Aftermarket with OEM Mic

I found a link elsewhere that gave some useful info. It looks like it is possible to bypass the stock mic amplifier and reroute the raw mic output down the factory harness to the radio area, then splice them into your head unit's connector at that point. This sort of thing is usually consistent through an entire manufacturer so despite these instructions coming from a Tundra board I've already found that at least some of the info is a dead match for my Prius, and I haven't checked it all yet.

We just got the prius a couple of days ago and there is a new head unit on its way to us now, so I hope to validate this procedure within a few days. It really looks like it's going to be 4 individual wire splices to solve this problem.

 

I forgot to update this thread until just now.

I did the modification described in my earlier post- I bypassed the amplifier and fed the OEM microphone directly to the aftermarket stereo.

It didn't sound great. So instead, I modified the housing slightly and installed the aftermarket microphone in place of the OEM one. So in effect, it is aftermarket mic --> OEM wiring through the car to the dash --> aftermarket deck.

Sound quality was vastly improved after I did this. My wife likes using Siri via carplay on this deck, and it seems to understand her perfectly.