installing 4 channel amp.

i am getting ready to install a four channel amp for 4 infinity speakers but i am still trying to get my mind around it.

i have a few questions:

HOW IS IT DONE!!!!!!!!!????????

currently i have one amp that is going to the sub so what i was thinking was to run another power wire from the capacitor to the new amp and tap the remote wire from the current amp to the new one, and then just ground it.

then i was thinking on running speaker wire from the new amp to each of the speakers but then i started thinking what was going to happen to the stock wire... i am running the panasonic strada headunit.

i talked to the installer at best buy and he told me that it was better if i connected the new amp to the hu because it would give me better sound quality...how is this done. do i just cut the speaker wires from the hu and run them to the new amp and then from there to the speakers? then again, what happens to the wire that would come out of the wire harness behind the hu.

thanks.

 

Power section first. You can split the power wire coming off the capacitor to the two seperate amps, that isn't an issue. I'd get a set of distrobution blocks from www.knukonceptz.com to do this. I would go with a fused block for the power wire if you reduce the size of the wire (i.e. from 4 awg to 8 awg). A non-fused would be just fine to combine the ground wires coming from the amps so that you can ground to a common spot on the body.

The remote wire can just be daisy chained from the current amp.

Now for signal wires:
Depending on how your HU is you have some options with the RCAs. Most likely it has seperate channels for front, rear, and sub or it has front and rear. Use either the sub or the rear for your amp that powers the sub woofers.

If the HU has front and rear RCA outputs I would use both imputs on the 4 channel amp so that I could fade the rears out when I want. (so a set of RCAs for the front 2 channels and a set for the rear 2 channels and a set for the subwoofer channel).

As for speaker wire, I would run new speaker wire from the 4 channel amp to the new door speakers. The stock wire would work fine, but I prefer knowing everything in my system and speaker wire is pretty cheap. At the HU, I would disconnect the speaker wires that come out of the HU (that are currently sending powered signal to the speakers) and cut the exposed wire off and tape up the ends.



Any questions?

 

all right. i think i got it...

i went and looked behind the hu and these are all the rca cables coming out of the hu harness:

AV-IN: withe, red and yellow

PRE-OUT FRONT: white and red

PRE-OUT REAR: white and red. i have the subwoofer amp connected here.

VIDEO OUT: yellow

S.W-OUT: it a single black rca.

REMOTE-OUT: it is a single black rca coming out from the hu itself.

So, you are saying that i need to connect the PRE-OUT REAR and PRE-OUT FRONT rca to the 4 channel amp. but then where would i connect the rca clabe coming from the subwoofer amp? thanks for the help man.

 

You will use the single SW-out to connect to your subwoofer amp, and the front preout and rear preout will go to your 4 channel amp.

There are a couple of ways that you can deal with the single RCA channel from the HU, but the best method depends on the sub amp. You can split that single output with a male to female adapter and run a regular 2 channel RCA cable to your amp, or you could run a single channel from the SW-out to the amp. You have to check the capabilites of the amplifier though. I typically split the signal and usea standard RCA to connect to the amp.

 

all right, got it...thank you much, you were of great help...

 

no prob

 

Check you head unit to see if you can disable the internal amplifier. If the HU will allow you to turn off your internal amplifier, it will cut down on interference picked up by your RCA cables.

I'm not sure what HUs you can do this with, but i have a pioneer premier unit that does this. Pretty nifty feature.