When I was in high school and college, I always had some sort of un-godly stereo in my vehicle. I never much cared how I hooked it up. I ran RCA cables from the head unit to the amp, then ran speaker wire from the amp to the subwoofers.

I'm putting a system in my truck and I've been doing some research. I'm seeing things about wiring the subs in series, parallel, etc. What's wrong with getting a two channel amp and putting one sub on each channel? What's the benefit to wiring in series or parallel?

Due to the box that I'm getting, I have to get shallow mount subs. I'm getting Pioneer shallow-mount subs, but haven't decided which specific model. They range from 200 watts RMS to 400 watts RMS (I know these are the important numbers.... max numbers don't mean much). These are all 4-ohm single voice coils. I'm gonna have two of them. So if I go with the 400 watt model, and I get an amp that puts out 400 watts RMS x 2 @ 4 ohms (800 watts total)... that should work, right?

They also make dual-voice coil 2 ohm models.

All this **** is confusing.

Help?

Crutchfield.com

uh, officer tim, you ever heard of noise pollution you inconsiderate vagabond?

Yup, Crutchfield.com is the key - between them and www.rockfordfosgate.com all your subwoofer/amp questions should be easily answered. Lots of diagrams, explanations, and probably suggestions on which setup is better in certain situations.

Go 2 ohm

running either series or parallel determines the load of the circuit. running your speakers in series allows you to bridge the channels of your amp so that it basically produces more output.

as far as the power rating of the amplifier goes, those numbers really don't mean anything. that's all marketing crap. you need to know more about the amplifier. some 200 watt amps won't hold a candle to some 100 watt amps. how do you know your amp's good enough? you have to do some research. talk to people who know more about the models you're considering. i recommend you get a strong, bridgeable, two-channel amp. bridge the channels so that basically you're using it as a one-channel amp. now, you have two choices for wiring the speakers. you can run two sets of wires from the amp, one to each speaker. this is parallel wiring, and it causes the overall circuit load to be 2 ohms. don't do this unless you know the amp is stable at 2 ohms. this is a decent idea because it allows quite a bit more current. the other way you can wire them is in series. that makes the overall load 8 ohms and is much easier on the amp. it just may not produce the same amount of power. play with both configurations to see what you prefer. if you do a search on series speaker wiring, you'll see how that works. it's really simple.

I've been checking Crutchfield.

What's better? Wiring two subs parallel into a mono amp? Or 2 subs into a 2-channel amp?

Don't real cops just wait till they bust someone stealing what they want and "lose" the evidence?

If you're not going for blow your eardrums, I wouldn't sweat it how it's wired. Make sure you get a quality amp and it should be fine.

And ask Ram.

And crutchfield.

LOL

Well, the subs are 4-ohm single voice coil. So wiring them in parallel brings them to 2 ohms. 400 watts RMS each x 2 = 800 watts RMS at 2 ohms parallel. By tweaking the gain on the amp, I could probably get away with a 1000 watt RMS monoblock amp.

Or... I could keep it simple and get a 2-channel amp and run them in 4-ohm stereo.

My concern is space... the monoblock amps are relatively smaller than the 2-channel amps, which would be better. Plus, more of the monoblocks are Class D.

Decisions, decisions....

1aDAM 12 ,1aDAM 12, How do you read this unit ???? Over................

Car RamRod!!!

^ #7 The lofty one says its simple!!!!!!!!!!

Way back in the day when I did car stereo, we ran almost all subs positive to positive and negative to negative in mono. The reason was, that we used Punch amps, and you could get a ton of power out of them by running them in mono at 2 ohms. I knew a couple of guys that were running Punch amps at 1 ohm, and they were stable and cool.

At that time, most music did not have much stereo information in the frequency range that the subs were playing, and so there was not much to be gained by running stereo subs.

At one point I had on Punch 45 amp driving two 10 inch Kicker subs running mono at 2 ohms in a 5th order bandpass box and at 3 ohms driving a pair of 3 inch mid/tweets as a center channel, and them in stereo driving each door at @1 ohm with a 6.5 mid bass, 4 inch midrange and Kicker neo tweet. I don't remember what the final load the amp was seeing was (as analyzed by the install shop), but it was crazy low. The amp handled it and never skipped a beat. The system jammed too.

J

The physicist and former SPL car audio junkie in me says that "stereo" in subs is almost laughable. Why do you think that fancy home audio systems are "5+1" or "7+1" channels? That "+1" is a single bass channel, so why try to make a two-channel bass system in a vehicle?

You said "Due to the box that I'm getting," so that leads me to believe you will have two subs in one enclosure, so unless the box has a partition in the middle to isolate the two drivers running them in stereo is retarded because if the left channel is driving and the right is not, then you will lose a bit of bass because the un-driven side will act as a damper as it would move out of phase with the driven side. In a single box with two drivers and no partition between the two sides, you need to run them in mono for the best sound.

You can run mono in series or parallel, it just depends on how much power your amp will supply, but as mentioned above, the power ratings are misleading. If you wire them is series you will have an 8 Ohm load, if you wire them in parallel you will have a 2 Ohm load. The 8 Ohm series option would be extremely rare nowadays, so I'd recommend that you go with a mono Class-D amp that is 2 ohm stable and then wire the subs in parallel to make a 2 ohm load... but that's just me.

-JT

dual subs in a Pick up is over kill...

wheel,

Bust one of the punks driving around with a sweet sound system and have him hook it up. Tell him you will drop the charges if he helps you out.

#15 - That's more along the lines of what I was looking for, thanks. I'm getting a dual 10" enclosure, up-firing, to go under the rear seats. It's a sealed system, with each side having .5 cubic feet of space. I'm getting Pioneer shallow mount subs (Pioneer TSSW2501S4) which can handle as little as .35 cubic feet and are designed for this specific purpose. 1500 watts max, 400 watts RMS.

I've seen mono amps that have ONE speaker input.... so I'd wire the speakers in parallel INSIDE the box, then just run one set of speaker wires OUTSIDE the box to the sub, correct? I've also seen some mono amps that have two sets of inputs (NOT two channel) that wire parallel internally in the amp... this just makes wiring the subs easier I guess. They both serve the same purpose, right? And running two SVC 4ohm subs @ 400 watts RMS parallel gives me 800 watts @ 2 ohms, right?

#16 - I have a Chevy Avalanche, the interior is huge. I was looking to get two 12's, but I thought that might have been overkill.... so I downsized.... LOL

The Best subs I ever had were Becker,,

Indesrtuctable,,I drove them with a punch 200watt,and had 200watt for the frt and mid spkrs.

I suggest a separate pre-amp,,

wheel,

^ a pre-amp with built in Cross over,

That's what I did.I had 2 Hi dome Tweeters and 2 Mids,,

essentially making the whole car one big speaker..

wheel,