I'm about to add some rears behind my seats and I'm wondering how the "balance" is between the door speakers and rears speakers in our car (assuming the fade on the HU is neutral) given the acoustics of our car?

The reason I'm asking is this. I'm currently powering my doors and sub from a 4-channel amp. My HU has front and rear RCA outs but no extra outs for a sub. Right now, adjusting the level of my sub is a matter of settings the fade on the HU.

I'm planning on adding rears and a new sub amp. So basically, my front and rears will be powered by my existing 4-channel amp and the new mono amp will power the sub. Because I only have 2 sets of outs from my HU, ie. front-left, front-right, rear-left, rear-right, and my new mono amp does not have pass-throughs, I'm going to have to put in a couple Y-adapters somewhere.

If I split the front channels coming from the HU it means I lose my fade but I can adjust my sub level using the fade. This would be fine if the door speakers and the rears are more or less the same "natural" level given the acoustics of the S.

The other option is to run the fronts off the HU's front channels and split the HU's rear out between the rear speakers and the sub. This means I would still maintain some way of adjusting the front/rear levels, but would not be able to adjust my sub independently of the cabin speakers.

In the end, I guess it shouldn't be any big deal to play with it both ways so see which I like, but I'm curious as to any one else's thoughts.

Thanks.

 

Let me start this by saying that I have no experience with this and there may be a better/cleaner way of doing what you want, but this may be something you could look into. If your 4-channel amp has a pass-through set of RCA's you could run that through the PRC1 here:

http://peripheralelectronics.com/2002/signal_path.asp

Again, I'm not sure how well this would work but it might be worth trying.

Good luck!

 

your other option, is to look for a mono amp with remote gain capability (most amps have this now) and just stick the knob somewhere close in the cabin.

 

To answer your question, if you have the front/rear fade in the neutral or middle position, you will be front biased. ie. There will be slightly more sound coming out of the door speakers.

 

Thanks to all who've replied and especially to xviper. Not having heard an S w/ rears, that's exactly what I was looking for.