Sonic Impact Amp for single speaker.

[TerribleT]

Hello ,
I've just received my $20 dollar amp from ecost. Hooked one channel up to my Akai portable CD player and to my single line array speaker in my bedroom. It sounds pretty good for what it is, but I have a few questions on hook up. I've read that it's not possible to bridge the SI to form a mono amp, so I need some ideas on the best way to utilize both channels for my single speaker. The speaker is composed of 8 woofers and 4 tweeters. I can rewire it to form two channels of 4 woofs and 2 tweets and then I can feed a summed signal from my CD player to both Left and Right amp inputs and its output to each speaker channel. (I hope this is clear :scratch2: ) Or I can split the woofers and tweeters and drive each set with the L channel for the woofers and the R channel for the tweets. If I do this should I build a simple crossover for the input to the amp or should I just let the existing speaker crossover do its job. Which is better? Any help would be appreciated. Thanks
Regards,
David

 

[Jon S]

I really don't think the amp can handle 8 woofers and 4 tweeters. The current demand may be too great.

 

[Fisherdude]

I'm a little confused about your question...

So if I've got this right, your question is just how to use the amp with one speaker? I've never looked into bridging the amp to mono, but if you did, and you can't, then you can't run one speaker.

As far as re-wiring your existing speaker, that would certainly work, although you would have difficulties with the crossover no longer being correct, and as Jon S said, you would be putting a pretty heavy load on the amp. I've hooked my SI up to a pair of vintage 3-ways just for fun, and it put out a pretty solid volume level with the volume control at about 1:00. However, four woofers per channel is a much bigger load.

Where I'm confused is where you talk about summing the output of the CD player to feed one channel in the amp. Why would you need to do that if you rewired the speaker to provide two channels?

Seriously, my suggestion would be to get two speakers. If you try to drive a big array with that amp, I'm really afraid you're going to melt something.

 

[TerribleT]

Thanks for the replies. Yes, I want to use one speaker with the SI amp. I bought a bunch of cheap 4 inch woofers and tweeters to experiment with in a line array. They are hooked up in series/parallel to give 4 ohm impedance. It sounds pretty good and is very efficient. I want the speaker-SI amp and CD player to be a self contained unit that I can bring along on my camping trips (Big Sur in June ). Right now this system is running off only one channel. So what's the best way to use both channels :scratch2: ? I hate to just use one channel. Should I rewire the eight woofers and tweeters into two separate channels and build another crossover and have stereo in one box or split the crossover and run one channel of the SI amp to the woofers and the other channel to the tweeters? Your thoughts would be appreciated.
Regards,
David