I have just bought the empeg and hooked it up to my VW GTI monsoon v, I got empeg powered up but I heard no sound from the speakers.

I have plugged the black plug to the rio iso connector,
with some pins rearranged (ign sense swapped with memory, then ground swapped with memory again, and unplugged amp remote line from the plug). I have plugged the brown one to a metra connector with RCAs at the end for the rio rear/front RCAs.

I have turned up the volume all the way ( I remember SuperQ said it's quiet because the monsoon amp is expecting speaker level input), but i couldn't hear any sound/noise.. nothing.

I am clueless right now...
I will be great if anyone can give me some advise !
Does anyone knows how to tell if the Monsoon amp is turned on? I know that it is going to be quiet, but I can't even hear anything.

Any pointer will be good

Thanks alot for the help!

First sanity check: do you get sound out from the home RCA outputs at home?

Was the previous HUs remote out connected to the harness? If so is the empegs?

/Michael

Have you checked to see if there's an aftermarket interface available for the monsoon system? Have you read through the Installation section of the FAQ?

Yes I get sound out from both RCA (1V) at home,
and front/rear RCA (4V) in car. There is no remote out from the old HU, and no remote out connector on the monsooon cable/system. The mosoon amp is expecting speaker level (12v) input, but the output from empeg is only 4V. I think that's the reason why the amp is not powered up? it might be waiting for 12v speaker level input before turning on the circuit.

I think the problem is on the monsoon amp, which it is expecting a 12V speaker level input.. I think I have no hope connecting the empeg line level output to the amp directly...

I think the problem is on the monsoon amp, which it is expecting a 12V speaker level input.. I think I have no hope connecting the empeg line level output to the amp directly...

What I'm trying to say is that you shouldn't be trying to plug the line levels into a factory amp that wants something other than line level. You shouldn't have tried plugging into the amp directly in the first place. They make interfaces for this sort of thing. This is covered in the FAQ. You should be looking for an interface to the monsoon system.

I don't know if the PAC OEM-1 or OEM-2 will do the job for you, but I'm sure there's some kind of an interface available somewhere.

http://www.pie.net/sec12sb4.htm

I'd be surprised if you could get this to sound right anyway. I haven't looked further into it, but I suspect that you're not just dealing with a different line level, but different load (amps) too.

The monsoon amp is 8 channel (very nice, but rare), and that may have some affect on how it is driven.

However, if this works, I'm interested, because I'll have to either do this for my Passat or have the whole thing rewired with new amp and headunit.

I haven't installed yet, but right now my workaround will be to use an RF modulator to plug into the radio antenna. I'll let you know how the quality is, but I bet it will be fairly good with the powered antenna.

You can probably get some of this info from www.clubb5.com (Passat board, but same problem anyway)

-Joe