New sound install

When it comes to trouble shooting a sound intall with amps, I'm not that great.

I have just installed a 4 channel 800 watt amp that is powering 4 mids.

I had it setup that channel 1 & 2 were powering 2 speakers each (because I could only run one pair of amp cables from the head unit) but the the one channel wasn't working. So then I moved them to channel 3 & 4 (and the amp cable to power that pair of channels) and still the 1 channel wasn't working. So I then bridged channel 1 & 2 to power all four speakers and now it works but it goes into overload protection mode pretty easily and obviously I am now in mono which is not great.

What could be causing one channel not to work on the original setup? And is the overload due to running 4 speakers on the one pair of bridged channels?

Thanks

Hi Dude

All you did was increase resistance and if the amp is sensing increase in Ohms , so it protects itselfs , I know you said you only have one out onthe amp what you can do is purchase a single female dual male RCA spliter you will need two of these and then you can connect one to the White RCA and the other to the Red RCA giving you two red and then two white , But Label them as either red or white if you know what I'm Saying

Good Luck It should slove your problem 😉

I have been advised that it might be the RCA cable I am using. Luckily I ran two anyway so I will swap them over and test.

If that doesn't work I will look at getting what you suggested (but its the headunit that only has one output, the amp has 4 inputs)

It is most propably bad RCA's, the amp goes mofo because of ohm's, it seen 2 ohm and is not stable on 2 ohm's....

And it's seeing 2 ohms because it's running all four speakers on the single bridged channel?

yes...most stereo amps are not 2 ohm stable...or less.... they are bridgeble but not less than 4 ohms....

Cool thanks bud

The only whay you can bridge 2 speakers on one 4 ohm stable channel amp is to bridhe 2 8 ohm speakers...which the amp will then see 4 ohms.

Hi DJ

I Have checked you can also get a RCA cable that has a 2 into 4 male connection which will then send signal to all four channels

If you see the chance of re-laying cables which will look alot better

😉

Hi mate,

yeah as i said above I ran two amp cables anyway so I will try switching them over, and also try getting an adapter like you said so that I can run all the channels.

DARRYL J wrote:

Hi DJ

I Have checked you can also get a RCA cable that has a 2 into 4 male connection which will then send signal to all four channels

If you see the chance of re-laying cables which will look alot better

😉

This can work...only problem is depending of your head unit, normally a ok'sh unit has a front and rear stage with L+R on each...if you use just one you will have L+R stereo but not F+R.

Hi djtrebble,

Darryl J is correct, in this event, you are putting the RCA into only one channel at a time, giving signal to either only channel 1+2 or 3+4, thus only that signal would get amplified, you can test this buy even puting the rca's into 1+3, this should give you either 1 front speaker and one rear speaker working, or if it is an internally briged amp on the 2 diffirent stages, it should give you a lower gain but on all four speakers.

get a set of 2 to 4 rca's, otherwise you can organise yourself an active x-over which you can set to take a single input (2 ch) and it will split it to 3 outputs (6 channels) , front, rear and bass stages, which should cost you about R450 for an audiobank acive 3 way cross over, this will also give you much better controll over your frequencies allowing you to boost your speakers more in the advised opperating frequency ranges, giving you much better clarity.... In the event of a fualty rca, you would get either only one side (l or r) not working, or you would get alternator hum, commonly known as feedback or alternator whine.... which is caused by a bad grounding or the rca being next to the power cable of some sort.

I have been doing sound installs since I was 12 so if you need any advise, let me know.....

Eish, just realized when the last post was, lol, O well.... The info is there anyway now

hahaha nice! but yeah, still good info.

Ye was thinking for a while now of doing a kind of DO's and DONT's Sound install guide, with how too's and standard color codeings n stuff, maths equations et-set-e-ra, what u think ?

yeah man! sounds good!