PACAOEM-MAZ2 Interface That Allows Replacement or Addition of an Amplifier in Select Mazda Vehicles Without a Factory Bose Sound System

I make payments on a 2016 Mazda CX-3 Touring (non Bose audio), so I wasn't about to start cutting into its factory wiring harnesses to splice in an aftermarket amplifier for the horribly underpowered aftermarket door speakers I already put in. PAC saved me from any disappointment I would've had in my car thanks to this genius rig.The audio system is "acceptable" at best in Mazda vehicles, with or without the Bose audio package, and the wiring and room to work with it, the unmodifiable head unit, and the difficulty in finding proper vehicle specific wiring diagrams for Mazda's online make it nerve-wracking to know where to start with making the audio match as fun as Mazda's are to drive.This device turned upgrading my audio into a rather fun experience, instead.Where it intercepts the "Audio Out" connection at your Tuner Amplifier Unit, the harness provides "twin" lines for each door speaker's +and- lines. If you cut the bottom ones of each pair closest to the white male adapter (which double check are just the wires that lead from the male (white) to female (orange) adapters), you now have the perfect lines to loop right back into your factory's speaker lines from the output of your aftermarket amplifier (if you are just upgrading your door speakers like I did and not including a sub).I was able to buy a mini Infinity Primus 60x4 amp and mount that thing inside my glove box with all the wiring wrapping behind the box and tidying up the wires and tucking them between the removable kick shield and the bottom of the cabin air blower.From what research I've done, most Mazda's after idk say 2000 or so up til current years have basically the same wiring harness you can intercept somewhere using this adapter.CONS: they REALLY should've chosen thicker guage wiring, cuz it looks like it may be a size or two smaller than the factory wiring, which I believe effects the sound quality potential, and could lead to more unwanted "white noise" coming from your speakers, regardless of if you get your amplifier's gain and head unit's volume in perfect sync or not. That's why I knocked a star off the sound quality rating.However, this harness is a life saver, so highly recommend going this route for any sort of (what I think is) necessary Mazda audio upgrade.Picture included is for reference as to what my 2016 Mazda CX-3 Touring without Bose audio harness looks like where you splice this harness into. Cheers.

Great product! I have essentially zero experience installing stereos and have always had a buddy help me in the past. Installing the LOC was always the worst part as I've found you can never fully trust wiring diagrams in terms of how a color is described. I couldn't find a wiring diagram for my vehicle so I read the reviews on this and decided I'd give it a try despite the mixed results of whether or not it worked on Bose and if the remote amp turn-on wire works. Needless to say, this thing works on with my Bose system and the remote amp turn-on worked as well without cutting any wires. I simply connected the remote wire coming out of this interface straight to my amp and bam! I really only encountered one problem and that was trying to get the factory harness out so I could plug it into the interface. Maybe I was being stupid, but just to help anyone else out that gets this, in my vehicle, the harness I needed was located where many others have said. You need to take out the glove box (very simple, just Youtube how to change your cabin air filter). As you are looking at the glove box compartment, a little bit to the right there should be a silver box. I had two harnesses connected to mine. One was smaller and was pretty much invisible until I stuck my head in and looked down. The smaller one is not the one you want. You want to hook into the bigger one. My issue came in trying to get the harness out. There is a tiny piece of plastic that is visible that I thought was the release clip and I spent a good thirty minutes trying to get it out using that. Eventually, I was able to get my phone into a good enough spot to take a picture of the back side of the harness (part closest to the vehicle's outer body and voila!). Found the clip. Took about 5 minutes to get it out after that as it is in there pretty tight. My advice is just to hold the clip and tug slightly to get it started and then slowly pull out the top area and bottom area a little at a time. Once it is out, plug in what you just pulled out into the orange connector on the interface, and then plug the interface's white connector back into the TAU. Couple pictures attached. Hopefully they help. I actually hacked another reviewer's photo as it definitely helped me out. I added a couple captions in it though. Ran all of my other wires and hooked everything up and my sub is actually louder and has much cleaner sounding bass than my setup in my previous Mazda 3 where I had done the aforementioned LOC hook-in. Some reviews say this doesn't work with Bose and the remote wire doesn't work and maybe it didn't for them, but for my '17 CX-5 w/ Bose, I couldn't be more pleased. 100% worked exactly as described.

I know it says it doesn't work with Bose systems, but that's clearly a mistake. I took a chance based on other's reviews and am perfectly happy with the success. The plugs for both the factory harness and into the TAU fit perfectly, the RCA leveler, albeit cheap looking/feeling works fine.This easily plugs into the harness in a 2017 CX-5 AWD Grand Touring behind the glove box against the outside wall. Just unclip the factory BOSE harness (this is pre amp signal too!), and plug this in between. I tucked the box further down and ran RCA cables and remote wire under foot well of passenger side, around the center console on the bottom and to the drivers side seat where I hooked up a powered underseat subwoofer from Rockville available https://www.amazon.com/Rockville-RW8CA-Under-Seat-Amplified-Subwoofer/dp/B073W5ZMWN/ref=sr_1_3?dchild=1&keywords=uss8+rockville&qid=1620652771&sr=8-3.This adapter took all of 5 minutes to install and saved me a good hour of splicing into the harness in very close quarters. Thank you PAC!