6 boat speakers, 4 vs. 6 channel amp?

Question about powering 6 speakers. My Supra 21v has six speakers in the seating area, all running off the head unit. (Which sucks) It has two speakers in the bow and 4 in the main seating area. There is currently one 4 channel amp powering the stock tower speakers and sub.

I am going to add a second amp to power those speakers and don’t know if I should do a 6 or 4 channel amp. Any thoughts? If I get a six channel each speaker can have its own channel, but I could also bridge the four back ones on 2 of the channels of a 4 channel.

Any Supra owners go though this same dilemma?

Hey Bill,

I'm in the same situation. But I have 4 tower speakers + sub going to one amp so I'm probably going to go with another 6 channel amp except a little different from you. I'm going to bridge the 2 front ones and put the back 4 each on their own channel. Front doesn't need to be too loud in my opinion

Bill, I had the same problem with my 22 ssv. the dealer installed a 4 channel amp to go with the 4 roswell tower speakers but they ran the "inside boat speakers" off the head unit. When I had the 13" jl sub installed I had the stereo guy install another 2 channel amp and run the sub off that and run the inside speakers and tower speakers off the 4 channel. sounds much better.

Doug

Get a 6 cannel. Power the 4 main cabin speakers with 4 of the channels, bridge 2 for the sub, and power the bow speakers with the HU. Bridge your existing 4 channel into 2 channels for the tower. Every 6 channel amp has 2 channels set up for bridging to a sub, and you can do your low pass high pass thing nicely and will get better sound.

OR

Get a kick ass 2 channel for the tower, wire the 4 main speakers in series into 2 of the existing 4 channels, bridge the other two for the sub, and keep the bow on the HU.

Better yet. Get a 4 channel to run the cabin speakers and run the bow speakers off of the head unit(or just cut them.) Every boat that I have bought had a 4 channel running the in boat speakers and the sub. The first thing I do is cut the bow speakers, run the cabins off of the 4 channel, and buy a mono or 2 channel for the sub. When I do tower speakers its a whole nother ball game, get a good SEPARATE amp for your tower speakers, I couldn't imagine not being able to turn on/off or up/down my tower speakers, it must be miserable.

Alan, I agree about being able to turn up and down. When they did the install we made sure this could be taken care of with the fader on the head unit.

Why not just get a good 4 channel amp thats stable at 2 ohms to run all 6 speakers?
You could run the bow speakers off 2 channels then run the 4 cabin speakers off the other 2 channels at 2 ohms.

Thanks for the help.

I think I will go the 4 channel route and run the speakers together

if you run all 6 speakers together you will need a 1 ohm stable amp. Keep that in mind.

The reason I cut the bow speakers is because I don't like them. The only people that sit in the bow on my boat are the girls and all they want to do is talk anway. Save all the power you can get for the 4 in-cabin speakers, the higher end marine clarions can take lots of power and sound really good with 75+ watts to each speaker.

Alan Slabaugh (alans) i totally agree. there a waste. its nice to have a spot where you can get out of the loud music every once in a while. actually talk on the phone with out turning it down so you can hear.

I did what Flux recommends and it works very well.

I like my bow speakers, and yes my wife tells me to turn them down when she is up there with a gf. I run a 4ch to all 6 boat speakers. The bow is on two channels with an LC1 in-line, the 4 boat speakers are on the two rear channels. Power/space/wiring/cost, everything considered I think it's best this way. Last summer I had seperate amps for the boat and the bow, I like it better this year.

Get a class D for the sub to save power. Make sure you can run all 4 channels in the boat amp in high pass, some only allow low pass for the rears. Run your boat speakers crossed at 100-200hz and let your sub handle everything below that. Things should run clean and efficient this way.

(Message edited by mikeski on April 25, 2006)

I have a 4 channel amp that I bridged 2 channels for the sub and I run all 6 speakers off the other side. I need to cross the other side at 100hz but other than that it works awesome if you crank it all the way up sometimes it will cut out so I if that keeps happening I will get another amp however so far its good. The amp is stable down to 1 ohm so I figure why wast all that unused power if it supposedly can handle it right.

I would run a 4 channel amp, 2 channels to the cabin speakers (3 speakers to each bridged in series then parrallel to keep it over 2 ohms), then the other 2 channels bridged to the sub. I run this set up and have done the same for many others and it works great. a 600 to 800 watt amp should do you great.