What is the correct way to wire this?

@ttmott would you happen to have a link to the breakers for that panel?
Thanks!
 
Hasn't seen I never seen all that on a boat before ,. it's more like a home theater. Do the right thing before someone gets hurt You're way too many wires with no fuses
 
Scott215 said:
Hasn't seen I never seen all that on a boat before ,. it's more like a home theater. Do the right thing before someone gets hurt You're way too many wires with no fuses
Click to expand...
@Scott215
You must have missed the part where I said each of those power leads are attached to a dedicated circuit breaker within 2-3 feet of the battery.
Thank you for your feedback and concern
Shaps
 
Shaps said:
Since I'm currently not experiencing ground loop noise, while I recognize not correctly done as @Wylie_Tunes and so many have said, does this at least make sense? I'm reluctant to move all the amps to the battery bank that supports the subwoofer amps fearing I may introduce an issue as the head unit is still on the original sea ray provided circuit/ breaker.
Click to expand...
Leaving the external amps on one bank and the head unit on the original harness may still leave you with audio equipment on different banks. ALL the audio needs to draw from the same voltage source.

It astounds me that a shop installed a 12 amp system and left the head unit on the OEM harness. But after seeing 6 B+ cables stacked on the bolt of an old school battery post clamp, make it totally believable. Its just totally wrong to do whats pictured above. There are proper battery cable ends that are an old school post clamp but yet are made to accommodate eyelets.

Beyond the potential of audio ground loop. Its possible that you could end up with one back with some of your amps reaching a low voltage point and amps start to drop off, which the amps on the other bank keep playing. Have ALL the audio on one bank of proper Ah, insures that ALL the audio gear "sees" the same voltage level. With that said. all electronics can be built with different voltage thresholds, but having them draw off the same source insures the best chance of losing part of your system due to low voltage. Going a little deeper, one bank may see deeper or shallower voltage cycles v's the other bank. This can have one bank reaching its end of life before the other bank. This = more work to take care of a staggered battery replacement v's having your entire audio bank needing replacement at the same time.
 
Shaps said:
Wow. Thank you everyone!!
I should definitely do a better job explaining what I think I have. And I want to cleanup the installation.
Those 6 leads on the positive terminal each run to a circuit breaker like @Skybolt and @ocgrant highlighted. They are within 2 to 3 feet of the battery. @Dxdave , there is a cover, just removed it for the photo.
The subwoofer amps are driven off the separate battery bank. Each discrete amp is grounded to its negative from its respective battery. Meaning the sub amps are grounded to their banks negative while the amps connected in the photo you see are attached to the ground strip in the engine room.
Last year, when the head unit was replaced along with the low voltage wiring on the audio side of the amps was replaced there was some intermittent ground loop noise. that actually was found to becoming from the overhead light dimmer.
Or at least changing out that dimmer reduced the noise dramatically.

So...
Let's start with the wiring currently in the engine room. Tom,@ttmott , I like the idea of moving to a breaker in that disconnect enclosure. And then from there to maybe a couple of those fused distribution boxes like Grant and Skybolt mentioned.

Since I'm currently not experiencing ground loop noise, while I recognize not correctly done as @Wylie_Tunes and so many have said, does this at least make sense? I'm reluctant to move all the amps to the battery bank that supports the subwoofer amps fearing I may introduce an issue as the head unit is still on the original sea ray provided circuit/ breaker.
Click to expand...
You could source B+ from different batteries but to what end? The wiring gets complicated pretty fast. The big issue would be if positives from the different battery banks were connected through equipment circuitry or sense wiring, or signal wiring then you now have a major current path between the battery banks. If there was a differential voltage between the banks then guess what....you'll let the magic smoke out of the equipment. The most important thing is to have all of the negative leads on a dedicated ground buss bar for the stereo system and that buss has a dedicated wire to the boat's main grounding buss in the engine room.
 
I think I am going to reassess the current setup.
Wasn't planning on a full rewire but I did need a winter project...
No judgement here please....
A quick survey shows I have a total of 9500 watts.
Is it correct to say that makes a total of 792 amps required to run the system?
(Watts/12volts)
If that is the case, will a 3 battery bank of Group 29 batteries with CAE APS-100 power supplies be sufficient? I will have to review where in line the power supplies are next time I am on the boat. I believe they are what ultimately powers the amps (to prevent the magic smoke?)
Assuming that battery bank is or can be made sufficient then I can remove all the engine room wiring and just work with that dedicated battery bank?
More questions to come I am sure.
Many thanks everyone
 
Shaps said:
I think I am going to reassess the current setup.
Wasn't planning on a full rewire but I did need a winter project...
No judgement here please....
A quick survey shows I have a total of 9500 watts.
Is it correct to say that makes a total of 792 amps required to run the system?
(Watts/12volts)
If that is the case, will a 3 battery bank of Group 29 batteries with CAE APS-100 power supplies be sufficient? I will have to review where in line the power supplies are next time I am on the boat. I believe they are what ultimately powers the amps (to prevent the magic smoke?)
Assuming that battery bank is or can be made sufficient then I can remove all the engine room wiring and just work with that dedicated battery bank?
More questions to come I am sure.
Many thanks everyone
Click to expand...
One thing - an advertised capability isn't necessarily what the system should be sized to accommodate. And, these are peak ratings, not continuous. You'll never operate the system at the advertised ratings. I'll defer to what the audio experts say but off the cuff somewhat less than 50% of what you laid out.
 
Is it correct to say that makes a total of 792 amps required to run the system?

That going to need some BIG wires!!
 
Shaps said:
I think I am going to reassess the current setup.
Wasn't planning on a full rewire but I did need a winter project...
No judgement here please....
A quick survey shows I have a total of 9500 watts.
Is it correct to say that makes a total of 792 amps required to run the system?
(Watts/12volts)
If that is the case, will a 3 battery bank of Group 29 batteries with CAE APS-100 power supplies be sufficient? I will have to review where in line the power supplies are next time I am on the boat. I believe they are what ultimately powers the amps (to prevent the magic smoke?)
Assuming that battery bank is or can be made sufficient then I can remove all the engine room wiring and just work with that dedicated battery bank?
More questions to come I am sure.
Many thanks everyone
Click to expand...

You need to look at the amperage rating on each amp and and total that up. Each amp should be fused so go by that. To Tom's point, 50-60% of that amperage should be fine to supply. The biggest thing as I originally posted, is to have all grounds connected together and as Tom mentioned also to the boat's grounding system.

Since you have a three battery bank for the stereo, it only makes sense to complete the job correctly. But, I might want to re-think having 12 amps, just a thought.
 
Skybolt said:
You need to look at the amperage rating on each amp and and total that up. Each amp should be fused so go by that. To Tom's point, 50-60% of that amperage should be fine to supply. The biggest thing as I originally posted, is to have all grounds connected together and as Tom mentioned also to the boat's grounding system.

Since you have a three battery bank for the stereo, it only makes sense to complete the job correctly. But, I might want to re-think having 12 amps, just a thought.
Click to expand...
You think 13?

Edit:
Kidding of course..

Totalling up the amperage of the required fuses gets to 1000 amps

So look to supply 500 = 600 amps for the system in aggregate
 
Shaps said:
A quick survey shows I have a total of 9500 watts.
Is it correct to say that makes a total of 792 amps required to run the system?
Click to expand...
No
1) how did your determine there is 9500W of draw? Is this based on the amps' summed peak, summed RMS with each chnl at its minimum load or calculating the amps' RMS based on the load placed on each chnl?
2) the amps' watts output is ACV, while the draw is in DCV. So you cant strictly apply ohm's law.

Shaps said:
will a 3 battery bank of Group 29 batteries with CAE APS-100 power supplies be sufficient?
Click to expand...
Under what conditions of use?
 
Wylie_Tunes said:
No
1) how did your determine there is 9500W of draw? Is this based on the amps' summed peak, summed RMS with each chnl at its minimum load or calculating the amps' RMS based on the load placed on each chnl?
2) the amps' watts output is ACV, while the draw is in DCV. So you cant strictly apply ohm's law.


Under what conditions of use?
Click to expand...
9500 watts was the sum of total advertised peak rms
I then applied ohms law.

Subsequently, I totaled the required amperage of the fuse per amplifier. That got me to 1000

Conditions of use:
Normally we are running gen when running or plugged in to shore power. We don't overnight on the hook. Modest volume and bass.

Thanks @Wylie_Tunes
 
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