I wouldn't really be gaining anything. The only thing that I would gain is the fact that I could do Bluetooth connection. 

 

With this head unit I can use the aux port with cable I have and it also has an adjustment level for the aux port signal So it doesn't overdrive itself or underdrive itself You can adjust it. 

 

What? I think I might have figured out the answer to the original questions. Clearly this doesn't have Bluetooth and it has limited USB capability unless you have an iPhone.

 

 Also, as far as The pre-outs go one is for sub and the other is for rear and that's all you get You cannot really use the sub out for rear speakers from what I'm reading in the manual, it doesn't really specify that you can turn the Sub out Port into another rear speaker out which I get You have a subwoofer level in the settings which I would assume if you did not turn the level all the way up you wouldn't get much audio out of that port and more than likely The signal is filtered but I mean there's a small possibility that where the radio was kind of on the old maybe they didn't go the extra mile to filter out the RCA port and all frequencies can pass through it. I don't really know. I guess I'd have to try it. See if any high frequency could go through it I mean if you could do that then you could use the rear and the sub out In a perfect world. 

 

 

[Joe X]

On 8/4/2024 at 12:45 AM, jgi420 said:

Yeah but the question is how am I going to run four speakers off of an amp If it states it only puts out for a subwoofer in rear channel, you know what I'm saying. It's on the verge of where Bluetooth came out, not quite a Bluetooth stereo. 

 

And I tried everything out today. I tried to get it to do USB to Pandora and it didn't really work. It works on an iPhone but not on an Android so I really can't hook my phone up to it except to charge it. It didn't seem to work with a pixel phone. Don't know what the deal is but apparently it doesn't know what I'm trying to do.

 

I picked up a  usb-c cable to the 3.5 mm stereo Jack and It seems like I was able to get audio to play out of there pretty clearly but it's factory speakers so I'm maxing out the front speakers. Pretty much the rear speakers were JBL which came from a Ford premium system. Those don't seem to have a problem I believe they can almost handle the power from the head unit, however that's just speculating.

 

Like I said, my goal was to try and get four speakers that are brand new that can put out at least 50 to 75 w RMS. So the listening would at least be enjoyable. 

 

Yeah I scored a decent stereo for his time for dirt cheap and I didn't have to go to Walmart to get one and pay top dollar but at the same time it's not a Sony ES and it does not do Bluetooth I thought maybe it would work for what I wanted to do because it mentioned Pandora. However, it seems like it only connects with Pandora on the iPhone. Unfortunately, I don't know why manufacturers did this. It says something about Android but it doesn't seem to want to work with my phone.

 

As mentioned before, I would like to get four speakers onto a 4 channel amp. However I do not know if that is possible with this head unit I would like to use low level input which would mean two sets of rcas. However, like I mentioned It is listed as rear and sub.

 

I know kind of what you're saying. I already have a taramps which is kind of like a micro amp. It's really small and it Powers my door speakers in my other vehicle. However, that head unit has three sets of pre-outs is what I'm getting at here. 

 

Not really sure how I would be able to hook up my door speakers to an amp with only one set of rca

 

 

If you want 4 channels fo speakers you ca go 3 ways:

 

1) use splitters as mentioned above if you don't need FADER.

2) install a cheap LOC in the speaker outputs of the head unit and use that as outputs for 2 channels and use the head unit RCA for the other 2.

3) Get a signal processor like the old clarion EQ7 it goes by many names like this:

 

https://www.skaraudio.com/products/ska7eq-7-band-half-din-car-audio-pre-amp-graphic-equalizer

 

You get from it all your outputs for sub and 4 speakers plus AUX for a bluetooth receiver or whatever other player.

 

It was made by the millions and I am sure it can be had used for cheap like $20-30.

 

See what I mean:

 

 

 

[jgi420]

20 hours ago, Joe X said:

 

 

If you want 4 channels fo speakers you ca go 3 ways:

 

1) use splitters as mentioned above if you don't need FADER.

2) install a cheap LOC in the speaker outputs of the head unit and use that as outputs for 2 channels and use the head unit RCA for the other 2.

3) Get a signal processor like the old clarion EQ7 it goes by many names like this:

 

https://www.skaraudio.com/products/ska7eq-7-band-half-din-car-audio-pre-amp-graphic-equalizer

 

You get from it all your outputs for sub and 4 speakers plus AUX for a bluetooth receiver or whatever other player.

 

It was made by the millions and I am sure it can be had used for cheap like $20-30.

 

See what I mean:

 

 

 

I might go that route or like you said I could just get a newer Sony for like 70-80 bucks and it will do everything I needed to do but it will still not have the preouts and we'll have limited preouts Yeah a guy did tell me I could pick up a DSP and it would handle everything

[Joe X]

A higher end head unit will have 3 sets of RCAs but that would be a different game, you are looking to a $100+ unit, new at least, DSP that let you change settings while driving would be also pretty expensive.