Can this damage the speakers or will it sound bad if I have more power than the speakers are rated for? Any drawbacks to this? Or is this acually a good thing?
I always prefer to have a slightly bigger amplifier than speakers for the reason that many people seem to think that they can turn their 100 watts (per say) amp up to all 100 watts RMS and then are driving their speakers with a clipped signal. Therefore, its okay to have that little extra. What you will want to do, is not turn the gains on your amp up ALL the way. This way your not pushing out the full RMS wattage of the amplifier. Also, just be careful not to overpower the speakers too far.
Thanks Donald! I can't wait to tinker with it. I have not set it up yet but I was going to bridge my 55W to get 110W but now I think I am going to run a parallel pair on speakers to one channel and a parallel pair to another channel and a separate pair to the remaing 2 channels. Per Grizzley's response to my post on the amp section, I was told parallel would actually send 55 watts per speaker(4 total at 2 ohms from just 2 channels) and I will run the other pair off the remaining channels. I hope it's enough to drive all the speakers. I think it will be ok, the speakers sounded pretty good even with the crappy HU power although not quite as loud as I like it. I am not looking for monster sound, any upgrade to stock crud will be sweet music! What's your take on this?
Woah... first off... if you're not using an external amplifier, stop right now. If you are thinking about maybe bridging the channels on your head unit, that's a bad idea. It will toast your head unit.
Yes you can run them in parallel with 2 bridged channels in mono. They'll be much louder that way, however you will suffer some sound quality loss. My ADVICE to you is if you're trying to get some great sound to 4 speakers, but a descent 4 Ch amp to power them with. It'll be your best bet to get the most QUALITY sound with the speakers you have.
I have a 4 channel amp that I am installing. I will run 6 speakers to this amp. It is a hifonics zeus. I will run one set of 6.5 speakers in parallel and a separate set of 6.5's in parallel and one set of 6x9's. The amp is only 55 watts per channel so I am now wondering if it will be enough power. When I hook two speakers in parrallel it be at 2 ohms so that will make it effectively 110 watts but since there are two speakers wont it be 55 per speaker for a parallel set?