I recently bought a 1995 dodge dakota with the infinity speaker system. It already had an aftermarket stereo installed with a mount for xm-radio. The stereo was out of date (older than the truck) I decided to install a new pioneer stereo. In the back of the stereo was a mess of wires and a little plastic box looking thing with two wires running to the fuse box. I thought this was for the xm-radio and decided to cut it out. Then hooked the wires up and the stereo works just fine but the problem is that the speakers sound horrible and they didn't sound that way before with the other aftermarket stereo. The quality would be comparable to something you would play out of your phone. I am trying to figure out what happened. Any ideas and help would be great.

 

the speakers wires might be backwards.

 

The problem may be that the box may have been an equalizer to help the sound. The wires being backwards isn't gonna hurt the sound much but it will wear on you speakers and radio and cause them to go out sooner. You may want to check all your connections to make sure they are all correct and not toughing that will cuz everything to sound like ****.

 

if the speakers are wired backwards you wont have any bass and the and yes they will also sound terrible(known from experience).

i agree with tgresch about the wires touching.

my next suggestion would be that the box you cut out would probably be a high/low converter for the speakers if your sound system had a factory amp. some of the chrysler infinity systems had amps on the speakers which were powered by the factory stereo which need a converter to be powered by an aftermarket system. if you don't have factory speakers then it goes back to the connections touching(though it would cause the radio to turn off if they shorted out), the speakers being wired backwards, or the speakers blew.