Amp and speaker questioins

[daytonlax14]

Driving down the highway with my windows open makes it really hard to hear the music. I'm wanting to get an amp and all new speakers. What channel amp should I get to wire 4 speakers to the amp? How many RCAs are needed? What wattage amp should I get? What guage wire (power, ground, etc) will I need? I already have amp wiring in my truck. I believe it is one size smaller than 4 gauge. Thanks for the help.

[88montess]

You would want either a 4 channel or 2 2 channel amps, you would need 2 sets of RCA's, and your stereo would need to have front & rear preamp outs or you would need to get an amp that supports speaker level inputs. As far as wattage, that would be based on what your speakers can handle, and wire guage would be based on what wattage your amp is pushing, most amps will have a recommended guage listed. Personnally rather than run new wires from the amp location to the speaker locations I added a set of 6x9's in truck boxes (http://www.crutchfield.com/p_130TSA6992/Pioneer-TS-A6992R.html?tp=91) behind the seat powered by a 50x2 amp (http://www.crutchfield.com/p_575P2002P/Rockford-Fosgate-Punch-P200-2.html?search=p2002_rockford_fosgate&skipvs=T) and that helped tremendously. Plus the 4x6's really can't deliver much bass, so adding the 6x9's allowed me to tune the system to run most of the mid to highs through the 4x6's & most of the low to mids through the 6x9's

[daytonlax14]

Did you amplify the door speakers at all?

I'm looking at getting these for the doors
http://www.sonicelectronix.com/item_39878_Pioneer-TS-G1644R.html

And these for the rear
http://www.sonicelectronix.com/item_41270_Pioneer-TS-G4644R.html

What kind of amp wattage should I look for then (4 channel)

[88montess]

Unfortunately my truck is too old to have door speakers from the factory & I haven't had time to get the pieces needed to add them, so all I have are the 4x6's in the dash & rear plus the 6x9's & 10" behind the seat.

If you are running an aftermarket radio you wouldn't see a huge amount of power gain by amplifying those speakers, most aftermarket radios push anywhere from 14-18 watts RMS & the smaller of those speakers are rated at 30 watts, so that is what you would want to look at when it comes to amp wattage. I always recommend people leave a little margin when choosing amp/speaker combos (other people might not agree, but I prefer playing it safe rather than replacing almost-new blown speakers), plus a lot of the better quality amps tend to run a little over the advertised power ratings, so I would say you could safely run a 25 watt x 4 RMS amp, such as this kicker (http://www.crutchfield.com/p_20611DX2K4/Kicker-11DX200-4.html?tp=35782) That all being said, even just installing those speakers without amplification would probably do wonders for your sound quality over the stock speakers, I installed the 4x6's (Here's what I went with (http://www.crutchfield.com/p_500SPS406/Alpine-SPS-406.html?tp=100)) a week or 2 before I installed the 6x9's & they sounded pretty good on their own. I would also recommend you get some bass blockers (http://www.crutchfield.com/p_127BB300A2/Bass-Blockers-300-Hz-cut-off.html) for your 4x6's and let the bigger door speakers handle producing the bass, depending on the radio you have, you may be able to tune what frequencies are outputted to which speakers, but in my opinion having hardware to back it up is always nice, since hardware doesn't go away if the radio's settings get reset.

[daytonlax14]

i don't have stock speakers, they are sony speakers but they are pretty old and kind of coming apart. Sound pretty crappy when the volume is up loud. my pioneer stereo puts out 14 watts rms. Can I not give the speakers more than 25w rms? Are there any cheaper amps that would be good for my application such as crunch amps? I have heard good things about them and they are very well priced. Such as this one:

http://www.sonicelectronix.com/item_44455_Crunch-P1-650.4.html

Would give each speaker 37.5watts rms at 4ohms......do i need to look at how much the amp puts out at 2 ohms or 4 ohms???

[88montess]

If the old ones are starting to come apart, then new speakers would definitely make a difference.
You can give them more than 25, the door speakers you're looking at are rated at 40, the reason I said 25 was that gives you a little margin on the 4x6's since they're only rated for 30, you could probably run 30 through them all day long & be fine, but like I said, I'm usually a little conservative on amp power vs speaker power, if I'm building a system that I'm going to use every day I use rockford fosgate amps, and they tend to exceed the advertised specs, for example the amp I have on my sub is advertised at 300 and according to the certification sheet it's actually running 315. Can't say the same about other brands, but some do exceed the advertised rating & having a little bit of a margin when I'm planning a build for someone helps keep from blowing speakers.

I've never used/heard of crunch amps before, but if you've heard good things about them & they're cheap go for it, before I could afford to buy name brands I had a pair of cheap profile amps in my monte, 8 years later, they're still there & last time I had a head unit in it they where still working fine. When it comes to buying off-brands, just make sure it's got a warranty & you're not going to have any issues returning it if it turns out to be junk.

You could probably get away with running that amp with them as long as you had the gain on the 4x6's a little lower than the door speakers, and didn't crank it way up, but I would recommend you look into a set of 4x6's that are rated at least 40w RMS, they'll cost a little more, but they're going to be a lot more likely to hold up. I have these in my truck: http://www.sonicelectronix.com/item_11570_Alpine-SPS-406.html and I love them, the only issue was I had to cut a hole in the center of the speaker grill on my trim panel to clear the tweeter.
Cheapest decent options I could find were these two, never used MTX or Polk myself, but I have heard they're decent. http://www.sonicelectronix.com/item_33701_MTX-Audio-TN462.html
http://www.sonicelectronix.com/item_9119_Polk-Audio-db461.html

And finally, as far as ohms go, it depends on the speaker, these & most of the full range speakers on the market are still 4 ohm, only the higher end ones are 2. I suspect in the next few years we may see them start trending towards 2 ohms like subs have done recently.

[daytonlax14]

Okay and just for clarification...I need to run 2 sets of RCAs from the headunit to the amp right? And the speaker wire just goes straight from each speaker to the amp?

[88montess]

Correct, one set for the front pair, one set for the rear pair, and if you think you might install a sub somewhere down the road, I would go ahead and run a 3rd set for that while you've got things apart, just make sure you leave the caps on the end of that set if you do.

Yep, the speaker wire goes straight from the amp to the speakers.