Wire 6 speakers on a 4 channel amp?

Anyone know how to wire up 6 speakers in 4ohm on a 4 channel amp? I belive there is a way to wire the speakers and have all 6 run effeciently without losing wattage. The amp is 45w X 4 RMS now.

Run the outside left, and the outside right on their own channels. Run the inside speakers in parallel. If your going to run a small wattage amp to drive six speakers, don't expect much out of them. You will need at least a 300w amp, and a 500w would be optimal for what your trying to to.

Do you think the amp right now is big enough? What are you pushing yours w/ right now? Do you think the amp is big enough to push four?

Adam dont forget to check the ohms on the speakers so you dont damage the amp. (check it with a multimeter). Another sugesstion is to wire up a mono amp to all those speakers, It would sound alot louder and easier to wire up.

George:
You can't measure the impedence (ohms) of a speaker with a multi-meter. The majority of multi-meters will only measure resistance, and the impedance of a speaker is mostly reactance.

Adam: You said "6 speakers in 4ohm". Does that mean your 6 speakers are all 4 ohms?

If you connect two speakers up in parallel it would be two ohms. Some amps are "two ohm stable" and other are not. If you are not sure then I would not recommend trying it as you could damage the amp.

Another alternative would be to hook two speakers in series: Connect the positive of speaker "A" to the negative of speaker "B", then connect the negative of A to the amp and the positive of B to the amp. This makes the impedence add, so you would have 8 ohms.

Note that you may not be able to get full power from the amp with 8 ohms, however.

I suspect that your best bet would be to add a second amp, or run one set of speakers directly off the deck.

Rod

Adam,

The quick answer to your question is no. The easiest thing to do is get another amp, since your amp is already on the smaller end of the spectrum for boat stereos.

If your amp is capable of driving a 2 ohm load then you could parallel two pairs to two channels, as Cliff suggests.

George, Checking speaker impedence is not always easy with a multimeter because a speakers DC resistance is rarely equivalent to it's reactive impedence. He might get close but also might not. It might be safer to just assume they are 4 ohm automotive/marine speakers. Also six 4 ohm speakers paralleled would be 0.667 ohms, I don't know of any mono amp that will drive that load.

Here is an article that provides lots of insight to wiring speakers:
http://www.termpro.com/articles/spkrz.html

looks like Rod and I were typing the same message at the same time...

The amp is 65w RMS x 4, I thought it was less. The speakers are 4ohm speakers. The amp is 2ohm stable. I think I may try adding an additional amp. In the meantime run only four speakers. Do you think this is safe...bridege the amp, to make it 2ch and run each set of speakers in parallel off the bridged channels? looks like you guys had mentioned that already.

Looks like by doing this "In the meantime run only four speakers. Do you think this is safe...bridege the amp, to make it 2ch and run each set of speakers in parallel off the bridged channels?" the amp is still only pushing the speakers w/ 65w. is this correct?

If you have all 4 ohm speakers and the amp is only 4 ohm stable, one idea that mixes some of the suggestions thus far is:
4 on the amp (1 per channel) and 1 pair on the head unit. You didn't state what the Head unit potential is but most now are over 45 Watts per channel......of some yet unknown measurement system.
Bottom line here, don't expect to much in terms of output with these limitations but this idea would be using most of what you have in terms of power at a cleaner THD level i.e. 4 ohm vs 2 ohm.
Of course you could switch that up and run 4 off the head unit (assume again...that you have 4 speaker outs on the head unit) and then bridge the amp for two speaks...assuming the speaker rating was suffiecient for the bridged output....probably not the better choice though.
Good luck

If you have to bridge two channels togeter in order to drive 2 ohms then you won't gain anything by paralleling the speakers.

Rod

Hopefully this puts all questions to rest. Score one for me!

http://www.jlaudio.com/tutorials/wiring/index.html

Pure and simple. You can run all 6 speakers off the amp. Some of these above posts are confusing.

Run two speakers off of the front channel on the amp. Run four speakers wired in parallel off of the rear channel of the amp. You said the amp is two ohm stable and wiring the speakers in parallel will show the amp a 2 ohm load. The amp with a 2 ohm load generally doubles it's power. So each speaker will see 65 watts. 65 watts is enough power. I have a PPI PCX440 and I wire my 6 speakers this way. The amp sounds clean and stays cool and is plenty loud