What Clarion Head Unit is this?

Wylie_Tunes said:
They certainly can, all day long and twice on sunday. Most amps actually how to do this in their installation manual.

"Also sub amps are mostly class D."

Just about everyone that is anyone, is offering class-D full-range marine amps.
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I agree for the most part, but some of the older FET based amps didn't have the internal connection to be able to bridge the channels. But certainly all of the newer ones can. I didn't read the spec sheet of the Clarion amp in question. @Chris-380 pointed out that, that amp could do that.

There are plenty of amps out there that are not class D including JL Audio, but to your point the higher end amps are.
 
mrsrobinson said:
No amp(s) issue. It started with wanting to learn more about the current Clarion CMD6, and then, "what else do I have". That led me to the cockpit speakers and then the amps. Once I knew I had nicer Kicker 6.5s in the cockpit I wanted to see if I could send more, cleaner power to them. Which led me to the Kicker 4 channel amp, with the thought of putting the sub on a separate mono amp. Prior to yesterday I thought the 2 channel amp bridged was powering the 4 cockpit 4.5s, I learned yesterday, based on advise from this thread on how to check, the Clarion 4 channel amp is powering the 4 6.5s in the cockpit, plus the subwoofer, and the 2 channel amp is powering the 4 cabin speakers.

If I am going to upgrade amps I'd like it to be as easy as possible, plug and play, no rewiring.

I started a new thread today since this one is getting a little off topic: http://www.clubsearay.com/index.php...-the-cockpit-subwoofer-or-a-5-channel.111875/

"The CMD has front, rear, non-fade and fixed outputs. all are full-range, which I prefer actually. You do not want to use the gree fixed output in your scenario."

What does this mean, to me? I'd like to take advantage of this if I can. Should I reconfig what I have to take advantage of this?

I wonder if I could remove the Fusion sub from the Clarion 50W X 4 amp, and then let the Clarion 50W X 4 amp power the 4 cockpits 6.5s, then purchase a dedicated amp for the Fusion 10" sub. If I do this, I do not know how to configure a dedicated sub amp with the current configuration.

Basically, I am wondering if I can improve the overall quality of the 4 cockpit 6.5s and the 10" sub by upgrading (going with a 5 channel) and/or adding an amp (mono dedicated for the sub). My best guess is the 4 6.5s and the sub can handle more power than they are getting from the existing Clarion 50W X 4 with it bridged to handled all 5.
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There will likely be no plug n play swap that involves a meanifull wattage, without also upgrading the power cables. In terms of wattage, your new KMA360.4 would yeild the same volume from both the 4 speakers and woofer. If you put in yet a 3rd amp just for the woofer and dedicated the KMA360.4 for just the 4 cockpit speakers, you would be doubling their wattage compared to their current configuration. This is noticable. Downside, you now need new cabling for the new woofer amp, and a place to mount it. See the theam here, lol.

The CMD will allow for fading between front (usually the salon) and rear (usually cockpit) speakers. The non-fade is controlled by the main volume dial, but does not fade. Fixed is 100% volume all the time. This is best used for a 2nd volume zone that will have its own controller.

The best upgrade for the woofer, is an amp that offers more detailed tuning. 2nd best, would be a true infinite-baffle woofer. That Fusions suspension is built for city streets ( aka a small enclosure behind it). You need a woofer with a suspension built for the Baja 1000 ( controlling cone movement that a small enclosure helps control, but its not there).

Buy your gear from a knowledable, reputable and crediable retailer, and should provide the details on how to setup and amp and tune it.
 
Wylie_Tunes said:
Oohh, ida kept the Sig 4 chnl. Its roughly 2X the RMS compared to the M400/4. Thats a noticable performance difference. All you need is a pair of RCA Y cables and plug into all 4 inputs if you are running the entire amp as a single zone.
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You are probably right but for a couple of things - one it wasn't new unopened which wasn't what I bought; in fact it was scratched up and screws were obviously previously installed as well as things missing; secondly, it is larger than the JL amplifier and wouldn't fit where the JL was causing me to relocate and pull all new wiring. It's the upper one here - you can see it's kind of tight. These are the cockpit amps; the amps for the bridge are under port side of the helm.
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ttmott said:
You are probably right but for a couple of things - one it wasn't new unopened which wasn't what I bought; in fact it was scratched up and screws were obviously previously installed as well as things missing; secondly, it is larger than the JL amplifier and wouldn't fit where the JL was causing me to relocate and pull all new wiring. It's the upper one here - you can see it's kind of tight. These are the cockpit amps; the amps for the bridge are under port side of the helm.
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My bad, I only commented on the only reason you gave to return it. hard to comment on withheld info.
 
For those following along at home...

I finally purchased a Kicker 5 channel amp. 65 watts to each of the cockpit 6.5s will double the power. I think that will be a nice, clean bump. 150 to the sub. I plan to use the factory wires for now, and will run new wires in the fall or winter when it cools down. If I need them. I don't plan on playing it loud for extended periods, so maybe I'll get lucky.
 
I'm at the boat, and I've pulled the Clarion amp out. I'm in the process of trying to figure out what speaker wires. For power I see two red wires coming in, two black and a blue. One of the red one has a label that reafs "569 AMP LEED" the blue one has a label on it that reads "702 stereo mute ckpt" .
Any idea why there's two red positive wires, two red black ones, and what the blue one is for?

For speaker in there's one set of RCA's from the head that splits into two sets going into the amp. For speakers out there's one pair that goes to starboard 6.5s, one pair that goes to Port 6.5s and one pair that goes to the subwoofer. So three sets of speaker wires going out, I was hoping to see five. In the last photo showing this I have disconnected the port side 6.5s. I'm assuming for one set of speaker wires to support two speakers, somewhere between the amp and the cockpit it's splitting off into another set of wires?

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On the drive home it occured to me where the one set of wires going to the 4 cockpit speaker may split. As you enter the cabin on my boat, on the left, there's two switches, I think they read cabin stereo and cockpit stereo. It allows you to turn them off, for example when I'm listening to music louder in the cockpit I'll turn off the cabin speakers. I'm wondering if that's where they split.
 
The red and black are power, the blue is the remote power on. The three sets of speaker wires are port/stb speakers and sub.

The port speaker wire is to two sets of speakers that are in parallel, so only one speaker wire off of the amp, same with the STB. Your original amp is four channels, the sub is bridged across two and the L/R are the other two.

The two Y rca's are the inputs to power both the L and R inputs of the amp.

For your new amp, you should run new speaker wires so the amp is biased correctly. Otherwise your only going to be using three of the five channels. Also it's a little tough to split one stereo channel three ways, does your new amp support internal coupling of channels for the sub? If not you will be slitting one channel three ways, not the best way to go for sound qulity.
 
Any idea why there's two positive red wires going to the amp and two black negative ones as well?
 
This factory stereo system is sounding a lot better now that I have to do all this work to upgrade it.
 
Wylie_Tunes said:
Not an issue. Woofer on the dedicated woofer chnls and one pair on Amp-1/L and one pair on Amp-2/R

Now, if the media unit has zone control, then you could run 4 dedicated 2-cons and have each speaker on its own chnl.
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I'm not a fan of speakers in parallel. For me a system ran that way doesn't doesn't sound as good as with a single speaker to a single channel. I get it's done all of the time, but there always seems to be upper/lower freq. roll off making that zone sound more mid-range then it should.
 
I'm not running the wires for the cockpit speakers..I'm thinking at this point it just makes sense to stop doing an upgrade. Does it make sense to go with a newer, modern, higher power 4-channel amp though? And hook it up exactly the same way the current amp is hooked up?
 
With 2 sets of speakers in the boat wired that way, wired together, are they seen by the amp as a singe pair at 2ohm? And basically it's a 3 channel system? @SKybolt I agree with, I prefer 1 channel per speaker. But I never intended to invest this much time in this upgrade, I wanted to do a simple swap. It's not that important to me.
 
I talked to a technical person at crutchfield. They suggested returning the five channel amp, and going with the 4-channel kicker amp at 65 watts per channel to get more power going to the 6.5's and a little more power going to the sub, of course using the same configuration as the existing Clarion amp. I like this option because if one day in the future I want to run two more sets of speaker wires to the cockpit, I can use the4 channel amp for the 4 6.5s and get a mono for the sub.
 
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