hogie roll

What amps do you have and what speakers?

Most amps are 2 ohm stable, and most speakers are 4 ohms per speaker.

That means, in general, you could run 2 speakers per channel wired in parallel (all reds and blacks together)

Joeyboost

Right now their not super quality amps it the Skar-marine amps. I plan to upgrade them soon. The speakers are Skar as well except the 10" subs which are Fusion. What is a good quality marine amp? Back in the day when I had big stereo's in cars it was JL or Phoenix Gold amps I ran.

t500hps

FWIW: I'm running a mix of (8) 6.5's and 7.7s off the 4 channels of a 900/5 JL amp.......the additional speakers help fill the space and it works well. (2) 10in subs off the 500 sub channel. Everything is JL Audio.

bajaman

SKAR amps and speakers have a good following, they are actually surprisingly good and consistently get good reviews in the stereo magazines...their amps actually outperform their stated specs. I say because you might go drop big bucks on a 'name brand' amp only to be disappointed. JL Audio makes good amps and speakers, though I took out all my JL amps and replaced them with Audio Control amps (one 1/800 watt sub amp and one 4/800 amp, along with a 500 watt Kenwood amp. Crutchfield is or was running a special on JL stuff recently.

xlint89

Easiest way would be replace the 4 channel amp with the JL M800/8 amp. It can supply 8 speakers with only 2 RCA from the head unit. Quality amp with good clean signal.

The biggest concern would be the size of the power and ground cables feeding the amp. Would need a good 4 AWG cable to feed it.

DMS_ATX

Good marine amp brands: Matt's Audio, Roswell, JL AUDIO, Wet Sounds, Rockford Fosgate, Kicker, Clarion, Bluave.

my top choices would be JL Audio, RF, and Wet Sounds.

You need more from the sounds of it. When you place two 4 ohm speakers on one channel (2 ohm load at the amp), they both get half of the rating at 2 ohms. For instance, JL XDM 800/8, 100 watts at 2 ohms per channel, with two speakers on each channel, each speaker would get 50 watts.

There are some gotchas to this marine audio stuff. Amps are typically most expensive part of the whole affair, aside from labor.

BBYSTWY

I'm partial to Memphis Audio as I have been a dealer for 15+ years...they make some really nice and compact stuff that is marine rated. Just another option. I have 4-8" speakers with 4-1" comp tweeters in my cockpit and 4-6.5" speakers in the cabin with 3-12" subs throughout running off 2-5 channel amps and 1 head unit in my boat.....It literally hurts your ears with it turned up especially the competition tweeters lol

Joeyboost

Using a RCA splitter is it bad to run two amps off of 1 channel of a head unit. So I have a 4 channel running 4 speakers in the boat and a 2 channel for the 2 - 10" fusion subs. If I cut in a RCA splitter and add another 2 channel amp to power 2 more 6.5's is this OK or maybe split both front and rear then add another 4 channel?

Wally

iTrader: (1)

wont hurt anything. The amps have their own power supply and are only trigger to turn on by 12v output from the radio...or a separate switch can be wired as well. The RCA signals are low level and in theory you can split it as many times as you want....keep in mind the more you do the more it weakens the signal so at some point you may get some signal distortion and audio quality will go down. For what we do on a boar you wont notice much so have at it
If it were me (My system) i would probably split the signals left and right. Assuming your 4 chan right now has 4 RCA's feeding it (two front and two rears that can be balanced left and right) I would take each of the front signals and split those with the "Y" and feed the 2chan sub amp.
If you want to add more amps then split the rear feeds and go wild As for it being a 2ch or 4ch amp...thats up to you on how many more speakers you want to add tot he system.
In my old Scarab i has a separate 4cahn amp to run the inside cabin speakers and all the amps had their own switch to turn on/off....this way i can have music in the cabin and turn the rest of the cockpit off at night and still enjoy some tunes

xlint89

Or you can do something like this.

https://shop.wetsounds.com/WS-220-BT/

You can put 2 RCA from the head unit into it. Then it will split your signal to the appropriate amplifier. You can then control each "zone" as you wish