I may be way off on this but here goes. I want to hook up my four Pioneer speakers to my Pioneer amp. Here are the specs of both the speakers and the amp.


Pioneer Speakers
Impedence is 4ohm
Max Power for the speakers is 120 watts


Amp Pioneer GMX 314 2/3/4 channel amp
RMS Output Configuration Options:
30W x 4 (at 14.4V, 4 ohm)
70W x 2 (at 14.4V, 4 ohm)
35W x 4 (at 14.4V, 2 ohm)
20W x 4 (at 12V, 4 ohm)
50W x 2 (at 12V, 4 ohm)
25W x 4 (at 12V, 2 ohm)


My first question is this. Do our cars provide 12V or 14V of power? Would I be better hooking the speakers up as 4 channels (20W @ 12V or 30W @ 14.4V) or should I hook them up in parallel and run the amp as a 2 channel so I either get 70W @ 14.4V or 50W @ 12V?

Btw, correct me if I am wrong but parallel hook up means:

both rear speakers on the same channel with positive to positive and negative to negative

both front speakers on the same channel with positive to positive and negative to negative

Please correct me if I am wrong as I am not car audio expert. I am still reading and learning.

Also, if I go the two channel route, I will loose some sound control, correct?

Thanks,
Kurt

ok.

if you know, our cars dont always stay at 14v. so just hook them up with all the speakers with thier own channel. (on 4 chan amp)
always remember that if you bridge the speakers, the amp will send out to the speakers in 2ohms. 4 ohm speakers dont like that.

anyways, it will be good enought sound with them running 4 channels.

Thanks man. I was typing this up pretty late last night and didn't realize that if I hook up two 4 ohm speakers in parallel I would be presenting a 2 ohm load to the amp which this amp can't handle (no 2 channel at 2 ohm configuration option). That was pretty dumb.

The reason I brought this up is because I was thinking of replacing all the interior with mb quart speakers but many of them have a min rms of 40 watts. This amp can only provide 30 watts rms (@ 4 ohms) so it falls a little short. Obviously, I would need a better amp but how would the MB quart speakers sound with this amp? Would they even work? Probably pretty bad since they are underpowered correct?

I may just wait and buy the speakers and a better amp. I was just curious.

Thanks,
Kurt

when the electrical system is at reast (when the car is off) the voltage is typically between 12.5-13 volts. with the car running, the voltage should go up to somwhere between 13-14.5 volts. on an unregulated amp like the one you mentioned, the power output will be nominal between these two states, and can be disregarded when you factor in the background noise from the cars engine. in other words, dont worry about the voltage stuff, lol.

when you run speakers in parallel (in order to drop the imedence), you are correct in your "+ to + and - to -" statment, although you would want to run the RIGHT speakers on one channel and the LEFT speakers on the other, not FRONT and BACK....otherwise your stereo image is shifted by 90 degrees, and youd have to look out the side window to get any sense of left/right stereo imaging.

you have two options:

1) run the speakers briged (total of a 2ohm load) to ONE channel per side of the amp (left/right). this will leave you with two more channels available for hooking up additional speakers, if you would like. with this setup, you loose the ability to fade front to back or adjust the volume for the front/back balance. this might not be important to you, however.

2) run one speaker off of each seperate channel. thats pretty self-explanitory.

you will get relativly the same amount of power to the speakers in either scenario, so its up to you.

Thanks SPL eclipse. I think I am just going to go the normal route and keep the amp four channel 30Wx4 @ 4ohm (since it doesn't make much of a difference and I would like to have control options - fade, etc).

I did notice that the shop that installed the amp and my speakers has each speaker going to it's own channel on the amp but the switch is on 2 channel. Maybe they forgot to change it? Either way, I am going to check the connections for each speaker (make sure the positive is to the positive and negative to the negative for each speaker) and then put the switch to four channel.

Any opinions on running this amp with the MB Quart speakers?


Thanks again,
Kurt

Just remember that your speakers are 4 ohm and even if your amp supported 2 ohm loads, the speakers wouldnt and amp will likey turn off all the time at high levels of sound or ruin your amp (i did this, i guess my amp, that went as low at 4 ohm, didnt like my subs bridged to 1 ohm,... who knew. :)

i dont see how speakers could have a min. wattage range, they just wont put out as much sound as they could. i think it will work out fine.

" did notice that the shop that installed the amp and my speakers has each speaker going to it's own channel on the amp but the switch is on 2 channel. Maybe they forgot to change it?"

thats because the amp has four inputs: front L/R and back L/R. sometimes people only have one set of RCA L/R outputs, so the amp internally bridges the signal to supply it to all four channels instead of just the corresponding two that are plugged in. if you have all 4 RCA cables plugged in, switch it to "4 channel" mode, that way you can control the fading from your deck. if theres only one set of RCAs plugged in, leave it where it is.