All you Guru's Stereo Wiring help

silvery2kgt · Newbie Joined: 17 Jun 2005 Posts: 35 City: Louisville

OK, guys I've been revamping my stereo in the boat. Replaced the factory sony marine stuff with some nice 6.5" Infinity components and 5.25" Infinity coaxials. The problem is I'm running them off a Kenwood headunit 45w x4, and we all know how that works out. My question is this, I have a nice Kenwood 160w x2 amp that I used to power my sub with, now that I've upgraded that side of things I have this extra amp.

I remember hearing about a way to wire 4 speakers into a 2 chan amp, but I couldn't remember the exact schematics. Does anyone have some insight on this? I.E. wiring scheme..etc and will it be a good upgrade or a waste of time?

thanks in advance for all your help.

Jonathan

acurtis_ttu · Soul Rider Joined: 16 Aug 2004 Posts: 499 City: Houston

easy......do a search for parrallel wiring on the net. tie each pair of pos to one terminal and each pair of neg. to respective terminal, repeat on channel 2. watch your RMS wattage going to each speaker. on a 160x2 RMS amp you'll have 80 RMS going to each speaker approx.

silvery2kgt · Newbie Joined: 17 Jun 2005 Posts: 35 City: Louisville

Thanks a bunch... Do you think 80 rms is too much? Or will it be ok, as long as I don't get crazy wiit it.

silvery2kgt · Newbie Joined: 17 Jun 2005 Posts: 35 City: Louisville

FYI, the 6.5" components are rated for 75w rms (180 peak) and the 5.25" coaxials are rated for 40w rms (150 peak). Am I asking for trouble here?

acurtis_ttu · Soul Rider Joined: 16 Aug 2004 Posts: 499 City: Houston

what is the RMS wattage on the kicker amp? do a search on the net with the model number. I'm guessign it's 160RMS x2 , if so based ont he numbers posted for your speakers..the amp is a little to big......but I would just turn the gain down, about 50% or less.

Wallrat · Posted: Sep 20, 2005 2:31 pm Post subject:

acurtis almost had it right. If you run the speakers in parallel you're going to double the output of the amp because your cutting the resistance of the speakers in half. You need to do some research on the amp as well as the speakers before you can try anything here.

Find out the RMS wattage for a given resistance (in ohms) of the speakers you want to run.
Find out what load impedence the amp can handle (most are 2 or 4 ohm stable)
Find out what RMS the amp puts out for different impedences.

Once you've got that, post and we'll tell ya how to wire it.

silvery2kgt · Newbie Joined: 17 Jun 2005 Posts: 35 City: Louisville

Kenwood amp specs are as follows:

150rms x 2 @ 4 ohm

230rms x 2 @ 2 ohm

460rms x1 @ 4 ohm (not sure how this is, but thats ho its listed.

Speaker specs:

6.5" components are rated for 75w rms @ 4 ohm

5.25" coaxials are rated for 40w rms @ 4 ohm

I appreciate your help guys.

tiqueman · Posted: Sep 21, 2005 1:34 pm Post subject:

Wallrat hit the most important, the amps minimal ohm load. With the specs above, you will be fine. ie. left side positives together and left side negatives together then take those to the left side channel on the amp, or fronts, howerver you want to split it up. the 460rms x1 @ 4 ohm is if you take one - 4 ohm speake and bridge it on the amp. Meaning (usually) the positive is on the positive of one channel and the negative is on the negative of the other channel. So both channels are powering one speaker. You could also Series the speakers as pairs up to 8 ohm, then parallel the 2 (sets if you will) back down to 4ohms and run the amp mono (bridged) Sometimes it works better, sometimes you dont really get a difference. depends on the amp. Ive got a 4 channel amp running 8 6.5's and that is how its wired and it screams. So well that it titled me the "Most awesome stereo" award at the 05 Correct Craft Owners reunion in Orlando Florida this past April. Rock on! Do some experimenting. Good luck with it.

Wallrat · Posted: Sep 21, 2005 1:49 pm Post subject:

Wire the 6.5 speakers in series for 8 ohms to give you 75w RMS going to them. Then wire your 5.25's directly to the HU's normal speaker output for prolly around 20w RMS. The 5.25's won't be as loud though. Either that or check to see if your HU can run at 2 ohms without melting and then wire the 5.25's in parallel for about 40w RMS. Pretty much that's the best setup with what you have. The only other option is to wire all 4 speakers in series to give you roughly 37w @ 16 ohms to each speaker. Supposedly you can wire speakers up to 16ohm's safely but I've never heard of anyone actually doing it. Lastly, Alpine sells a little 2 ch amp for about $90 that puts out 50w x 2 RMS @ 4 ohms if you find that the 5.25's are lacking off the HU power alone and the HU can't handle 2ohm loads.

Here's the alpine (its cheaper at etronics): http://www.woofersetc.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=product.display&Product_ID=67

silvery2kgt · Newbie Joined: 17 Jun 2005 Posts: 35 City: Louisville

Ok, here is what I'm thinking, run the 6.5s in series as you guys have stated and run the 5.25s off the head unit as well. (Great ideas guys, btw) Then run the other channel of the amp into an 8" sub I could position under the bow for a little extra somethin up front. Is this possible, and will the #2 channel still run 150w at 4ohm, if the #1 channel is running at 8 ohm or will the difference between the two cause a problem?

tiqueman · Posted: Sep 22, 2005 10:40 am Post subject:

The 6.5 wired into 8 ohms I dont think is what you are looking for. I dont even think I know or have seen anyone who has done that. Your weekening the power to your speakers. Maybe in a household system, seeing as most are 8 ohm, but not in mobile audio. Im not sure if the amp will have any punch. As for 1/2 on the amp and half on the deck, usually not a good idea. The problem lies in that you can only turn it up as much as the speakers off the deck can handle. They are going to distort alot faster than the ones powered by the amp. Also, just a note, RMS is the minimal amount of power at any given time produced my the amp. You dont want it to be less then the speaker calls for. Also, in my past expereince, being in the mobile industry professionally for 6 years and here and there on side jobs for the past 5, too much power is way better than too little, as long as it is clean power. You dont want a 69.99 amp from Wal-mart that says it produces 600 watts, because just as your deck says 45X4, it doesnt produce it. ie, a deck on a test bench, the louder it gets, the less power it wants to push, sounds crazy, but some of the guys at the shop I worked at found this to be a fun experiment, they did the research and found that an Alpine deck, I dont remember if it was 40X4 or 45X4 or whatever, was as low as 8 watts per channel at a little louder than normal volume. If you want to hear it loud while you are driving, keep off the deck power and mixing power sources. Ive tried it, it never sounds balanced or works the way you would want it to. One thin I did do, that worked to an extent, was in my old Nautique, 1983 2001, I had the four speakers in the boat running off the deck. I then put tower speakers off of an amp and ran the remote wire from the radio to a switch on the dash. To set it all, I turned the radio up until the speakers began to distort, then turned it down 3 or 4 notches, then flipped the swith to the amp and adjusted it until just before they distorted. I noted the volume number and always kept it a little below that. It seemed to work but again that was cockpit speakers to tower speakers. So I dont know how well that would be in your situation. Anyway, take it all for what its worth, I just know that when I spend an entire Saturday, or weekend for that matter, redoing the stereo in my boat and not riding, Im pretty upset if it sounds like crap next time I go out. In all honesty, sounds like for wha tyou want to do, save up, spend the money on a decent 4 channel amp, put your mids and highs on it and use the Kenwood you have for your sub that you want to install. I know you dont want to hear that but the truth hurts.

tiqueman · Posted: Sep 22, 2005 10:42 am Post subject:

Dang, that was long, I need to get back to work!