Question about hooking up mids and highs

1161 Views 6 Replies 4 Participants Last post by shandstech, Mar 7, 2010

shandstech

Discussion Starter · Mar 6, 2010 (Edited)

Alright, so the short of it is, I'm hooking up my mids and highs and can't decide how I want to do it. I have an Alpine HU with preouts for front, rear, and sub. The HU has an adjustable crossover in it. I'm using the sub out for a mono Alpine amp. I will be using the Front out for a PPI 2 channel with built in crossover and rated at 2 x 60w @ 4 ohms. In the doors I have Boston 2 ways rated at 40/160w @ 4 ohms and JL tweeters with inline crossovers rated at 70/175 @ 8 ohms. Can't I just run one wire to each of the Bostons and loop them up to the JL's? or should I run one of these two off of the HU which might have 12 watts? Any other ways I could wire them up correctly?

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Stock Taco

· #2 · Mar 6, 2010

I could be wrong about this... Need a stereo guru to chime in.

shandstech said:
Alright, so the short of it is, I'm hooking up my mids and highs and can't decide how I want to do it. I have an Alpine HU with preouts for front, rear, and sub. The HU has an adjustable crossover in it. I'm using the sub out for a mono Alpine amp. I will be using the Front out for a PPI 2 channel with built in crossover and rated at 2 x 60w @ 4 ohms. In the doors I have Boston 2 ways rated at 40/160w @ 4 ohms and JL tweeters with inline crossovers rated at 70/175 @ 8 ohms. Can't I just run one wire to each of the Bostons and loop them up to the JL's? Do you mean channel instead of wire? Your PPI is a 2-ch amp (2 pairs of wires, one pair for L and one pair for R). I don't think that'd be a good idea to "loop" the wires (ie, connect your speakers in parallel) or should I run one of these two off of the HU which might have 12 watts? Yes, run the tweeters off the HU and 2-ways off the amp. Any other ways I could wire them up correctly?

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shandstech

Discussion Starter · #3 · Mar 6, 2010 (Edited)

yes,that is what I meant, one channel. A pair of wires to each of the Bostons. As far as wiring the tweeters in parallel with the mids, The tweeters have a higher impedance than the mids and should only be robbing power from the mids and still both be getting more power than the HU would put out. Or am I looking at this all wrong?

The tweeters are 70 watts RMS and the coax are 40 watts RMS (and both really need all the power they can get, They are quite power hungry) and the amp is an old school one which is way under rated at 60 watts by 2 and the HU is something like 12 watts. It just seems like all of the speakers would get more power by tapping the amped mid rather than using the HU at all.

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shandstech

Discussion Starter · #4 · Mar 6, 2010

And I dont think crossovers are an issue because my mids are really coax's and need mid and high frequencies so tapping them for another high freq and an inline x-over between the tap and tweet would handle its x-over point.

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amber00dak

· #5 · Mar 6, 2010

just keep it simple. set the crossover on the HU to about 80hz. run the Bostons and JLs off the amp in parallel and keep the inline crossovers in the tweets

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nextgendude

· #6 · Mar 6, 2010

You may have to experiment a bit.
It is possible that you will end up with too much high-freq sound if you drive the coax tweeter and the separate tweeter. You won't have a good way to lower that aside from messing with the HU equilizer settings. Are you installing rear speakers? If not, I suggest using the rear HU outputs to drive the separate tweeters. This way you can use the fader to lower the tweeter output separately.

You can also try your original plan of paralleling the Bostons with the tweeters. Normally, if you parallel two equal speakers you get 1/2 of the impedance (2 8-0hm give you an effective 4). In this case the inline cap crossovers act like opens at low frequencies so your amp's 4-ohm output should be ok. I am just concerned of too much tweeter versus the midrange. You might even try disconnecting the coax tweeter (unsolder the cap lead of whatever is cleanest). This would give you one tweeter and one midrange. It might sound better.

Again, you will have to experiment with this unconventional setup.

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shandstech

Discussion Starter · #7 · Mar 7, 2010

Thanks for the reply. I did some research on impedances and all of my speakers and amps in question. I found out that I should in fact be allright running the tweeters parallel with the coax door speakers. I too was skepticle of how much highs I would be getting versus my mids. I thought about the whole unsoldering of the tweeter in the coax but wetn ahead and wired it all up and see what I was starting with. I had to mess with gains and crossovers quite a bit but it is pretty much acousticly correct now. It could however, still need a little more mid and a little less high, or more sub? :evil: I will start another thread with pictures of the complete install. Thanks again for the help. :clapping:

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Question about hooking up mids and highs

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