How do I wire this up correctly?? I have no idea

officer dave

I have a JVC KD R 720 head deck, 4 Polk Audio MM 521 speakers and an Arc 125.2 mini amp 2 channel all running in a motorcycle fairing. The nominal impedance of the speakers is 2.7 ohms and the Arc amp is stable at 2 ohms. I do not know the best or correct way to wire this up to give me the best performance and sound quality. I have heard if I wire it up incorrectly that the amp could burn up the out put. Please help as I have no idea how to do this at all. Series, paralle, or series paralle is what I have heard people talking about. I do not understand. I don't want to make any mistakes and damage this nice stuff.

Jstas

I'm not really sure why you have 2 pairs of components but, ok, we'll work with it.

The 125.2 is a stereo amp so you're going to put one pair on one side and the other pair on the other side.

First things first, to get the proper impedance from your speakers, you'll need to run the through the crossover networks. You could run them individually but that's more equipment and much more complicated. You're already losing the sound quality battle with a motorcycle anyway so what you have should be fine.

Wire the tweeters up to their tweeter slots and the woofers to the woofer slots. Easy peasy.


Couple things here. I'm not sure if this will work because I do not know if the crossover network has a disconnect in it anywhere. It shouldn't really but I dunno. It should present the entire speaker set and crossover as a single load and you should be able to pass a full signal on to the next crossover network. If I'm wrong, I'm sure someone will take great relish in correcting me but, whatever. Now here is where you have to pay attention.

This goes for each side of that stereo amp.

- Take the positive wire from the positive side of the left channel on the amp
- Connect it to the positive lead of the first crossover network
- Now, take another wire from the negative lead of that crossover and run it to the positive lead on the second crossover.
- Then take another wire and from the negative lead on the second crossover, return it to the negative lead of the left channel of the amplifier.

Do the same thing from the right channel.

This is called series wiring and it will double the impedance of the circuit. It won't put out as much power but going with parallel wiring would put your impedance at about 1.2 ohms and that's about half of what the minimum impedance your amp can handle is.

Wiring in series will present about a 4.74 ohm load which should be well within your amplifier's operational capabilities. Don't worry about the power levels, you'll make up a bunch of volume using multiple drivers. I'm not really sure how well this is going to work out for you though and I'd seriously consider going with just one component set and plugging the second set of holes.

officer dave

Thanks for the help the MM 521 are coaxial speakers. But again thanks for the lesson. I am a total rookie on this stuff. Here is a picture of what it looks like.

Jstas

Then forget the crossover bit.

- Amp positive to speaker 1 positive
- Speaker 1 negative to speaker 2 positive
- Speaker two positive to amp negative

Do that for both channels. Will give you 4.75 ohm loads on each channel.

officer dave

Thanks alot guys you are a big help to a rookie. Sorry for asking for so much help but my wife has purchased the same fairing with the same head deck and has 1 set of the Polk MM 521 and 1 set of Energy speakers which are 4 ohlms and 80 watss rms can you tell me how to wire that up as well. She doesn't have the amp yet but will be getting the same Arc 125.2 mini amp. Thanks again you guys are great.

officer dave

The Polks are coaxial but due have a cross over

Jstas

officer dave wrote: »

Thanks alot guys you are a big help to a rookie. Sorry for asking for so much help but my wife has purchased the same fairing with the same head deck and has 1 set of the Polk MM 521 and 1 set of Energy speakers which are 4 ohlms and 80 watss rms can you tell me how to wire that up as well. She doesn't have the amp yet but will be getting the same Arc 125.2 mini amp. Thanks again you guys are great.

It's going to be wired the same way as yours. It'll provide a 6.7 ohm load so its not going to be as loud. If you wire it in parallel instead, it's provide a 3.35 ohm load. Since the amp is 2 ohm stable, that's not going to over drive the amp. It'll be louder too.

To wire in parallel, run a positive lead from the positive jack on the amp to the positive on speaker one. Then run a positive lead from the positive of speaker one to the positive of speaker two. The take a negative lead from the negative jack on the amp and run it to the negative of speaker one. Then take a positive lead from the negative of speaker one and run it to the negative of speaker two.

However, mismatching speakers like that and having them that close together, you might notice some disparity in voicing of the drivers and performance levels. Also, using dissimilar resistance levels between speakers can cause other issues. You might want to check iff you amp documentation has anything specific mentioning that as well. It basically makes a complex load and there may be issues running the two disparate sets in the same configuration.

If I were you, I'd eBay the Energy or the Polk speakers and get a duplicate set of which ever one you keep.

officer dave

Thank you very much. I Think I will buy a second set of the Polks for my wife as I love the sound of them. If I do that would it be best to wire them in series or in parallel

officer dave

I went ahead and purchased a second set of the Polk MM 521 speakers. And I am looking at the Massive Audio NX2 Amp.Weight 12.00 Pounds
RMS Power 120 x 2
PEAK Power 480 x 1
RMS@2Ohms 240 x 2
Bridged RMS 240 x 1
Min Impedance 2 Ohm Stereo
Min Ohm Bridged 4 Ohm Mono
THD >1%
S/N 100dB
Max Voltage 15v
Max RCA Voltage 5v
Freq. Responce 15Hz-25KHz
Dimensions 7.2" x 5.5" x 2.1"
Bass Remote n/a
What is your recommendation on how to wire this up?

Jstas

officer dave wrote: »

Thank you very much. I Think I will buy a second set of the Polks for my wife as I love the sound of them. If I do that would it be best to wire them in series or in parallel

Using two sets of Polks, you'll have to wire them exactly as yours is wired, in series.

Since the amp you have for her setup is similar to yours, wire it the same way as yours.