What's disadvantage to using 2-ch amp to power 2 sets of components?

 

New member
Username: Hotstank

Post Number: 1
Registered: Apr-05
Hi

I'm hoping someone can give me some advice.
I have a Kenwood Excelon kdc-x789 head unit &
MB-Quart Reference components(f&r).
I'm a newbie to car stereo stuff, and I made the mistake of buying a 2-channel amp, intending to push both sets of components with it. The amp is a Kenwood Excelon KAC-X521 1000w. I know now that I should have gotten a 4-ch. amp. My question is, what's the disadvantage in using the 2-ch. amp to power all 4 speakers? Can I use the amp, or should
I sell it and get a 4-ch ???

Any advice will be GREATLY appreciated.

-Brasskey
 

Silver Member
Username: Theelfkeeper

Stockbridge, GA USA

Post Number: 280
Registered: Feb-05
if the speakers are positioned front and rear, then you'll need a 4 channel, or another 2 channel, for it to sound right. if you hook all to a 2 channel, they will all receive the same signals at the same time and just sound funny.
 

Bronze Member
Username: Mad_at_madd

Chico, CA USA

Post Number: 14
Registered: Apr-05
The only problem that you are going to run into running four speakers off of a two channel amp is, depending on how you do it, is that you either won't be able to fade the speakers or you won't be able to adjust the balance.

Personally, I would rather have the fade control instead of the balance control. So here is easier way to wire everything up. First install the speakers and run your wires from each speaker back to you amp. Now, you are going to have four sets of wires at the amp, two wires for each speaker. Pair these four sets so that you have two sets, each set has the positive and negative of one of the front speakers and the positive and negative wires for the back speaker on the same side. After you have done that you take the postive wire of one of the speakers and the negative wire from the other speaker and plug them into their respective slots of one of the two channel amp. this should leave you with one positive and one negative wire and at this point all you have to do is twist those wires together thus creating what is called an intermittent wire.

As for it sounding funny, for most applications this setup will be completely ok sound wise. It is only after you reach the competition level that this might become a problem. Yes a four channel amp would be preferred, but for the money it is not going to make a very big difference.
 

Gold Member
Username: Glasswolf

NorthWest, Michigan USA

Post Number: 7551
Registered: Dec-03
you'll lose the ability to fade front to rear, but you can build a pair of circuits called L-Pads that will allow you to use a dial and a power resistor to attenuate the rear speakers to quiet them down manually.
www.bcae1.com has a section on lpads.
 

Gold Member
Username: Glasswolf

NorthWest, Michigan USA

Post Number: 7552
Registered: Dec-03
on a side note, with proper crossovers, I've run an entire 14 speaker system on a single 2 channel amp before without any trouble, but the biggest trick there was building the passive filters to split up the speakers for each frequency range so none of them overlapped to drop the load on the amp too low.
 

New member
Username: Hotstank

Post Number: 3
Registered: Apr-05
Thanks VERY much for the helpful replies.

-Brasskey
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