Audio setup?

The current setup has 2 JL e6450's / 8 polk MMC650 / 1 polk MM14 10" sub. Each speaker is on it's own channel except for the sub which is bridged on 5 & 6. The amps seem to get real hot as well. The wiring is all stock as well.

Where should I start.

thanks

it should sound good, what are you trying to achieve?

I would like the amps to stay cooler and a little less distortion

Amps are gonna get hot when you use them for extended periods. Yo could add small fans on the amps? Go as far as to water cool them. Are they gettign hot enough to actually shut down? I'm assuming your giving them enough room to have air flow over the fins?

Are you hearing distortion at low/high volumes?

Joe,

Do you have the frequencies, gains, etc. setup correctly?

With JL's and Polks that sound good.

yeah that setup should sound awesome. i have an e6450m (m for marine, has stainless terminals) running (4) MMC650's and (2) DB1000 tweeters. it should sound incredible. i bet your input sensitivity is whacked. did you change/add anything since they were originally installed?

can't answer the heat issue and i know nothing about that polk sub. haven't owned mine long enough. i'm not too worried about heat though, i've got plenty of air flow and lots of room around mine. i don't hear any distorition and i've cranked mine a few times trying to dial it in.

I am pretty confident in the setting on the amp. All the filters are adjusted correctly. The amps have shutdown a few times due to heat. The distortion occurs when I have it up near max on the headunit. Picture below show the amps in position. Would re-wiring (speakers and battery feeds) help?

Are you sure they are shutting down due to heat? I have 2 JL amps in my tahoe and they have never given me any trouble and I push them hard.

What kind of power and ground are you using?

What kind of boat?

Did these amps come stock?

Where are your gains set at?

What kind of head unit? You are going to get distortion from your headunit after about 75% some can go higher but depends on the quality... marine headunits are notoriously bad about this.

This thread is vague as crap!

The pics are a little dark so I cant say for sure, but the power and ground look a little small. If the power wire is not large enough to carry all the current the amps draw, it will cause them to run hot. Especially in a boat where you have to run the ground all the way back to the battery. I would suggest a minimum of 8ga wire to each amp. Preferably 4ga to each.

I am assuming they are shutting down due to heat? Why else would they?

The boat is a 2004 X-Star. The boat was upgraded with the JL/Polk upgrade prior to purchasing (dealer demo). The head unit is a Clarion XMD3. All the wiring is stock from whatever was in boat prior to the amp & speaker upgrade. Unfortunately the boat is in storage, so I am not exactly sure what the gains (input sensitivity?) are set at.

My guess is that the power and ground is 10 or 12 GA and there are have inline fuses by the batteries.

It sounds like I should start with down-gauging the power and ground.

Joe,

Need to re-run power and ground... As far as the size wire, according to jl's manual the minimum wire size is 4 gauge...you can run individual + & - wires or run one + & - to a distribution block then split to the 2 amps.

The clarion is going to start distorting around 75% volume.

log onto www.jlaudio.com and select marine product, go to amps, scroll down to pg 7 of the manual, it will tell you what voltage range you need to have on the speaker outputs. Depending if you're running it bridged or not. Definitley upsize your power/ground.

If there are vent holes in the ends they would probably run cooler if they were mounted horizontally instead of vertically?

Keep in mind that all amps will run hotter at 12v (motor off/idle) compared to 14v (motor cruising). Our car based systems are really designed to run at closer to 14V, that's one of the reasons why we need to keep power wire size on the larger end of the scale.

I would guess the power wires to be #10 from the pictures. The capacity of a #10 wire is 35 amps which may be adequate but it will allow voltage drop if it's longer than 5'. Voltage is a precious commodity in a boat system.