my front speakers are 110rms eacht into 3ohms and my amp is 250rms into 4ohms per channel can any one tell me the the power of my amp at 3 ohms an would it be alright if i ran both these speakers off one channel of the amp. I herd there are some drawbacks of doing this such as loss in sound quality but is it really noticble?? If it is could you suggest another way to wire these speakers off hte one channel a run them close to or on rms power?? any help will be much appreicated!! My amp is a SSL sta416 if thats any help
i might aswell go through the rest of my system iam pretty much a noob so please dont make fun of me if i bought sh*t i have Soundstream Tarantula Series SST6.9" 150rms i think anyone corect me if im wrong Soundstream XTC.6 -6,5inch Component 110rms again i think but could be wrong Sound Storm SSL STA416Max power 2 ohm 400W X 4
RMS power 4 ohm 250W X 4
Bridged power 4 ohm 800W X 2
Signal-to-noise ratio 105dB
THD at RMS output 0.01%
Damping factor 125+
Dimensions (11-1/4"W x 3"H x ...) 13-3/4"L an SOUNDSTREAM XW12 - 600W -12" 4 Ohms Woofer RMS Power Handling: 300 Watts Dual 4-Ohm Voice Coil any1 that could tell me how to hook thses up running as good as i can it would be great
First get a decent deep cycle battery fitted,and pwr cap approx 1 farad per 300w rms. Power cap will protect against alternator whine, improve sound quality and extend the life of the car battery. 2)use some decent speaker cable for the compo units (throw the stock cable away)it wont do justice to the speakers. ! 3)sound proof front doors ( dynamat or similar) this will take the metallic ring out of the sound.and tighten up the sound. I found the best soundstage is with tweeters on mirror plates facing at each other with you in the middle. if your speakers are 3ohm then the amp needs to be run at 2 ohm, otherwise amps will trip out all the time. I think you should only have 1 pr of speakers per stereo channel. Amp for front should be set at h/pass on the crossover and cut off @ about 90hz. 4)if these are mossfet class b amps then you are looking at about 55% effeciency so about half of the quoted power will hit the speaker.only digital classD amps will produce about 90% of quoted power.
5) you can wire the sub in different configurations, but one is to run it with a 2 ch or bridged 4ch. AMP set up l/pass (unless its a mono)cut off about 80 hz but you can experiment with this during final setup. 6)Make sure all connections are clean and earth connections are sanded down to metal. try and avoid screwing amps directly to metal,mount it to board first.keep earth cables as short as you can. rca cables : use helix core or triple shield if possible. cars are full of electrical noise and the rca can act as antenna if coax and have lousy shielding. don't run rca and power together , put one up left side and the other up the right side. when all connections are done (and checked) then put in the main fuse. use a power kit that is right for the power of the amps. so get advice from a pro shop or I can give a formula to work it out. Yeah if making a power kit from bits MAKE SURE that the pwr and ground cable are same diameter !! more later. got to go to bed. Zorin
"I think you should only have 1 pr of speakers per stereo channel".?? hi thanks for the help i dont under stand if i hook up one speaker to ech channel tehn where can i put the sub into??
Hi Matty, you need another amp really, as the 6 x9 and compo unit swill use all the channels.Its not good anyway to try and connect 2 prs on the one channel you loose your fader facility on the head unit and crossover settings have to be the same 4 both. A decent 2 ohm stable amp will drive your sub as its power is not high. effeciency (db) of the woofer will tell you how power hungry it will be. if its 89-90 db its fine if its 86db then you need to nearly double the power. 2) remember to allow bigger power cable for a 2 amp install or run seperate power cable to the battery or power cap. a power cap is generally in the boot / trunk and keeps all cables nice and short.
Pete - I'm sure you mean well but there's a lot of misinformation in there.
I would agree that another amp would be ideal, but Matty, I think you can make it work.
First of all - you DO NOT need a battery, and you CERTAINLY do not need a capacitor. Those would both be a waste of your time and money. That goes for fancy cables as well. You are clearly not trying to put together a top notch sound quality system. You're trying to do the most with what you have and NONE of that stuff is even CLOSE to a necessity.
2) that's not a 1600w amp, it's not even a 1000w amp. Soundstorm over-rates their amps drastically, as many entry level companies do. That amp has a pair of 25A fuses which is a good indication it's going to do around 500w at its best.
3) You're clearly not at the point that you need to be worrying about Dynamat. That's much more of a finishing touch IMO.
The way I would do it is run your left component in parallel with your left 6x9 on ch 1, your right component and right 6x9 off channel two. Use your HPF at 60hz or so. Then you can bridge channels 3 and 4 to run your sub (coils in series) at 8 ohms. Your components and 6x9's should see 60-70w each, and your sub should see around 200w.
The only issue is that the 3 ohm spkrs in parallel with the 4 ohm speakers will actually have your front 2 channels running at slightly lower than nominal impedance. I would expect it to work ok though since the actual impedance playing music should be well above 2 ohms.
With a decent ported sub enclosure you should end up with some pretty good sound.
Pete is right in that you won't have the ability to fade from your 6.5's to your 6x9's, but that's not really an issue in the big picture.
hi done exactly what you said Optidriven one small problem my head unit only has two rca inputs so i just split them but now i gte this annoying whining sound that shits me up the wall and gets louder when i put my foot an the gas i spoke to a guy at a car audio shop he recons that its cause my head unit is not powerfull enough to be split and its tryna over compensate. I have been through and checked all my wiring the sub on the two channels works fine (on its own) the 4 speakers work fine(on their own) so basically i only get the noise when there is more than two channels in connected to the head unit. So i guess my question is do i spend a bit of money and buy a new head unit like the guy at the cay audio shop said? I know hes an expert but i cant help but feel im being takn 4 a ride whn i walk into one of those places cause i dont no much
the guy is throwing darts. there's no electrical basis to his claims. Splitting a pre-amp signal one time is such a slight load on the HU it doesn't even matter. The problem you describe is definitely weird though. Have you tried something as simple as twisting your m/f rca connections after you've made the connection?
yer i have tried everything Optidriven i went to a differnet shop and told him about my problem and he said that my head unit was made when mostly two channel amps were used so they wern't designed to be split and there is really no other explanation to the problem> However someone i know did mention something intresting about how i split my channels at the head unit i used two splitters. The female and the male end of each one are to the same colour of rca cables. so on the white plug of my head unit it has the two black rcas and on the red on my head unit it ahas the two red rcas is this right?? Somone also told me that i should split it at the amp and only have two rca (one pair) running down the car as opposed to 4 then split it at the amp i thought about trying this but im not sure if i can use the same splitters so i decide against it just to make sure i didnt break anything. But anyway the guy described what would hapen if my headunit was split wen it wasnt ment to and the problem he describe was pretty acurate to what the problem i have so i think he may be right whats your opinon? I know you dont think he is right but is there a chance that he might be?? any help much appreciated
Hi Matty, The noise you are getting is alternator whine 90% of the time it comes from a bad eath/ground connection.Check all the ground terminations -make sure they are clean(down 2 the metal ) I know somepeople don't like power caps but you don't get whine when using caps. anyway that aside ref; your second set of rca you can also use a line level converter (small box that connects to the speaker wires and has female rca on the other end ,this will change it from high level speaker to low level rca- the better ones have gain control for each channel (this should not cost anymore than $20>25.
This problem of alternator whine is what i first thought it was because my ground wire wasnt properaly attached but it cant be the problem because the speakers work fine on there own an the sub work fine on its own. If i had alternator whine then theroetically i should get it all the time and not just wen i put in the sub as well as the speakers not to mention i get the sound even when the engine is off and just the stero is on so the alternator isnt even turning
Hi Matty, its hard to say what is causing that situation. Could be smoothing caps gone in the amp, too much strain with all connected at one time. have u tried 1 x pr of speakers and the sub or you could connect the amp in trimode ? it will say in the handbook if this is an option
Hi Matty, Do you know somebody who would loan you another amp to hook up? it would tell you if the amp is the problem? otherwise it would be worth it to get somebody qualified to check it out for you.otherwise you might be pulling your hair out in lumps. But ask plenty of questions so you can learn from the experience.
try your amp with just one set of speakers and the sub and you can take it further if its still giving problems.also check to see is the headunit earthed seperately ? cause you may have a ground loop.is the amp screwed to something metal or is it mounted on timber. I had a problem with an amp once and we couldnt find where the noise came from and it was one self tapping screw that held the amp to the back of the seat.!
i yer i have had problems with the head unit being earthed properly it works fine though so i assume it is properly gounded the amp is screwd ino the back of the sub box and i will try jus connect one set of speakers and the sub but im not sure what that will achive can you please elaborate and also could you explain the what a ground loop is
ground loops are caused in many ways but basically its due to slight earth differences between inputs and outputs. this can be eliminated by a ground loop isolator. example ACR part no : hca65. it looks like a small cap with a female set of rca on one end and a male pr on the other, and it just plugs into the rca lead.(but check the frequency response is 20 > 20,oohz) as some of the cheap ones cut off some of the treble frequencies.
