Will two speaker sets in parallel overload an amp?

R

Ryan A

New Member
I have two Sansui SPL-700s and a Kicker Super II hooked up to a Sansui AU-919 (B and A systems respectively). The SPLs have an impedance of 8 ohms but I'm not sure what the impedance is on the Kicker enclosure. I can't seem to find anything online about it either, other than it being 100w per channel.

Am I overloading the amp by running A and B speakers at the same time at moderate volume? The manual says it should not be used this way if combined speakers are 4 ohms or less.
 
My guess is yes. I drove my AU-919 into protection using a single pair of supposedly 4 ohm speakers (Infinity RS IIs).

Most car speakers are 4 ohm and many car subs are even less. You're playing with fire, or soon might be.
 
Ryan: Is that Kicker thingy a passive or rather a powered/active subwoofer? In the latter case there usually shouldn't be anything to worry about.

Greetings from Munich!

Manfred / lini
 
Is that Kicker thingy a car unit?
Asking because lots of car speakers and components are rated at 4 ohms.
 
Ryan A said:
I have two Sansui SPL-700s and a Kicker Super II hooked up to a Sansui AU-919 (B and A systems respectively). The SPLs have an impedance of 8 ohms but I'm not sure what the impedance is on the Kicker enclosure. I can't seem to find anything online about it either, other than it being 100w per channel.

Am I overloading the amp by running A and B speakers at the same time at moderate volume? The manual says it should not be used this way if combined speakers are 4 ohms or less.
Click to expand...

With just the SPL-700's connected to the amp, you are good to go. The SPL's are 8 ohms and fairly efficient. Your amp is rated to handle 4 ohm loads so no problem.

Adding that Kicker is another story. Those things are 4 ohms by themselves. You need a dedicated amp just for the Kicker.

Regards,
Jerry
 
And lots of the car subs run at 2 ohm and 1 ohm depending on the connection wiring and whether dual or single voicecoil and how they are set up... best bet.. find a powered sub at the thrift store or buy a disposable amp for your kicker before it is your "cooker"
 
You will need to run them in series and not parallel. If you run them in series you'll give 12ohm which will be fine on an 8-16ohm speaker terminal, but running them in parallel will blow up your amps transformer. If this is not possible (not enough power) or whatever then you will just have to get a new amplifier. Bare in mind that running 8ohm and 4ohm speakers like this in series will effectively give you 1/4 less volume then you would get otherwise from both speakers separately.
 
The Kicker is 4ohms after doing some more searching online. It's been ran like this for quite some years. I hope I didn't damage my amp in any way. The combined impedance is about 2.67ohms.
 
If it hasn't done any damage you can hear now and it runs fine for the foreseeable future then it probably hasn't done any damage. It's best you fix the topology though. Either run it in parallel or find a new amp for your sub woofer at least.
 
Roumelio said:
If it hasn't done any damage you can hear now and it runs fine for the foreseeable future then it probably hasn't done any damage. It's best you fix the topology though. Either run it in parallel or find a new amp for your sub woofer at least.
Click to expand...

I have a Yamaha Natural Sound receiver lying around, forgot what model it is. Could I wire it into my current system? I have an AU-919 and an SE-7 EQ,
 
Conceivably you could wire the natural sound into the AU-919 but it wouldn't really get you anywhere. You're playing with a car stereo subwoofer. If you wanted to keep the sub woofer you would need some kind of amplifier such as a monoblock (designed for running sub woofers with a crossover) to attach to the output of the AU-919 to run the speaker properly. You can't hook up a sub woofer to full range speaker terminals. The driver isn't meant to work like that. At the very least you would also need a crossover to cut the full range frequencies going to the second amplifier. A good sub woofer runs most efficiently anywhere between 25hz and a couple hundred hz. If you start trying to run 16,000hz to a sub woofer its likely you'll blow it up.

The good news is that a Class D or Class A/B monoblock amplifier is cheap and they can put out at least a couple hundred watts normally. You would need to build a good sealed enclosure for that driver if you intended to use it at home it wont work in a free air environment. Car sub woofers are designed to work free air in the space the size of car trunk/boot. They're not designed to operate free air in a room the size of a living room. You will need a sealed enclosure for it.

In the end though its better yet just to get a sub woofer in a box off somewhere like ebay which already has the amplifer and crossover attached to it, unless you're really interested in doing a DIY job or are on skid road and can't afford to do anything else.
 
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Ryan A said:
I have a Yamaha Natural Sound receiver lying around, forgot what model it is. Could I wire it into my current system? I have an AU-919 and an SE-7 EQ,
Click to expand...

Yes, Ryan, the easiest way is to run an audio patch cable from Record Out on the Sansui AU-919 to the Aux input on the Yamaha. This way the Sansui becomes the Master for source selection and whatever is selected on the Sansui will be routed to the Yamaha.

Once connected up, your next step is to test for phase/polarity. That is, you can never be certain the two amps are in phase with each other, but to test you need to get everything connect to first.

Ryan, does your Kicker have inputs for both left and right channels?

Regards,
Jerry
 
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onplane said:
Yes, Ryan, the easiest way is to run an audio patch cable from Record Out on the Sansui AU-919 to the Aux input on the Yamaha. This way the Sansui becomes the Master for source selection and whatever is selected on the Sansui will be routed to the Yamaha.

Once connected up, your next step is to test for phase/polarity. That is, you can never be certain the two amps are in phase with each other, but to test you need to get everything connect to first.

Ryan, does your Kicker have inputs for both left and right channels?

Regards,
Jerry
Click to expand...
Yes, left and right channels.
 
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Ryan A said:
I have two Sansui SPL-700s and a Kicker Super II hooked up to a Sansui AU-919 (B and A systems respectively). The SPLs have an impedance of 8 ohms but I'm not sure what the impedance is on the Kicker enclosure. I can't seem to find anything online about it either, other than it being 100w per channel.

Am I overloading the amp by running A and B speakers at the same time at moderate volume? The manual says it should not be used this way if combined speakers are 4 ohms or less.
Click to expand...
The SPL-700s are rated for 30-25,000 Hz. The Kicker II is rated 40-39,000 Hz. Not sure what you're trying to do with the Kicker, but it appears to be competing with the SPLs. If you're using it for a subwoofer, it doesn't appear good for that function either. Best bet would be to get a dedicated sub and run it from the pre-amp output.
 
highvoltage_ said:
The SPL-700s are rated for 30-25,000 Hz. The Kicker II is rated 40-39,000 Hz. Not sure what you're trying to do with the Kicker, but it appears to be competing with the SPLs. If you're using it for a subwoofer, it doesn't appear good for that function either. Best bet would be to get a dedicated sub and run it from the pre-amp output.
Click to expand...


Where are you finding this kicker II info? I thought its a sub?

SP-L700
30-25,000 Hz doesn't really mean anything except that soundwaves of that frequency range will make the speaker cone move.
I think the SP-L700 are probably more like 45-19000 +-3dB
30-25,000 Hz +- 10 dB - maybe. Probably not.

SP-L700 - great speakers and pretty darn hard to find. Whatever that kicker is, just trash it. Your setup with the Sansui AU-919 and the SP-L700 will sound 10x better. You don't even need a sub with those speakers.

I am not sure you actually know how nice that setup is. Some people here will pay decent money for those speakers alone.
 
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