Stock radio upgrade
All Star
Joined: Feb 2011
Posts: 928
Likes: 0
From: South Texas
I originally tried the 80 dollar harness with the little box attached for the accessory. That thing ended up being more of a pain in the butt then it was worth. Bought a 20 dollar harness from best buy and tapped the accessory into the cig lighter. No problems, no codes everything works just fine.
Veteran
Joined: May 2010
Posts: 456
Likes: 1
From: Sparta, MI
Both standard system and Infinity system are tied in to the OEM CANBUS system.
In the standard 4 speaker system the Radio has no accessory power located in the harness. The radio is fed constant power and the command for turn on is carried by the CANBUS system in the vehicle.
In the 4 spkr set up you could elect to not get the harness... downside is you need to run accessory power to some other source in the vehicle. This can be a bit tricky on an 06+ ram because there really are not any good places to do so. also not using the harness can cause some issues with the vehicle. A CEL may occur or just hidden codes will be stored in the computer. You never know. For an 08 you can probably get the harness for about 50 bucks so it's better to use it.
Now the infinity system is an entirely different animal. The infinity system consists of the stock deck, the infinity amplifier (located behind the glovebox) and the seven speakers. In the infinity system signal is sent to the amplifier through low level outputs on the deck. Volume, balance, fader are all controlled via the CANBUS system between the stock deck and amplifier. In this case you need the adapter.. otherwise integration to the infinity system is not possible.
Easy way to tell if you have the infinity system is to go into the radio settings and fade to either the front or back as fast as possible.. on a vehicle with infinity there will be a noticeable delay between when you turn the **** until the actual adjustment occurs. On a system without infinity this will happen almost instantly.
In the standard 4 speaker system the Radio has no accessory power located in the harness. The radio is fed constant power and the command for turn on is carried by the CANBUS system in the vehicle.
In the 4 spkr set up you could elect to not get the harness... downside is you need to run accessory power to some other source in the vehicle. This can be a bit tricky on an 06+ ram because there really are not any good places to do so. also not using the harness can cause some issues with the vehicle. A CEL may occur or just hidden codes will be stored in the computer. You never know. For an 08 you can probably get the harness for about 50 bucks so it's better to use it.
Now the infinity system is an entirely different animal. The infinity system consists of the stock deck, the infinity amplifier (located behind the glovebox) and the seven speakers. In the infinity system signal is sent to the amplifier through low level outputs on the deck. Volume, balance, fader are all controlled via the CANBUS system between the stock deck and amplifier. In this case you need the adapter.. otherwise integration to the infinity system is not possible.
Easy way to tell if you have the infinity system is to go into the radio settings and fade to either the front or back as fast as possible.. on a vehicle with infinity there will be a noticeable delay between when you turn the **** until the actual adjustment occurs. On a system without infinity this will happen almost instantly.
Rookie
Joined: Aug 2011
Posts: 63
Likes: 0
so for christmas i got new speakers, two subs, two amps and the wiring stuff to hook it up. with that being said, do i need this special harness with using the stock head unit? trucks an 06 with only 4 speakers. thank you!
Registered User
Joined: Jan 2012
Posts: 2
Likes: 0
I just had a alpine after market stero installed on my 03 ram 2500. The fade and balance dont work and it sounds like most of the sound is coming from the dashboard small speakers. The stock radio was the premium infinity. Did the installer forget to put a special harness in to work with the infinity system? Id appreciate some help with this. Thx.