Connection and Settings

[Bradmph]

Hi,
Yes a noobie here to the forum, Hello.
Let's see if I can ask this question and not confuse the pro's. Below is what I have installed in my car. Correct me if it is connected incorrectly because that is why I am here. Hooking up a stereo in a car has changed since back in the day when we didn't have all these powerful amps and wiring, etc.
My stereo is installed with a kit and fused properly. The Head Unit is the easy part and I have it installed, the amp is where everything starts getting confusing, so I created this image of all my devices and the specifications each item has.
What really confuses me is correctly wiring the duel voice subs to the amp and wiring the duel voice connectors on the back of each sub, then to the amp. Ohms setting and wiring the subs to the amp correctly would help very much, because, at this time, I think my present wiring is overheating up the amp and it will fault if played at higher volumes. This is most likely the duel voice wiring being done incorrectly for the proper Ohms setting. I have the specs and instructions shown below so the pro's here can point me in the right way to wire it up.
Again, the stereo wiring nowadays has me confused and Ohms and Watts and LPF/HPF, bridged, not bridged are kinda overwhelming. I can rebuild a High-Performance engine and take a car down to the last nut and bolt, but can't wire a car stereo, lol. Can anyone tell me what would be the best direction to wire this system up so it doesn't heat up my amp and possibly get a better, nicer sound than I have now. I know I am not getting the potential from this present wiring. I would be grateful for any help. You can copy my image and correct it as you wish so I can use it, since I am better at visuals than I am at talking the tech talk stuff. I am trying to learn as much as I can about installing, but teaching an old dog new tricks seem to apply to me with electrical installations. Thank you for taking the time to view my request.

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[Dafaseles]

So, in my opinion, sorry, but that's the wrong amplifier for subs.
Usually a mono amplifier for subwoofers will have a HPF (high pass filter) or subsonic filter (essentially the same thing) and a LPF (low pass filter), so you can set both for a single channel. The LPF will only let frequencies below the set frequency play (at "full blast" for lack of a better term). The HPF or subsonic filter will do the opposite, only let frequencies above the set value play (at full blast). This essentially protects your subwoofers from over exerting themselves. If a subwoofer plays to high of a frequency, that can damage it (or just sound like crap) and also playing too low of a frequency can also damage it. Usually, for subs, the simple setup is setting your LPF at 80 hz, and your HPF a half an octave below the tuning of the box port (if the port is tuned to 30 hz, half of 30 is 15, that's a full octave. Half of 15 is, 7.5 so let's just say 8. 15+8=23. 23 would be half an octave below 30 hz). Or on a sealed enclosure, just set the HPF around 20-25 hz. The human ear can't hear below 20 hz anyway.
If you insist on using that amplifier (though I recommend you get a dedicated subwoofer amplifier) with those subs (the picture says they are dual 4 ohm), you can do 1 of 2 things. Wire them both together in series/ parallel for a 4 ohm final load, or wire then separately in parallel for each to have a 2 ohm load (I recommend this style for ease). I'll put pictures at the bottom. If you wire them together for a final 4 ohm load, you can bridge the two channels on the amplifier and get your power that way. To bridge you would take the positive wire from the subs and input it into the positive terminal on channel 3, then the negative wire for the subs, input it into the negative terminal for channel 4. Wiring them each to have a final 2 ohm load you would just wire them each into their own channel like you would any speaker. Either way, you'd get about the same amount of output.
With that amplifier, for the sub channels, I recommend switching the crossover to LPF and setting it to around 80 hz.
As far as your amplifier getting hot, how do you have it wired now? It could be an electrical issue, or a grounding issue, could be a subwoofer/ speaker wiring issue.... could be a lot of things. Knowing exactly how you have it hooked up now would be beneficial to troubleshooting that issue.

 

[Bradmph]

Sorry for the delay in responding. I go to many car shows and have been very busy Friday, Saturday, weekend.
Thanks for responding Dafaseles. I will take a photo of the hook-up I have now.
What I think I might have done with the wiring, which might be the reason for heating the amp, is I wired the duel voice on the subs to be 1 Ohm at the Amp. I think wiring to 4 Ohm with the DVC on the speakers and then bridging them onto the Rear amp connectors might help?
Someone suggested to me that I should dedicate the subs to the Amp and bridge them and then run the front speakers directly to the head unit only and not through the Amp at all. As you said, dedicate subs to the Amp if I can.
I grabbed your screenshots and will examine them and see what happens when I reconnect the speakers like the diagram, first at 4 Ohm. I have another Amp by Planet Audio I think still works here at home also if I wanted to add a second dedicated Amp for front speakers. I had some grounding issue with Amps and was faulting them while powering up the head unit. I corrected the problem by grounding the Amp with a lower gauge wire and much closer to the Amp. This stopped the red light faulting on the Pioneer Amp and it comes right on now.
I would like to keep the pair of subs installed because the car is an '89 Toyota MR2 and the space is very limited to mounting subs just behind each of the 2 bucket seats, halfway up this rear-engine firewall panel. Having one sub wouldn't mount in the center of the panel because the center consoles on these cars runs up the center of the car and then up this rear firewall panel to the rear window, splitting this rear-engine firewall panel in half. So, each 10-inch sub fits perfectly on both sides of this center console divider nicely behind the driver and passenger seats, in their own boxes.

After reading your reply, I am deciding on the 4 Ohm Subs Bridged to channel B as shown in the NEW CONNECTION image.
Also, instead of robbing any more power from Amp, I can wire the front speakers directly to the front A outputs of the head unit. Perhaps this will also keep the Amp cooler without these 2 additional speakers going to it.

You also specified connecting the subs to the Amp not in a series, but separately, just like normal speakers would be. plus to plus, neg to neg to both pos and neg connections on channel B of Amp. I get the idea to still also switch to LPF at 80Hz, setting on the Amp to save my sub speakers from the stress.

 

[Dafaseles]

If you want to use a dedicated subwoofer amplifier, I'd get a new mono block amplifier and use that 4 channel for the mids and highs. A nice 500 watt amplifier that's 1 ohm stable isn't too expensive. Also along with a small footprint. I'm sure space is very limited in an MR-2.
https://caraudiobargain.com/sundown-audio-sfb-600d/

 

[Bradmph]

Thank you Dafaseles for this help. I checked the connections on the amp and I have the duel voice subs connected correctly to the amp and I still have to connect the front speakers to the head unit. I will have to wait to purchase a dedicated mono amp for the subs which I will probably do pretty soon. I also changed the amp crossover to 80 Hz. I also changed the head unit setting for this as well. I still need to adjust the gains on it though since I didn't want to crank it up late at night and irritate the neighbors, lol. This is the car (below) I have installed this system into and yes the space is incredibly limited. I could put stuff into the trunk but did not want wires running throughout the vehicle to connect to it there. I didn't want to cut the car up to embed the subs, so I made some small boxes to mount on the forward firewall between the engine and diver compartments. Subs have a couple of inches behind the 2 front seats when slid all the way back and the amp is mounted below the passenger side sub on the firewall.
The doors have very little room to embed speakers into but could probably get a low-profile mid-range speaker in them. I already installed a pair of 3in. tweeter size speakers in the upper dash.
I think your suggestion is dead on also about the second monoblock amp and using this present amp for the smaller speakers.