Question about speaker polarities

[Kamaaina]

When I fade the music to the front speakers the bass is strong. When I fade the music to the rear the bass is also strong. When I fade to the middle position the bass seems to get weaker from both front and rear. I made sure that I hooked up the speakers properly. Is it true that if I have one set of speakers with the wrong polarity it will cancel out the other speakers? Before I installed the speakers I made sure that the + and - were correct by using a AA battery and seeing which way the cone kicks and then hooked up the "hot" lead and common lead correctly. Oh, by the way, this is with the OEM head unit. When the fader is split in the middle do I lose some of the bass because it is being split four ways?

 

[TJM623]

I would think so...If what i'm think of it's right...think about it...Say your pushing 100 watts...split that to two speakers and your getting 50 on each side per say...now split 100 to 4 speakers your only getting 25 watts to each...?? that's how i would think of it i'm probably compleltly off though so lets see what someone else has to say

 

[davesexplorer]

no, sorry I dont mean to come off as mean but you're wrong in a way..
If you were talking about a mono amp, and varying impedances between speakers then you'd be right.. But it is all load dependant, the amp puts out power according to the load (speaker impedance) attached to it... say you have a mono amp, 2 ohms stable 600 watt rms at 2 ohms, 300 @ 4 ohms.
you attach one speaker that is 4 ohms, that speaker will get 300 watts, then say you attach a pair of 8 ohm speakers paralleled, together they total 4 ohms, and will recieve another 300 watts from the amp together, but each speaker is a less resistant 8 ohms which means each of them will get ~150 watts. You can run really as many speakers as the amp will handle, all the way down to its minimum impedance.

The polarity thing could be the problem, if you have 2 speakers out of phase with the others you're goin to get plenty of cancellation, as long as all the speakers are in sync with each other you'll be fine... The battery is a good way of testing this as you did.
It really could be something weird with your speaker dynamics or the vehicles sound properties I dunno, are they aftermarket speakers?

 

[Kamaaina]

This is basically a stock setup with OEM head unit and speakers. I tried Pioneer and Infinity speakers but lost a lot of low frequencies with these so I went back to stock. I don't need too much power as the music I listen is "old fart" style. Still, the bass is weak when the fader is "centered". I balance it with more bias towards the rear to get some of the bass back and it's okay, not great, just okay. Is it possible to add a four channel amp bywithin the speaker leads by adjusting the gain way down? Will there be static/noise?

 

[TJM623]

no, sorry I dont mean to come off as mean but you're wrong in a way..

No worries...I said if I was wrong correct me...ya taught me something new

 

[davesexplorer]

Is it possible to add a four channel amp bywithin the speaker leads by adjusting the gain way down? Will there be static/noise?

look for a line output converter at your local wal-mart, stereo shop, online etc. It takes the speaker leads and converts them to rca outputs for external amplifiers.

Or, you could get an amplifier that has "speaker level inputs" which utilize your factory speaker wire from the factory head unit for input signal.

No worries...I said if I was wrong correct me...ya taught me something new

kewl