So I got given a speaker system for my car, which I have installed fully in my car, I have had to disconnect the two back door speakers that were currently wired up to my head unit, and replace them with the parcell shell ones. What if I were to plug both of them in?
Depends on the impedance of the speakers and what your headunit is rated to drive... Chances are it will drive them both but they won't sound as good as proper matched speakers,
Car stereos have the power output rated @ 4 ohms, if you connect the back door speakers and the parcel shelf ones up off of the rear channel you'll be running either a 2 or 8 ohm impedance depending on how you wire it up, 8 ohms means the amp in the stereo will have to work twice as hard to get the same volume from the back and 2 ohms means you'll either burn the internal amp out eventually or blow the output diodes , either way it won't do the amp any good, it'll get hot, sound cack and you might even let out the magical smoke that resides in all electronics
not meaning to hijack the thread, but ufk sounds like he knows what he's on about. I just recently changed cars, just to a mk6 fiesta from a mk4. I had an aftermarket headunit, and took it out of the old car, where it had been working fine. I had to buy the wiring converter for the new car, and got it all in and it works fine, but, it gets pretty warm. I never noticed heat before in the old car because it was in a single DIN slot, but in the mk6 its in a double DIN slot, with a frame thingy to make two single DINs with one of them being a little storage thingy. Is it normal for them to get warm?? Theres no extra speakers connected, infact theres fewer as in the mk4 I had standard front door main speakers, front door tweeters and then I put some in the back aswell (4 speakers + 2 tweet), the headunit had enough connectors for these. And in the mk6 theres only front door and rear door speakers (4 speakers).
It would depend on how the dash is set up. It is most likely getting warmed by the engine because the head unit is closer to the fire wall than it was in the old set up
Car stereos do get warm as the amp produces heat, if I remember correctly on a mk6 fiesta ,its the one with the stock 2 teir silver radio seperated by a black strip and a swine to remove and reassemble, the heater matrix is not far from the stereo and its also quite well insulated up behind the dash so heat dissapation can be a problem. You dont have fewer speakers, tweeters and speakers in the same panel are only classed as one unit (component speaker) because the impedance is still 4 ohms, a crossover of some description routes the frequencies to the appropiate component. This font of useless knowledge is brought to you by virtue of having spent 1/2 my working life as a specialist car audio and security installer
yeah ufk said.. it's the impedance of the speakers- basically resistance.. most car speakers are rated at 4 ohm (you can check on the backside of the magnet- usually right there, will use the ohm symbol)- you could run all 4 of them at 8 ohms in series without any problem, but parallel your going to be at 2 ohm.. and your amp has to be able to handle a 2 ohm load (or lower) at 8 ohms your speakers will be putting out half output each with the same wattage (wired in series).. in parallel, they will put out the same volume they put out now- all 4 of them.. but the load on the amp will be double (2 ohm) just depends on your amp really.. either it can handle it or it can't.. if one set of speakers are better for highs, you can use crossovers to cut the bass on those and cut the high's and extreme low's for your mid-range speaks.. you'll get alot more volume out of them if they don't have to try and reproduce really low bassnotes.. save that for the woofers
There is no way the head unit will like a 2ohm load It will may just blow a fuse, or maybe overheat and die, perhaps it has overload protection circuitry that will shut the unit down, etc - it won't like 2 ohms. +1 With all four speakers hooked up in series, you'll be running at 8 0hm, and all will be fine Issues would be things like if one set of speakers don't perform well, so it spoils the sound that you will overwise have if you just have two good speakers running. I'd say go for it and see if you like the resulting sound - provided all the speakers are well mounted and able to produce bass, you will feel more bass and probably increased overall volume levels from the increased effeciency of running multiple speakers. If you want a bit more treble up front, you can get a couple of little tweeters with a high pass x-over - these add very little load to your deck, which wil also be producing a clearer sound since it's having an easy time only having to drive a 8 ohm load.
