Tower speaker amp malfunctioning?
 

I was on the water a few days ago after just installing my new amp and tower speakers. Everything worked great all day, but at the end of the day my amp went into protect for the tower speakers.

It happened while on the way back into the dock, so I didn't look into it that day. Everything had worked fine. Yesterday I went out to check it out, amp fired up no problem and everything in the boat was working as usual, however it seemed as only 1 channel of the amp was working and not the other.
I checked all wiring, swapped RCA's with my sub amp, still same problem.
Anyone have an idea if 1 channel can go out, but the other still function?
Amp is a 4chan amp running in 2chan mode. (There's a switch on the amp for 2/4 chan mode)


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One of my other thoughts was that maybe one of the outputs in the HU is toast?



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Yes, a single amp chnl can go out. If you swapped RCA cable from another amp, then that eliminates the upstream signal as the problem. Swap the speakers leads and see if the problem stays on that side or fallows the current inop speaker. You can also remove the speaker leads from the amp and test them with an ohm meter.

If the amplifier is running in the discrete 4-channel mode then it is possible that one of four channels could go out.
But if the other channel on the same side works and you are using just two of four RCA inputs then it can't be the source unit.
If bridged, you are using two positive channels, although one is inverted, and discarding the common terminals. So if one channel is out then the good channel isn't terminated which would result in no sound. If bridged, you can easily verify a bad channel by returning to discrete stereo temporarily and testing each channel individually.
So if you switch RCA inputs and switch speaker outputs you should easily narrow it down to either upstream before the amplifier, within the amplifier, or after the amplifier.
When you have a problem on one channel the amplifier's protection circuitry normally shuts down the entire amplifier and not just the problematic channel.
If you have an open or shorted amplifier channel this will usually read differently than the other three channels with a multimeter checking resistance to ground. But keep in mind that two of the four channel's positives are marked negative.

David
Earmark Marine

There are 6 speakers, wired into 3 pairs at the amp at 2 ohms.
Using 3 of the 4 inputs.
Ill also add that the deck only has 1 set of outputs.
1 output used for the subs, and 1 with a splitter for the amp going to the tower.
Could this have put too much strain on the outputs of the HU?
I have a new deck on the way with front/rear/sub but I needed this one to make it through the weekend! Lol


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after getting home and testing the speakers on the amp, they are all getting power, but it seems as some, 2 especially are getting more power than the others?
does this mean the channels on the amp may be bad?
or I have a blown speaker that is corrupting the ohm load?
I do not remember any of them seeming to get more power than the others previously, they all seemed very uniform.

more results tomorrow when i can turn the volume up louder and it is not at 10pm after work.

btw everything is brand new

So you have an unused channel on the amp or you wired two pairs to a channel each and the third pair to a bridged channel?

There is an unused output left on the amp, but it says no need to bridge, because the amps circuitry will auto detect and "autosum" that channel for you.
I plan on using up that extra output today.
It is weird to me that 1 chan is definitely louder, and I'm assuming that is the channel with only 1 output being used.


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alright guys. problem solved, im an idiot lol.
after a day and a half of tearing things apart, and over reading. the problem was very simple, and very stupid.

even though the amp is in 2 channel mode, and the manual makes this quite confusing, you must use both sets of gain/bass boost/hp/lp filters, not just the set for channels 1 and 2.

as some of you can probably tell, this is my first go around with anything other than a mono sub amp lol

Using 3 of the 4 chnls of a 4 chnl amp is actually in 4 chnl mode. Bridging a load on chnls 1/2 and another on chnls 3/4 is running and 4 chnl amp in 2 chnl mode. Regardless of this configuration, both halves of the 4 chnl amp still have adjustments that need to be set accordingly. This is almost universal with every 4 chnl amp.