I have the Bose system in my Rx-8. When I hooked up the bose adaptor it consisted of soldering all the speaker wires to the adaptor. A friend of mine has bose in his 05 Maxima but he doesn't use his speaker wires, he uses stock RCA's. Mine didn't have stock RCA's.

 

How do the amps power my speakers if I only connected the speaker wires but no RCA's?

 

Sorry for the noobish question, but I was just thinking about that this morning and was curious. Thanks!

This question is dependent on your factory head unit. Bose makes a variety of systems for various manufacturers. The '05 Maxima system uses a factory head unit that has no internal power, just pre-outs. Therefore, the Bose system in that car can utilize RCA's (are you sure the car was wired with RCA's, usually they still use speaker wires, but the adapter will have RCA's).

 

Your Mazda factory head unit most likely has built in power. The Bose system utilized a "high level" or "speaker level" input. Therefore, you had to connect your speaker outputs to the inputs (of either the factory wires or the adapter).