QuestionQUESTION: OK, new question, it took me forever to find you again. My main question is how to wire my subs, do i do series or paralell, or both for the setup I got, I think you told me both but i have never wired this way before and im lost on the diagrams I've found. I'm guessing all the wiring can be done inside the box so i dont need any special terminals on the outside of box, just the 2(total of 4) connectors for each speaker to run to the amp, right? Also my battery, I was planning to wire this way, 1/0 gauge connection to + post, 1/0 ga. wire running 6 inches to a fuse holder with a anl 60-200 fuse, a couple more inches of 1/0 ga. then going from other end of fuse holder to block distributer, then that block has 2- 4ga. outputs that will allow me to run 4ga power wire straight to amps, i dont think i need capaciters to store power for bass so let me know if this sounds good enough to protect my battery and the cars electricial components. I see crutchfield sells those 6x9 adapters so i will buy a set of them, i dont think i need a set for the doors though. I have changed my door/rear setup to 2 pairs of infinity kappa 50.7cs, the polk 5250 are already sold and the db6500 he raised in price so i found these infins for a great deal, let me know if they are superior speaks and if i should go with this setup. I see cardomain specs for my subs are wrong, it's 2.0 cubic feet per sub not 3.50 like cardomain said, this helps alot with finding a good priced box. Im lost on sub wiring, I want to protect my battery and all electricial systems in my car but dont wish to spend alot, anyway to modify alternator so i can increace amps?, and want to make sure I want a dual 12" ported box with individual enclosure's and not a sealed or bandpass for listening to metal. If you can take all this in a reply to this gibberish it would be greatly appreciated. Chris
ANSWER: ok, I looked up the subs you listed and i think its these:
http://www.cardomain.com/item/ECLSW6200
they show dual 4 ohm coils. is that what you got?
regardless you can pick what amp and subs and ohms coils etc that you have from this list here and it will show you exactly how to wire it all up to get it right:
http://www.crutchfieldenespanol.com/crutchfield/enes/24/_www_crutchfield_com/lea
so if you have any specific questions about these diagrams, feel free to ask and I'll try to make sense of it for you.
Yes the wires can be done inside the box. I usually prefer to run them all to the outside of the box so that if I get a new amp later I have the option of hooking them up different without tearing the box apart. but thats up to you.
now for the wiring part. using 1/0 is great, cant go wrong there. yes you use a short pice from + of batt to ANL fuse, but between the ANL and the distrib block, not sure why you'd use a short piece there and then run your 4 gauge back to the amps. I'd pull the 0 gauge back to the amps and put the distrib right there to break out with short 4 gauge to the amps know what I mean?
Also If your amps have their own fuses in them then your distribution block should be unfuesed but if your amps don't have fuses on them you should not rely on the ANL fuse up by the battery(some do, some don't).
if your amps have fuses you should total them all up, say as an example there's 3 30 amp fuses on your bass amp and 2 25 amp fuses on your mid/treble amp. you'd add them all up to get 140. so your ANL fuse up at the battery should be equal to or more than this. personally I'd go a fair amount more like a 200 in this case.
But like I said, if the amps don't fuses you'll have to get a fused distribution block to split the 0 gauge out to the two 4 gauges.
You probably wont need a capacitor and if you realize you do you can always add one later. once your system is done, when its cranked up put on your dome light at night and if you can see it dimming to the beat then you should get a cap. if its not noticeably dimming or just barely noticeable when absolutely cranked I wouldn't spend the extra cash for the cap.
The kappa 50.1cs are probably great speakers. they are 2 ohm speakers which the amps I recommended are stable to 2 ohms but I think they will distort more with that amp. I'm typically a big fan of infinity but I do think their components sound too "bright" for my taste. and since they're component speakers there will be a separate tweeter, if you choose to put the tweeter up on the dash instead of down by the woofer they will be so overly trebley it will kill your ears. I installed a set of infinity components in a friends car a while ago (similar set, but not these exact same ones) and the tweets were so overbearing that we had to get an Lpad (basically a volume knob) just for the tweets to turn them WAY down.
the fact that car domain shows the box at 3.5 not 2 doesn't mean its wrong. ported boxes are "tuned" and the tuning determines how the subs will sound. the size of the box verses the length and cross sectional area of the port will determine its tuning and performance.
I really think for listening to metal you should be using a sealed box NOT an ported box.
the sealed will be smaller too so that helps with your space concern.
no I wouldn't mod your alternator! you shouldn't need it either, this isn't a giant system and if you do the wiring and charging correctly you will not have problems. I've installed MUCH bigger systems into cars with very old factory alternators and not once have I blown one or had performance issues.
I believe I recommended a class D amp for your subs, this will help allot with the power requirements as well. You'll be fine with this setup.
Good luck and let me know if I can be of any more help.
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QUESTION: Yes those are the right subs, two eclipse sw6200's. I will use a sealed dual 12" box instead, I was thinking ported would be better for the type of music I listen to but sealed is what I need. And being I dont know the right cubic feet I will find a box with between 2.0-3.50 cubic space per sub and hope for the best. I understand what you said about the battery to amp wiring and will put a fused block near the amps if they dont have their own fuses and wont use one at all if the amp is fused, I think this is right. My main concern is getting the right amp for the subs and deciding on the right wiring process and doing that wiring process correctly. Which wiring option should I do? 1. 2 paralell 2 series 2. 4 coils in paralell 3. 2 coils in series 4. 2 coils in paralell. I'm looking at diagrams at www.lalena.com/audio/faq/wiring and believe these are the choices I have, which one do I do? In those diagrams say the 2 paralell 2 series option here is what I see. Connection on the + of one channel of amp that goes to + of both subs, then from the - of one channel of amp to the - of both subs, then I see a wire connecting the + and - of sub together on each sub itself and do not know if this is a seperate speaker wire or the same wire thats coming off the amp? I only want to use one 2 channel amp for both subs and the one I told you i want is the Power Acoustic Gothic OV2-2600 which is not a class D amp as you suggest. Let me know which amp in this brand or around this price range will give me the best performance and which way I should wire it to subs. Im seeing the diagrams but do not understand if Im using multiple speaker wires, or making multiple splices in each speaker wire for each connection, hope you get what im saying, and I dont understand how you can run all the wiring outside of box. The only other thing ill need help with is adjusting all the crossovers, filters, ect once everything is in, basicly getting complete harmony by setting all the options in the head unit correctly, by ear I guess . I have ‰; nwood KDC-X589 and the 2 subs, everything else I am buying soon so if you have any suggestions on amps, doors. rears, ect, let me know. You kind of scared me about the infinitys, i know remember a friend car that had a system with infinity highs and mids in the doors and the highs were so clear and high it hurt your ears even at mid volume. I going to buy the doors, rears, amps, and accessories next week and am just trying to get the best sounding system for metal possible without spending too much, the volume will be up most of the time. This will be the last time I ask you for help, I just want to understand the wiring process better and the diagrams are just creating more questions. Extra question, how far should a 10 disc cd changer be from the subbox, will its vibrations effect the changer if it's in the trunk with the box? Chris
ANSWER: ok, well there's allot here! how about from now on we try to attack one thing at a time. you're still getting hung up on the ohms/coils/series/parallel/wiring thing which is COMPLETELY understandable. so lets iron that out now and in future messages we'll get to the other details ok?
I think, instead of picking things out and still having questions. I'll try to explain how it actually works, so it makes sense to you and you can then decide for yourself ok? I'm going to attempt to give you all the basic details here so it will be rather complicated but I'm going to try to help you to understand how it all works. please feel free to ask for any explaiations since this a rather complicated thing to understand overall.
so this is how it works, each sub that you have has 2 coils in it. some subs have only 1, and yours have 2 and some even have 4 (or more even!) and each one of those coils has an "ohm" value. which in your case is 4 ohms per coil. some subs are 2 ohm, 1 ohm, 8 ohm, etc. but yours are 4 ohms PER coil. and you have a certain amount of these subs, in your case you have 2 subs right? some people only have one, some people have 4, some have 16 whatever. so the first step is to realize how many total COILS you have. you have 2 subs that have 2 coils each, so you have 4 coils total to work with here (and you HAVE to use all of them!) and each one of those is 4 ohms. so the numbers you are working with are 4 coils, and 4 ohms each. simple so far right?
now for the math. "Series" means multiply, and "parallel" means divide. Remember that! So if you have 4 coils at 4 ohms each and you put them ALL in series, you multiply 4x4 which is 16 ohms total. if you have 4 coils at 4 ohms each and you put them ALL in parallel then 4/4 = 1 ohm total. now for the tricky part, there's the option of putting them in groups. In the previous example we put ALL the coils in either series or parallel, but if you put 2 of the 4 ohm coils in series, you get 4ohms X 2coils = 8 ohms, then put the other 2 coils in series to get another set of 4x2 = 8. then put these two 8 ohm sets in parallel which would be 8ohms / 2sets = 4 ohms total!
so you can see that with 4 coils that are 4 ohms each, you have the option of either 1 ohm, 4 ohms, or 16 ohms. now the idea is to find an amplifier that supports either a 1 ohm load at the total wattage you need, or an amplifier that supports a 4 ohm load at the wattage you need or an amp that supports a 16 ohm load at the wattage you need. th wattage is determined basically by adding up all the recomended RMS ratings for each sub. so you have 2 subs that are rated for 350 watts RMS each. so you need a total of 700 watts RMS from the amp at either 1, 4 or 16 ohms depending on how you wire it. make sense?
amplifiers put out different amounts of power at different ohms so now that you've done the math, its a simple matter of finding an amp that puts out 700 watts RMS at either 1,4 or 16 ohms. it doesnt matter if it puts out 2000 watts at 1 ohm, but if the same amp puts out 700 (or close) at 4 ohms then this amp would be a good match and you should wire your subs to the way that they come out to 4 ohms if you get this amp, cuz you dont want the 2000 watts at 1 ohm since your subs cant take 2000 watts.
so as an example, the OV2-2600 is rated for:
8 ohms at 900 watts bridged
4 ohms at 1080watts bridged
2 ohms (NOT RECOMENDED!!!!)
as you can see amps only go so low in their ohms and usually distort more and more as the ohms get lowwer and lowwer. so you can either use this exact amp at 4 ohms which would be pushing it pretty hard but provide you a fair amount of power (even though its a little high it's ok, I'll explain if you want) or you could get an amp that's rated for 1-2 ohms but wire your sub at 4 ohms. this would waste a little max power of the amp, but it would have less distortion etc.
UHHHH! this is enough for this repsonce!!! I'll go on more in another message. just dont want to be cut off again by the email system here!!
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QUESTION: UHHH is right, I'm amazed you stuck with me this long but I now understand the basic math of series/paralell wiring, here's how I see how to hook my subs up. Wire the + and - of one VC together on each sub seperatly, then with another wire wire from the amp's + to the + of each sub but on the other VC's only(not the VC's that are hooked together on each sub), then wire from the amp's - to the - of each sub but on the other VC only,(the same VC as the + of amp is hooked to), this is how I see it on the diagram at bcae1.com/ under the diagram of hooking up 2-dual 4ohm subs. If this is right do I use a short seperate wire for each sub to connect the + and - together on one VC on each sub?, the wires coming from the amp have no connection to the VC's I've wired together, right?. I think I get the procedure, from the amp's + that goes to the + of one VC on each sub, do I just splice the speaker wire at the point where it needs to connect to the first sub's + then the wire would end at the second sub's +, and then from the - of amp I would splice where it needs to hook up to the first sub's - and that wire would end at the second sub's -? Then the 2 set's of wires that are coming from the amp can connect to the outside terminal's of the box and the wires coming from the speakers on one VC on each sub that are suppose to go to the amp's + and - can go to the inside of boxes terminal's, oh boy. I wont go into anything else now as this is my main concern. I will be using the Gothic OV2-1600 amp for these subs, the amp is stable at 4 0hm's at 2x520 RMS I believe, I cant afford 2 class D amps so Im stucking with this amp. 3 easy question's, do I need a cooling fan or anything to cool amps in trunk? can I secure amps to subbox without it effecting them or the box? and how far away should a 10-disc changer be from the subbox? Hope you can understand the first long part, I'd like to think i got it right now or close at least. Chris
Answerdamn! the message got cut off again! do me a favor and just send me a new message, mark it private and give me your email address since that wont happen if we email eachother directly.
I got what you wrote so don't bother typing it all over again! When I get your email address I'll give you my answer in it.
Look forward to hearing from you. It seems like you've pretty much got it, just a few things I want to be solid on. then I'm happy to help with those other details.
look forward to hearing from you. OH and do me a favor, please rate me on all the past messages.
thanks!
