MM 6501 Hard to drive!

Rudolff zigray

Hello everyone I would like to introduce myself, My name is Rudolff Zigray and I am very well known in Hi End Home Audio. I am very knowledgable in home audio a bit ignorant with car audio.

I recently purchase the MM 6501 MM 561 and a mm10 for my VW Eurovan. I have an aftermarket HU Kenwood Excellon X994. I cant drive these speakers with this head unit. It is rated at 22 rms with 60 watt peaks. Is it possible something wrong with HU or install

Here are some of my observations.

1. Somewhere I read the most idiotic statement in the polk specifications for this speaker. It read something like these speakers use a low 2 ohm impedance to draw extra power safely from your HU (compatible with virtually all factory or after market head units)

A) This seems really stupid to me. A low impedance is always harder to drive. There is nothing safe about a 2 ohm load. A speaker with 8 ohm or even 16 ohm will drive effortlessly and far easier than a speaker at 2 ohm. 2 ohm is very rough its about as bad as it gets....infact it can there is only one other worse situation 1 ohm. So what the

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is crutchfield talking about.

2) Most HU are rated at 18 rms with 40 or 50 watt peaks. So the kenwood should fair better than most.

3) All speakers are distorting horribly when I try to turn the head unit up to decent spls. I cant turn it up to 3/4 volume with everything falling apart. Sounds terrible. Sounds find at easy listening levels...(grandparent listening level)

4) Most reviews of these speakers if not all post that they are using a seperate amp to drive these speakers.


5) Could the stock wire be to low of a gauge creating resistance?

6) Has anyone had this same problem trying to drive these with a head unit?

Any help or comments greatly appreciated.

Kindest regards
Rudolff

royalty

The specs say that the RMS power for these is 125 watts. So with your head unit you arn't really giving them any where near the power that they need, thats why you're amp(HU) is distorting like crazy. I have the old version of these and they seem to be a little more efficient, but I still wouldn't drive them with a head unit. You have some nice speakers there and I'm pretty sure you won't be happy until you get a separate amp. Remember you double the volume and you need about ten times the power.

royalty

Grandparent listening levels= a couple of watts
decent loudness=10 to 20 watts (pushing HU)
loud= 100 or more watts --distortion