I have a Soundstream Reference 300 SX amp. It is two channel. I want to bridge it and run my two subs id parallel, but I'm not sure how to hook up the pos and neg speaker wires to the amp. I'l' make a little picture here to show what how speaker output is arranged. The "O"'s represent the orfice the speaker wire gets insterted into:

+L- -R+
O O O O
(- +)

That's what the wire hook up on the amp looks like, including the parenthasis. The normal hook up is obvious, but for bridged operation, do you us the polarity in the prenthesis? Any help is appreciated.

[This message has been edited by Tom 400 CFI (edited April 25, 2001).]

[This message has been edited by Tom 400 CFI (edited April 25, 2001).]

[This message has been edited by Tom 400 CFI (edited April 25, 2001).]

 

To run them in parallel, you will only use two of the connections on the amp, one positive and one negative. Make sure that if you use the Left poitive that you use the Right negative, or the other way around if you so choose.

Run one speaker wire from the Left Positive that connects to the positive side of both speakers and do the same with the Right Negative side.

It has been a while since I physically ran speakers like that (my amp does the paralleling internally for me) so I don't remember how I had mine hooked up exactly, but it was similar to that. That is the typical brief description of it.

Matt

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I just checked out Soundstream's web page and pulled up the owners manual for that amp.

Here is the link for the manual:
Reference 300/sx

Here is what you need to do:
1st) On the top of the amp, switch the MIXED MONO/STEREO/BRIDGED switch into the
BRIDGED mode.
2nd) Switch the HIGH POWER/HIGH CURRENT switch into the HIGH CURRENT mode (this is to accomidate the 2 Ohm/bridged load you are going to put to it)

Then, wire your 4 Ohm subs (they are 4 Ohm, right?) in parallel and connect them to the RIGHT CHANNEL ports on the amp.

Good luck,

Thomas



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Thanks for the replys. Esspecially the link. I hooked it up as you described, but set on high power, not High Current, because I am using JL Audio 12W0-8 which are 8 Ohms, so they are 4 ohms parallel. They still don't sound that great. I don't know what the problem is but I'm begining to think JL's aren't that good. (?) You won't belive this but here goes; I used to have a cheesy pair of "Urban Audio Works" Subs hooked to a two channel Soundstream Amp that was rated at 60 watts/channel. It had WAY more punch than what I have now. What is going on?

 

Have you tried running just a single sub with the amp bridged? Or without bridging with each channel driving a sub? If it sounds different it may give you some indication of what the problem is.

 

JL makes an awesome sub! I have a single 12" W0 sub on a RF Punch 160 in my trunk and it sounds great. I did make a custom enclosure using JL's sugested volume size, so that is definitely something to consider ..... the proper enclose can make all the difference.

Anyway, those 8" subs you have are not designed to play really low (read: into the 20Hz range). They're more of a "Sub to mid-bass" range speaker. What are you crossing them at on the high side? I would go around 150-200Hz on those.

What size were those cheesy sub's anyway? If they were 12's or 15's or something, I could see how you would like them better ..... they probably played the lower frequency tones a lot louder.

Are you going for ultimate Db's? Or are you looking to for clarity? If you're looking for max Db, then those are probably not the sub for you.

Those things should sound really good as long as you have the proper enclosure for them. I'd say you could probably get a flat response down to 40 something hertz with them. Maybe not? I'm not too familiar with the 8"ers frequency response, but I know JL, and they do make great sub's.

Try like 87Kevroc said and hook up one of the subs to the amp in a bridged mode and see what happens. Let us know.

I hope you get it figure out,

Thomas.

 

My Subs ARE 12". Same as the old cheepies that got stolen. I have them in a free air encloser (a 1" plywood board).

But I figured out the problem(s). The biggest was that I had the speaker wires hooked up improperly. Fixing that made a BIG difference. The second problem is that the JL's just plain take more power to make the same volume than other brands, (lower db) but the sound is probably cleaner, which is what I desire. I want clean tight bass. I feel I have found it. I'm going to get a 1 farad Cap to help a bit. BTW the amp is bridged, running BOTH subs in parallel.

When I had the two subs (the JL's) hooked up to the 5th channel (meant for subs) on my Alpine V-12, they just sounded muddy. The sound was tiresome and annoying after a short time. Too much bass guitar, and not enough bass drum, if you know what I mean. The Soundstream sounded the same at first (when hooked up wrong) and I was totally disappointed. But as soon as I fixed the wiring, it transformed the sound of the entire system. Very pleasing to listen to now. Thanks for all of your input guys!

[This message has been edited by Tom 400 CFI (edited April 29, 2001).]