How To Connect Subwoofer To Pioneer Headunit Using Direct Sub Drive

If you lucky enough to own a Pioneer car headunit that has the direct sub feature, it allows you to power a small subwoofer without connecting an external amplifier. This saves you the time installing an aftermarket amp for a subwoofer and also money if you are not after big bass. How the direct sub drive feature works on a Pioneer car stereo is it bridges the two channel together on the rear. It also applies a low pass filter onto the rear channels to play only bass and stop vocals. So your front door speakers are playing the vocals and the rear channels are used to drive either 6x9 speakers or a small 10 inch small powered subwoofer to play bass. So vocals in front and bass coming from the back of the car. Its easy to setup up the direct sub drive feature on your Pioneer car stereo to power a small sub. I didn't know about this feature until today, so i decided to do a full guide for you guys to setup your own system at home.

1) You will need to bridge the rear channels to a subwoofer. The best way is to disconnect the wires from the speakers that go into the rear parcel shelf. If they are not long enough its best to extend them using speaker wire so that it can reach the terminals on the box.

2) To bridge the rear channels for one speaker, simply take the negative from the left and the positive from the right and wire it into the terminals on the subwoofer box. Bridging is just another terms for adding two channels to make one. That way it takes power from both giving you one more powerful output usually doubling the rms output.

3) Now you done the hard part making the connection you have to setup direct sub drive on your Pioneer car stereo now. Get into the sound settings and enabled Rear SP :S/W. This will increase the power and add a LPF filter onto the rear channel. You can now control the subwoofer through the equalizer to increase the bass further to your liking.

The pioneer direct sub drive feature is kind of cool i think, i only discovered it today when flicking through the manual and tested it out to drive a 10 inch sony Xplod subwoofer. With the right song i could move the front mirror, so its definitely something worth a try if your after big bass but would like to add a little more punch in your car audio system.

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