Need head unit suggestions

Saharacon

Member
I do I like to hear my music lol if all I can hear is my face vibrating I get a little annoyed.

Yes but these are system built to hit over 150 dbs. We can't hear our mids or highs ever while competing and it's just a waste of power.

But this is a daily driver system much diffrent lol
 

Saharacon

Member
These are the 2 amps I got from work. Both are Kicker. View attachment 162008 Would I need both to run the head unit, speakers and sub or just one? I don't know a lot about audio.

If you have a 4 channel that's used to give extra juice to your 6.5s and tweeters. The Mono Block is for your subwoofer. You'll need a head unit with 3 rca outputs all together unless you want to use a Y splitter for the 4 channel
 

JakeJK

New member
If you have a 4 channel that's used to give extra juice to your 6.5s and tweeters. The Mono Block is for your subwoofer. You'll need a head unit with 3 rca outputs all together unless you want to use a Y splitter for the 4 channel

I think you misread the boxes, he's got a 5 channel and a 4 channel
 

JakeJK

New member
These are the 2 amps I got from work. Both are Kicker. View attachment 162008 Would I need both to run the head unit, speakers and sub or just one? I don't know a lot about audio.

The top one will run your whole system, the bottom one would run your door speakers better but you'd need a separate amp for subs. That or you could bridge 2 channels of the bottom one to your subs and run the speaker bar speakers off the head unit. The top one will give you 40 watts rms to each speaker which should be plenty loud, and assuming you're running a 2 ohm impedance 300 watts rms to the sub/subs

Edit: but if you ran the bottom one that's a lot of power for door speakers and I can guarantee you it'd be loud enough haha, you'd just need a separate amp for sub
 
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dillard09

New member
I run 2 fosgate t400-4 under each seat. I have one for the 2 doors and 2 tweets and the other for the 2 in the sound bar and then bridged for the sub. Sounds good enough. I just need to update my 5 yr old Eclipse headunit.
 

TNuggs13

Member
The top one will run your whole system, the bottom one would run your door speakers better but you'd need a separate amp for subs. That or you could bridge 2 channels of the bottom one to your subs and run the speaker bar speakers off the head unit. The top one will give you 40 watts rms to each speaker which should be plenty loud, and assuming you're running a 2 ohm impedance 300 watts rms to the sub/subs

Edit: but if you ran the bottom one that's a lot of power for door speakers and I can guarantee you it'd be loud enough haha, you'd just need a separate amp for sub

When you say whole system that includes the sub for the 5 channel amp? I'm clueless about this kind of thing but hope to learn soon when I get help installing from a buddy.

Could I use the 5 channel to run the head unit and speakers and use the 4 channel to run the sub or something in that combination?
 

quertyman

Member
When you say whole system that includes the sub for the 5 channel amp? I'm clueless about this kind of thing but hope to learn soon when I get help installing from a buddy.

Could I use the 5 channel to run the head unit and speakers and use the 4 channel to run the sub or something in that combination?

Yes you could do that if you wanted to. The main thing you want to know is to match the rms power to your speaker. So if your sub is a 400 watt rms sub use the 400 amp for it. Then use the 5 channel for the speakers. You will just not be using the sub channel on the big amp is all. What speakers and sub are you putting in?
 

JakeJK

New member
When you say whole system that includes the sub for the 5 channel amp? I'm clueless about this kind of thing but hope to learn soon when I get help installing from a buddy.

Could I use the 5 channel to run the head unit and speakers and use the 4 channel to run the sub or something in that combination?

Alright lemme do a little explaining haha

Head unit doesn't need power from amp, it only sends signals to the amp to tell the amp what power to give to the speakers, and the volume and frequency etc. the head unit gets its power from the battery through the wiring harness

Now in the case of a 5 channel you have 4 pathways (channels), 1 for each speaker, that are each equally powered (40 watts). Along with 1 extra channel, made for a subwoofer that has 300 watts. So you can run a good stereo off just the 5 channel but your door speakers would not be nearly as loud as if you were to use the 400 watt 4 channel amp. This is because that amp puts roughly 100 watts to each speaker. Depending on what kicker speakers you got that's probably way too much power anyways and you'll blow them.

So in my opinion use the 5 channel amp, sell the 4 channel amp or keep it either way, but the 5 Channel will power all of your speakers including the sub with most likely plenty of power

RCA cables will give the signal to the amp from the back of the head unit telling it what to do you will need 3 sets of RCA cables sometimes called signal cables they have them on crutch field. You said you already had wires so you may ready have them.

I can probably answer any question you have about stereos but it took me a lot of research haha so don't feel bad about not knowing it took me months before i started to pick up on things
 

JakeJK

New member
Yes you could do that if you wanted to. The main thing you want to know is to match the rms power to your speaker. So if your sub is a 400 watt rms sub use the 400 amp for it. Then use the 5 channel for the speakers. You will just not be using the sub channel on the big amp is all. What speakers and sub are you putting in?

Can you double bridge a 4 channel into 1 channel?

Also I'm pretty sure that will put the amp at 1 ohm and I doubt his amp or sub is 1 ohm stable

I've never heard of bridging a 4 channel into 1 I don't think that's a good idea... Saharacon can correct me if I'm wrong but for 100 extra watts I don't see the point, 1 you have a whole extra amp in the car 2 I don't think it's safe
 
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quertyman

Member
Can you double bridge a 4 channel into 1 channel?

Also I'm pretty sure that will put the amp at 1 ohm and I doubt his amp or sub is 1 ohm stable

I've never heard of bridging a 4 channel into 1 I don't think that's a good idea... Saharacon can correct me if I'm wrong but for 100 extra watts I don't see the point, 1 you have a whole extra amp in the car 2 I don't think it's safe

I am pretty sure that you can do that. Your ohms aren't changing, that's only based off of the speaker not channels. You're just sending all the power to one speaker. But I'm not 100% sure either so I'd go off one someone with experience.
 

JakeJK

New member
I am pretty sure that you can do that. Your ohms aren't changing, that's only based off of the speaker not channels. You're just sending all the power to one speaker. But I'm not 100% sure either so I'd go off one someone with experience.

Yeah you're right, but I think he's only got 1 sub so its only got one input unless it's a DVC which I doubt it is I think it'd be weird to wire it down to 1 channel but yeah someone with experience should know
 

quertyman

Member
Yeah you're right, but I think he's only got 1 sub so its only got one input unless it's a DVC which I doubt it is I think it'd be weird to wire it down to 1 channel but yeah someone with experience should know

We really just need to know what speakers are being used by the OP. Care to share TNuggs13?
 

TNuggs13

Member
We really just need to know what speakers are being used by the OP. Care to share TNuggs13?

I'll check them out in the morning. They are marine speakers in boat style mounting units. Similar to what would be on a wake board boat tower. Here is a bad pic of what I got. I'll try and get a better pic once I take the speakers out. Thanks for all the feedback guys.

ImageUploadedByWAYALIFE1440750513.791100.jpg
 

Zstairlessone

New member
Pretty sure you can use the KX in mono mode to send 400 watts to a sub, then use the CX to power your speakers, it will provide 40W/channel to 4 speakers at a 4 ohm load, should be all you need. Later, if you really want to hurt your ears, you can pick up another CX and bridge each for 150 W/channel stereo both going into 4 speakers at 4ohm loads, but you shouldn't need to do that.
 

JakeJK

New member
Pretty sure you can use the KX in mono mode to send 400 watts to a sub, then use the CX to power your speakers, it will provide 40W/channel to 4 speakers at a 4 ohm load, should be all you need. Later, if you really want to hurt your ears, you can pick up another CX and bridge each for 150 W/channel stereo both going into 4 speakers at 4ohm loads, but you shouldn't need to do that.

Yeah but is a whole extra amp worth it for an extra 100 watts? I doubt that sub can even handle 400 watts rms the cx puts out 300 to the sub RMS

Edit: well shit that sub is 4 ohms.. You won't get 300 watts out of the cx to the sub.
 
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TNuggs13

Member
Ok so here's what I have. These are all the specs from the Kicker site. Sorry this might be very repetitive but I'm completely clueless with audio. I've always had a shop do the install on my systems and this will be the first time doing it myself when I get the head unit.
ImageUploadedByWAYALIFE1440781119.458384.jpg
ImageUploadedByWAYALIFE1440781131.855546.jpg
ImageUploadedByWAYALIFE1440781142.140753.jpg
ImageUploadedByWAYALIFE1440781152.458949.jpg
 

JakeJK

New member
Ok so here's what I have. These are all the specs from the Kicker site. Sorry this might be very repetitive but I'm completely clueless with audio. I've always had a shop do the install on my systems and this will be the first time doing it myself when I get the head unit.
View attachment 162266
View attachment 162267
View attachment 162268
View attachment 162269

Alright well if the sub were 2 ohm I'd say run the 5 channel by itself. You need to find out for sure If you can bridge a 4 channel down to 1 channel safely. I don't think you can, if you can I'd run the 4 channel into the sub because you'll get more power from it at 4 ohms than you will the 5 channel. The 5 channel, at 4 ohms only has enough power for half of that sub basically. If it were 2 ohm you'd be getting 300 watts (what you want) but it isn't. More ohms=better sound quality but less power. For door speakers you want to run 4 ohm but for subs 2 ohm will suffice. Now if you were to somehow come up with another one of those subs there's a way you can wire then so that the Resistance is 2ohm meaning you'll be getting 150 watts for both speakers effectively doubling your power output and making it quite a bit louder, you could build your own box (fairly simple).

Keep in mind this is to run only 1 amp.

Now if you were to run both, the 4 channel bridged down to 1 channel(I don't think it's possible) I'm not sure how much power you'd get because the specs on the amp only give you the 2 channel bridged mode specs. Which leads me to believe there is no option to bridge to 1 channel. If there is a way, I'd call an audio shop and ask. You could run the sub off of that and use 4 of the 5 channels on the 5 channel amp to power your door speakers.

To the matter of installation: the head unit is the simple part. The door speakers require removal of a lot of pieces of the dash to get the speaker pods. I have a 2010 and I'm not sure if it's easier in the new models but definitely watch some videos before trying to do that by yourself, the head unit if purchased from crutchfield in addition to the optional RAC(retains accessory power) wiring harness is basically plug and play. Simple installation. Subwoofers as well I have yet to do my door speakers but I've heard they're a pain ImageUploadedByWAYALIFE1440783457.386273.jpg ImageUploadedByWAYALIFE1440783486.356993.jpg ImageUploadedByWAYALIFE1440783509.186790.jpg

I built my own box and am running a 500 watt at 2 ohms between 2 speakers I love the sound if you go topless quite often be aware that the subs are hard to hear with it off you can feel it but not hear it nearly as loud as if the top is on. Sounds really damn good though
 

JakeJK

New member
Honestly. Since those speakers handle 75 watts a pieces I would run the 4 channel to your door speakers I'd sell the 5 channel and get a 500 watt amp for the sub because usually a 500 watt will throw out 300 watts at 4 ohms
 

TNuggs13

Member
Thanks so much for the info and suggestions. Seems like it might be good to stop by a stereo shop and ask them what you suggested. Hopefully what I have will work but if I need to sell an amp and get a different one that just what I'll have to do.
 

JakeJK

New member
Thanks so much for the info and suggestions. Seems like it might be good to stop by a stereo shop and ask them what you suggested. Hopefully what I have will work but if I need to sell an amp and get a different one that just what I'll have to do.

No problem let me know what they say, that 5 channel retails for 400 bucks so you could sell it for 300-350 and get a good d class 500 watt 1 channel(mono block) amp for the sub and have a rockin stereo
 
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