Hooking up a second amp to audio control LC5.1300 amp that was installed with speaker level input.

[Clockwerk]

Hey all, new here, after watching a ton of Steve's technical videos I thought this would be a good place to ask.

My buddy had a system installed at Best Buy.

2014 Honda Accord LX.

To keep the factory head unit and speakers they used the speaker level input to a Audio Control LC5.1300 Amp. 

This worked out well until he began upgrading and just adding on components without really knowing what he was doingw. 

A second dual-channel amp was added to be dedicated to the subs. This is currently added using a custom subwoofer +/- output to RCA cable.

After researching what he did I found this is about the worst way to do this. 

Without getting behind his head unit to see exactly how they installed it, from all the research I've done, it seems like since they did speaker-level input, there is no line output converter as no RCAs are going to his LC5.1300. 

If so, can I use one of the proper speaker outputs on the LC5.1300 to install a line output converter that runs RCAs to the second amp dedicated to the 2x 15" subs? Or do line output converters need to be installed at the head unit and is there a way I can tap in there for one amp and still use line level on the original amp? 

Hope this makes sense because it took me forever to figure out what the hell he did lol. Any help or insight is appreciated.

[Joe X]

The LC5.1300 s many other amps is capable of receiving directly speaker level inputs, no need for LOC.

 

However the amp dp not have line level outputs so if you need to connect a second amp that do not have speaker level inputs then you need a LOC for that second amp or the second amp would get  blown input stage and probably the speaker connected to it could become damaged.

 

Bear in mind that you are always connected to the head unit even if you take the signals from the audiocontrol amp.

[Clockwerk]

On 1/25/2025 at 8:53 PM, Joe X said:

The LC5.1300 s many other amps is capable of receiving directly speaker level inputs, no need for LOC.

 

However the amp dp not have line level outputs so if you need to connect a second amp that do not have speaker level inputs then you need a LOC for that second amp or the second amp would get  blown input stage and probably the speaker connected to it could become damaged.

 

Bear in mind that you are always connected to the head unit even if you take the signals from the audiocontrol amp.

Hey thank you for taking the time to reply! 

Excellent, I relayed the information and I convinced him to pick up a line output converter and I'll be hooking that up for him soon. I know he likes to tinker and try to make things work and did this with home audio often but I tried to explain, car audio is a bit of a different beast you can't just slap cables in there and connect things together especially when you don't fully understand the way the system what originally installed. Ill revist this post once I get it all hooked up and post some pics. 

[Joe X]

Ok let us know know if you have any problems or if you got it working.