Kenwood KMR-550U speaker selection.....

[CliffA]

i installed a Kenwood KMR-55OU marine head unit in my boat last year and i like it a lot....i have two speakers in the cabin, two speakers in the cockpit, and two speakers in the rear of the transom....i have all the speakers wired to a DPDT rocker switch.....with the switch in the center position only the two cabin speakers are active....when the switch is in the forward position the two cabin speakers and the two cockpit speakers are active....when the switch is in the rear position the two cabin and the two transom speakers are active....

the two cockpit speakers are located in front of and beside the Captain's and front passenger's seats.....when we are cuising my wife sometimes likes to stretch out across the rear bench seat to 'catch some rays'.....when she does she has difficulty hearing the two cockit speakers over the sound of the engine.....i was wondering if there is a way to leave the current speakers and selector switch (rocker switch) wired as they are but also be able to run a 4th set of speakers i would install in the rear of the cockpit....

i use the head unit's 'AUX' input for the Sirius satellite radio so it is not available for the new speakers....

any ideas from the stereo guru's?

thanks...
cliff

 

[OllieC]

Cliff
I am no guru however my past Radio Shack experience tells me that I would exercise caution when adding a rocker switch to change the speakers because I believe you are messing with the impedance which could potentially damage your head units built in amp. IM "dumb" O, I believe you would want to use a dedicated speaker switch which has circuits to help keep the required ohms.

I have an amp that splits the channels then use the Front and Rear off of the head unit to control the sound. Sorry - that's all I have for you...

 

[Newman]

The AUX input is just that. An input so that will not help you here even if it was free.

OllieC makes a good point. You want to watch your impedance level. Most classD amps (most likely the type in the Kenwood) are designed to operate 4-8 ohms. A typical speaker is 8 ohm. Running two 8 ohm speakers in parallel will result in 4 ohm. 4 ohm is usually ok. Stay away from anything less. When you are switching do you notice a volume drop?

But to answer your question I *think* (I'd have to look up the specific Kenwood) you could wire it up two ways without destroying it. One would be so it activates the new speakers when the switch is in the center position. You would end up with 4 speakers like you have in the other two positions. This would be my recommendation as it currently works for you. The other option would be to add a secondary switch. So you could switch between the cabin or new cockpit speakers. Adding the load of the two new speakers so you had 6 in total running would could result in an uneven load between the channels of the amp. (4 ohm / 2 ohm).

I hope this didn't muddy the waters. A/V is what I do and sometime I forget that I speak greek to the rest of the world. While I'm not real familiar with Sea Ray stock setup I know concepts and best practise. I'm sure someone on here has done this exact thing before and can tell you what they did.

 

[Joel_CA]

when we are cuising my wife sometimes likes to stretch out across the rear bench seat to 'catch some rays'.....when she does she has difficulty hearing the two cockit speakers over the sound of the engine....

i use the head unit's 'AUX' input for the Sirius satellite radio so it is not available for the new speakers....

any ideas from the stereo guru's?

thanks...
cliff

I have the same headunit installed on my boat and quickly learned that the built in amplifier does not have enough power to overcome wind noise and engine noise. If your rear cabin speakers are forward facing and she's laying on the bench behind them, that will just make things worse as far as being able to hear anything. Not only that, but your rear facing cockpit speakers are likely firing directly into the front seats. The main issue hear is speaker placement. I managed to overcome much of this by adding a 5 channel Kicker Amplifier and replaced the factory Clarion speakers with 2ohm models to maximize the output of the amplifier (rated at 800W total at 2ohms). Even with all that additional power, it can still be difficult to hear music while cruising because of the speaker placement. My next upgrade will likely be adding a pair or rear firing speakers up on the tower to eliminate the speaker placement issue.

JJ

 

[CliffA]

thanks for all the replies....maybe it is just dumb luck but so far running the speakers through a rocker switch has been working fine with no 'obvious' problems.....i may just need to install a 'real' speaker selector switch that can handle more sets of speakers.....the head unit does have bluetooth.....could i use the hard wired speakers at the same time a pair of bluetooth speakers are active?.....

cliff