I'm itching to upgrade my system.

[Acid X]

Alright, right now i have a Tsunami 4 channel amplifier running off of no-name wires and a Pioneer DEH-P6700MP headunit. The amplifier is only powering my two MTX Thunder 4510-44 Dual 4 Ohm Voice Coil woofers rated at 225 watts RMS. They're run off of the first two channels on the amp bridged together, and i have the subwoofers in series and paralleled to run at 8ohms. The amplifier is seeing a 4 ohm load with both of them running off of the bridged channels.

Bridged, at 4 ohms, the amp puts out 280W x 2, so each sub woofer is seeing 140 watts. This is the optimal way of hooking these subs up to this amp, because i don't believe it's 2 ohms stable bridged, though i can't be sure, but i dont want to risk ruining my only amp at the moment.

Anyway, seeing as these subwoofers are rated at 225 watts rms each, i don't think this amp is doing them justice. I want to upgrade to something not so powerful as to blow the subs, but im pretty sure (considering its MTX) that they can handle up to 300rms easily.. So i've been searching for the best 600watt amp i could find for the price. So i've come upon this:

Power Acoustik LT980/2

I've read alot of reviews across the web and most of the time this amp gets some pretty good ratings.. Its only 560 watts bridged (RMS), but im not planning to bridge it. What i want to do is open my subs up to their full potential by wiring them up the way they should be. I'm going to plop one sub on each channel, with the two voice coils going straight through to the amplifier. This will make the amp see a 2 ohm load on each channel, and will put out 280 watts to each sub. Not putting too much more power into it.. right?

I was planning on using my old amplifier to power my speakers since its a 4 channel, rated at 70 x 4 @ 4 ohms. Should sound pretty good!

Now for my dilemma. My head unit unfortunately only has TWO pre-amp outputs. Front and Rear/SW... This serves me a problem, obviously. So what i have come up with is this; I plan to run the two pre-amps to the Tsunami 4 channel amp functioning as normal channels, front and rear, not front and SW. I was then planning on using an interconnect to connect the output from the amp to the input on the second, Power Acoustik 2ch amp, and tuning the 2 channel amp for lows as normal.

My only disadvantage to this is that i now cant adjust the subwoofer bass from the head-unit, and the new amp doesnt come with an external bass adjustment. Do you think this will work?

Also, i wanted an opinion on the stuff i am going to purchase... Please note im not going for extremely cheap, just affordable in my case. Here's what i plan to get:

Stinger SWT12BLU PRO Series Car Audio Blue 12 Gauge Speaker Wire ~50 feet so i can have extra if i need it later [$16.90]
Stinger SHR1.5 Hyper Series Car Audio Interconnect RCA Cable 1.5' For amp-to-amp connection [$6.50]
Stinger SHR417 Hyper Series Car Audio Interconnect 4 Channel RCA Cable 17' For head-unit to 4ch [$23.00]
Power Acoustik LT980-2 Car Audio 2 Channel Sub Speaker Amp Amplifier 2 channel amp [$99.00]
Stinger SWK4D Pro Series 4 Gauge Car Audio Red Amp Kit Obiously for the amps' power souce [$54.75]

And then i made a little diagram, too: :P


Red = Power, Black = Ground, Blue = Distributor Block, Green = Head-unit to 4ch interconnects, Orange = 4ch to 2ch interconnect, Yellow = Speaker wires

Sorry for the long post.

[3rdCoast]

wouldnt 280X2 be 280w a sub? not 140w.....?

[2drSE-i]

its a 280 watt 4 channel amp, meaning it gets 70 watts per channel, or 140 x2 with two bridged channels, or 280 x 1 for one channel. since he has two subs, he has two bridged channels, meaning 140 watts per sub.


edit
i was reading my amps instruction book (yea yea instructions are for dorks) and it was saying a minimum of 10 guage wire. im most likely gonna get 8, but my amp is a 600 watt monochannel (300 rms), yours will be slightly more powerful, so id go either 8 or 6 guage wire. your choice tho.

[ivanfbi]

you might not actally agree with me, but read it at least. Get better coaxial speakers, like crystal ssx series and a good 12" or 10" sub like IDQ series from Image Dynamics. Also a better 4 channel amp, like phoenix gold/puioneer it doesn't matter much, how much ACTUAL wattage you get is more important. you need somewhere around 75Wx4 RMS and 150Wx2 bridged., so you can use front outputs to power speakers in front and 150W to power sub, it will be a lot better sounding and balanced and cheaper system than the one you planned. believe me, you DO NOT NEED REAR speakers, all they do is distract all the sound image. If you don't believe me, check the current champions in sound quality, they all have no rear stage.

[wallyyfm]

i suggest dumping pretty much everything you got and starting over
IF you're on a budget
amps, cadence or old school rockford (90's) ($200 tops)
speakers, coaxial cadence ultradrive series, even pioneer would cut it ($200 tops all way around, prolly les)
subs...pretty much anything better than what you got now ($200)

mtx

[Acid X]

Err, my MTX's are very good actually. They pound very hard for how much power they get from my tsunami amp. And they can handle more.
So why shouldn't i stick with them?
Anywho, i can't afford to redo my whole sound system. I don't have stock speakers if thats what you guys are thinking.
The tsunami amp would for fine for my speakers until i can afford to upgrade from the coaxials i have. Putting out 70Wx4 rms to the speakers is probably exactly what they require rms...
Anyway, nobody really answered my question, lol.. You all just told me to go and redo my whole system, which is NOT what im going to do. I'd rather put that much money towards other stuff.. Maybe strut bars or a header or something...

:\

its a 280 watt 4 channel amp, meaning it gets 70 watts per channel, or 140 x2 with two bridged channels, or 280 x 1 for one channel. since he has two subs, he has two bridged channels, meaning 140 watts per sub.

edit

i was reading my amps instruction book (yea yea instructions are for dorks) and it was saying a minimum of 10 guage wire. im most likely gonna get 8, but my amp is a 600 watt monochannel (300 rms), yours will be slightly more powerful, so id go either 8 or 6 guage wire. your choice tho.

It's 280 watts at 4 ohms per bridged channel. Thats a total of 560 watts from the amp RMS.. I have the two subs i have paired together to make a total of 4 ohms when connected to the amp.. Thats 8 ohms on each sub, which kinda sucks, but i can't hook each sub up normally to 2 seperate bridged channels because the amp cant handle a 2 ohm load on a bridged channel.. I can't wire the subs up to each only use 4 ohms instead of 2. It's either 2 ohms or 8 ohms only.. Because its dual voice coil.

Oh, and i've also been told you cant bridge a 4 channel amp down to one channel like your saying.

[3rdCoast]

u bridge a 4ch. amp to 1ch.. Have u tried just running each sub on a bridged channel at 8ohms just to see how it works out..... 280w a sub is pretty decent power. If u want to beef this up i think ur gonna have to get rid of one or the other. either new amp (probably should get a mono amp) or get some new subs that will work better with the amp u got. Other than what i suggested about running each sub 8ohm on each channel i got no other ideas on that. I got 2 dual 4ohm subs and i wired them to 8ohms and then wired them both together to get a 2ohm load at the amp on a 1ch mtx class d amp. works great

[Acid X]

3rdcoast, your amp isnt seeing a 2 ohm load from those 2 8 ohms put together. When you put 2 8 ohm subs together on one channel it represents a 4 ohm load. It would only be a 2 ohm load if you put both 4 ohm voice coils of one speaker on to a channel.

And since each sub is only 8 ohms at the sub itself i doubt it would see the 4 ohm load that the amp would need to put out the 280watts to the sub...

[3rdCoast]

forgive me i forgot how i wired them it was a long time ago. My subs are Dual 8ohm so i wired each to 4ohm then wired the subs together to one channel so the amp would see a 2ohm load