Power rears? Opinions please...

[jwpb00]

Would like to hear peoples opinion on this...

If I install components in the front and 2 way coaxial speakers in the rear, is there any benefit of hooking a 4 channel (75W X 4) amp up to the rear speakers in addition to the front? I should mention I have an alpine head unit that puts out 18W RMS X 4. I should also mention that i do not have any seperate subwoofers.

I've heard that for better sq, rear speakers are mainly for effect b/c you want to feel like the sound is coming from in front of you.

I'm just wondering if I should take the time to power the rear speakers with my amp, or leave channels 3 and 4 open for a sub later on down the road.

With that being said, what would be the best way to set up my current system?

 

[BrianG]

Depends on your preference. Do you care about staging and depth and how close your car sounds to an actual concert? Or do you just want louder volume and/or better sound for back seat drivers? Or, are you eventually going to get some type of surround sound setup?

If you want better front stage and just rear fill, I'd disconnect the tweeters on the rear speakers. It will keep the highs from pulling the stage to the rear. Running them at less power is advisable as well. However, speaking from experience with Alpine decks, you will reach max volume on the HU outputs before the RCA outputs. So, you'll have to raise the amp's gain to compensate and then may have more noise. The best thing to do here (if you really want to use all 4 speakers) is to amp them all and reduce the amp's ear channel gain, or set the gains equal and use the fader to reduce the volume to the rears when you want stage and increase rear volume when you have passengers or just want louder mids/highs.

If you just want louder volume, you could either use all 4 speakers with 75w going to each, or bridge the amp to 2-channel mode and run high power to some really nice front components. However, the amp running this way will have higher THD, but it probably won't be noticeable if it's a decent quality amp. You'll also need some pretty hefty components for this too. Bridging the amp while retaining stereo sound can be tricky if you don't understand how bridging works.

Or, hook 75w to each of the fronts and bridge the rear amp channel for the sub. Most decent 75x2 amps bridged will give you 300w this way (some won't double power and some, like JL, deliver equal power regardless of load).

 

[chuyler1]

Read through the rear speaker discussion...
http://www.msprotege.com/forum/showthread.php?t=118232