stereo amplifier question

[QueBert]

Picked up a box with 2 subs and 2 amps. Haven't had a stereo since my old sub and amps were stolen. Digging around I found all the wires except the 2nd remote one. It's a very thin wire maybe 20 or 22 gauge. Would splicing it and running a y connector to hook up the 2nd remote wire be a bad idea? I don't want to do it the wrong way, but I also don't want to have to re run a whole new wire if it's not needed.

 

[hanoverphist]

the 2nd remote on one of the amps, or in your car?

 

[QueBert]

Originally posted by: hanoverphist
the 2nd remote on one of the amps, or in your car?

to the amp, I already have 1 wire running from the stereo to my amp, but I have 2 amps so I trying to hook up 2 wires. I'm not even sure if they're needed, I know on many newer amps they auto shut off even without the remote wire. Better to be safe than sorry.

 

[brblx]

the remote wire carries very little current. you can daisy chain them with no problems.

make sure you match the gains on your amps. should be some tutorials on the net for how to do it with a multimeter.

also make sure not to run the subs in stereo. if you take one set of RCA's and use y splitters, one amp will be playing the right channel and one will be playing the left. out of sync subs don't sound good (though most bass is probably evenly mixed). splitters are fine, but make sure you get one left and one right input per amp. last time i had a setup like that i had to kind of 'customize' some cables in order to have enough length to do this.

 

[QueBert]

thanks for the reply brblx, the sub amp is a mono amp so I shouldn't have any problem there. I didn't know you had to match the gains on the amps, interesting I learned 2 things from you.

 

[brblx]

still applies if the sub amps are mono. i was saying that your amps' mono outputs should be a combination of left and right inputs, so that both subs play exactly the same thing.

concerning gains, you can often get decent results by just turning the gain knobs to the same amount (helps if they click), but even with the same model amp, there can be some variance even though the knobs look like they're in the same position. DMM is the way to get it perfect.

these things matter the most if your subs share a common airspace (no divider in the box).