Mid-cabin speakers

[jnar240]

2012 AR 240

JL 6’s x 4 (front and rear cabin)

WS towers x 2

All 6 speakers powered by JL M600/6 amp

Kenwood DIN head unit

I’d like to add 2 more JL 6’s in the mid cabin as per the multiple previous threads.

In an effort to save time/effort/money, does running just the 2 new mid cabin speakers off of the Kenwood head unit seem reasonable? I've looked at several threads describing installation of new amps/etc, but I was hoping the head unit would have enough power for just the 2 new speakers to be added fairly easily.

 

[tdonoughue]

I basically did this with my Fusion HU (I have the same amp, Polks in the cabin and a sub--so I was adding speakers on the tower). I ran the towers directly off the HU and the rest are all on the amp. You are not going to win any volume awards for it, and it will greatly help if you have the ability to adjust the volume on the HU separately from the amp output (mine has 2 zones, so I used the 2nd zone for the new speakers). But it works very fine for me...

 

[212s]

In my opinion, the head unit doesn't have near enough power to keep up with the JL amp and you'd probably be disappointed. But the good news is the JL amps can handle 2 ohm loads easily and you can simply add 2 more speakers and parallel wire them in the cockpit with the other 2 speakers. It will almost double the output from the amp and split the power into two sets of speakers to maintain a fairly balanced sound. I'm looking to add 2 speakers mid-cabin next spring to spread out the volume in the cockpit. The rear of the cockpit is too loud and captain/co-captain chair locations are too low - rear passengers are getting blasted so I can hear the tunes LOL. I will run the 4 cockpit speakers in parallel and the bow/stern speakers in parallel, tuned properly for output it'll sound great and the amp can handle it no problem. Then the wife and I can listen comfortably without blasting the rear of the cockpit.
Yeah...I'm thoughtful like that. The added volume has nothing to do with it!
?

 

[jnar240]

Great. I appreciate the advice.