I know there'* a lot of people here who are good with aftermarket installations for cd players with factory amplifiers. On the CTS, the BOSE amplifier is responsible for controlling volume, DSP, EQ, FADE, Balance, etc through data bus communications. The question I have, is how do I get a low-level output from an aftermarket headunit? Speaker-level connections are high-level and I don't want to damage the amp. For the CTS, the only way to keep the factory steering wheel controls, and DIC, is to keep the factory BOSE amp. There are only four input wires to the amp (left +,-) and (right +,-). I don't think speaker-level inputs would be a good idea for the amp. Wouldn't it fry it? How do you do an aftermarket headunit + factory bose amp on the Bonneville and other GM cars? I know these too have low-level inputs for the BOSE amp.

Try to get an HU that has preamp outputs or see if the amp has input lvl adjustments.

I'm going to guess here, but since they are labeled + and -, these are not line level inputs. Are the wires going to these inputs regular stranded, in a ribbon cable? If they aren't sheilded, I would say they are high-level inputs. Just a guess. You could stick an o-scope on it and measure the voltage.

Don't need an o-scope, just hook a speaker up and see how loud it gets.

But how do you look impressive doing it that way? We don't want to do things the easiest way. What are we teaching the young'ens?

Yeah they're not protected or sheilded, they just appear as normal wires in the wiring harness. One thing I do know is that if you splice into the BOSE input wires with the factory system all intact, it is a constant volume level (about equal in volume to mid-level on the volume dial.) So, the output from the factory in-dash cd changer appears to be constant. If it'* a high-level input, what should the voltage be? I'm guessing a low-level would be around 2-4 volts?