Question about wiring my Bose sound system to a Pioneer Receiver.?

This is a great question. Very creative solution, by the way, but you are wiring it up wrong. This is understandable as Bose speakers are a little different and are a common cause for confusion.

I am going to guess the Bose Subwoofer has the wire connections to drive only the front two speakers, hence your neat trick of combining the back speaker wires into them? I guess this as I have a Bose speaker system, and that is how mine is.

First we will clear up some terminology: What you are referring to as a sub, is actually a Bose Accoustimass module, and not a sub at all. The difference is that a modern sub as commonly referred to will have its own built in amplifier, which is why your receiver drives it with the RCA jack, and not speaker wire terminals.

So, your original wiring was correct: Take the front left and right out terminals from the receiver and connect to the Accoustimass module, and then wire that on to the front left and right cubes. Wire your rear speakers to the receivers "surround" left and right out. Be careful here, as it sounds from your description like you have a 7.1 receiver, which means it will have "surround back" speaker outputs as well. You should not use these, and there is a setting in the receiver to turn them off.

What is missing in this layout is a center channel front speaker, and a sub. Both are optional, and you can get by without them, but they will improve your over all sound a lot, so drop hints for christmas and birthday.

So why were your back speakers not playing? Most likely is that you were playing a CD or a regular TV channel, where there are no surround channels delivered. Digital sound from a DVD palyer, sattelite or cable box, needs to be supplied to your receiver, and your receiver will need to be set into an auto mode to detect this and play it. You can also force stereo sound to play from all the speakers with settings on the receiver. My denon receiver calls this "all speaker stereo" and then there are also the effects, like hall, jazz, rock arena etc.

Hope this helps.

Bose Acoustimass 3 Series Iii Subwoofer

Be aware that this will be an expensive changeover. I can not find a harness available for this vehicle yet. The GM radios control all of the chime features in your car, and the onstar is integrated through the radio as well. For almost the entire 2000 + year model GM vehicles, it costs an extra $100-$150 for aftermarket integration harnesses and modules just to replace the radio. Factory radios are becoming more entwined with the vehicle computers and wiring, and becoming more difficult and more expensive to replace.

How many inputs and outputs are there on the sub? I'm pretty sure you need to run the speaker out puts from your receiver to the sub for all channels, then from your sub to your speakers.

As far as the rear not playing when you hooked them to the receiver, if you had it in "stereo" mode, they wouldn't have played. You would have to switch to a multi-channel surround format, such as DolbyProLogic2, which takes stereo signals and coverts them to surround.

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