Stereo help!

Ok guys, back to the drawing board. I have attached a diagram I made of how our stereo is currently set up. I am really worried about two things...

First: The head unit I chose a while back, is only a 2 channel output. I should have looked more into this..so not sure if what I want to do will work with this head unit.

Second: For the tower speakers, I have 2 KS600's. Instead of having both of their sets of wires (red/black, red/black) running down the tower, I tapped them together and only have 1 set running down the tower (red/black). Is this a problem?

The reason I am asking this is because yesterday the stereo would cut out here and there. Sometimes the towers would go off, and then come back on shortly after.

The head unit also cut out once when I turned it to a certain volume...I simply turned it back on and everything worked.

Is this a power issue? Wiring issue? I have half the mind to just take it somewhere and have them wire everything but don't want to pay the big $$.

Also, the amps I chose, is because I already had them in my garage and wanted to use these first.

Any help is appreciated.

See attached diagram.

Thanks,
Cody

Cody,
definitely need to re-wire.

The towers need two sets of wire to run stereo other wide you are running in mono and the set of speakers at a two ohm load, not sure you amp can handle that ( need two wires , one left + -, one right + -)

also not sure your cabin amp ( is it 4 channel or two channel) running six speakers at two channel can cause some problems at 4 ohms.

Here is another picture to help you see the wiring diagram.

Anything wrong with this?

I currently have my towers set to full range. I am going to switch that to High Pass.

If those tower speakers are 4ohm then you are running your amp at 1ohm. So unless you your amp is stable at 1ohm (which I doubt) your going to have to run two wires and run it stereo at 4 ohms.
When you bridge and amp you emmediately drop the ohm load in half, that makes 2 ohms. Now you run two speakers in parallel to that bridgged amp you drop the ohm load in half again, 1ohm. Most amps are not made to run that low and will overheat in a hurry. Those kickers are really effecient, you shouldn't have any problem running them in stereo at 4ohms. They will be plenty loud.

Same goes for the interior. Running two sets of speakers off the rear channels of the deck. It doesn't like running at 2 ohms and will eventually cut out. I know a lot of boats come wired this way but its not the ideal set-up. You should really consider another amp for your interiors.

Nope. If you bridge an amp you drop the ohms, and if you add more speakers you drop the ohms.
A 2 ch amp with 50 x 2 for example bridged will roughly double the power by dropping the ohm load.

02outback if you ran the tower speakers in series it would work fine with 1 wire. Meaning positive from the amp to positive of one speaker and negetive from the amp to the negetive of the the other speaker and the remaining pos and neg from the speakers connected together.
Make sense?

http://www.termpro.com/articles/images/image33.gif

This configuration will make the two speakers 8 ohms and when you connect it to the amp bridged it will drop the amp to 4 ohms. right where it wants to be and you still retain the single wire.

Thanks for the input guys. I will be working on this again this week.

And like said above, the 4 cabin speakers in the rear were already bridged from factory. I noticed that when I replaced them a month ago.

I went by the storage this evening for a quick second and re-wired the tower speakers in series as described by newty. (Positive from amp to positive of tower speaker 1. Negative from amp to negative of tower speaker 2. The remainder positive and negative from tower speakers connected together). Also switched the amp powering the towers to High Pass rather than Full Range.

Tomorrow when I get the chance, I will head back over there and take the rear cabin speakers off the head unit and put them to the amp powering the tower speakers. I agree, that the head unit can't put out the power these speakers are needing.

How does this sound?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by 02Outback

How does this sound?

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Hopefully, better than before. :smile:

Quote:

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Originally Posted by newty

Nope. If you bridge an amp you drop the ohms, and if you add more speakers you drop the ohms.
A 2 ch amp with 50 x 2 for example bridged will roughly double the power by dropping the ohm load.

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Newty,

With all due respect, this is not correct. Bridging an amp does not drop it's ohm load. However, most amps when bridged cannot handle anything lower than a 4 ohm load.

An an example, below are the specs for a Kicker zx450.2 that I copied and pasted from sonicelectronix's website.

ZX Series 2-Channel Class AB Car Amplifier
RMS Power Rating:
4 ohms: 150 watts x 2 chan.
2 ohms: 225 watts x 2 chan.
Bridged, 4 ohms: 450 watts x 1 chan.

The problem is that he had the tower speakers wired in parralel so the amp was seeing a 2 ohm load which it cannot handle when bridged, so it was going into protect.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by 02Outback

Here is another picture to help you see the wiring diagram.

Anything wrong with this?

I currently have my towers set to full range. I am going to switch that to High Pass.

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02outback,

Sorry to have to tell you, but the wiring diagram above is all wrong. Let's start with amp 1. It's a 2 channel amp which you are running bridged to your 2 tower speakers which you wired in parralel. This means that your amp is seeing a 2 ohm load and when bridged, most amps cannot handle anything less than a 4 ohn load so your amp is going into protect mode. The right thing to do here is to run separate wires from your amp to each post on your speakers (4 wires in all). This way, you are running your two channel amp in stereo and it's seeing a 4 ohm load.

Amp 2 looks like a 2 channel amp that you are also running bridged to a dual voice coil sub (I'm going to assume each voice coil is 4 ohm). But the way you have it wired, you are only sending power to one voice coil (wiring the "+" and the "-" together on the second voice coil does nothing). This is not good for the sub! Here again, what you need to do is run separate wires from your amp to each post on your sub (basically, treat the sub like two separate speakers). This way, your amp sees a 4 ohm load. But I'm not sure that would work because then you are running a single sub in stereo. And you can't wire both voice coils in parallel and run one pair of speaker wire back to the amp in bridged mode because once again, it will be seeing a 2 ohm load which it can't handle while bridged. I would either get a single voice coil 4 ohm sub and power it with amp 2 in bridged mode, or get a mono amp and wire your DVC sub in parralel so the mono amp sees a 2 ohm load which it can handle.

Please carefully review and understand the excellent article in the link below which explains all of this.

http://www.termpro.com/articles/spkrz.html

Al