Open RCA

I have a Soundstream VGA800.5, just hooked it up earlier. I'm getting sound to all my speakers but my subwoofer isnt working. There is an illuminated light on my amp that tells me there's an open RCA. I tried switching the RCA's but it still shows open and I'm still not getting anything from the subwoofer. I wired my (1) 12w6v2's voice coil jumper in parallel to get 2 ohms. Would the open RCA light on my amp light up because one of the voice coil or connections is burnt out? Someone please help my diagnose my problem.

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Thuan

Easiest way (assuming you do not have a multimeter) to check this sort of thing is in two steps. First step is to make sure all the speakers and sub are working. If one of your speakers is working, try connecting each of the other 4 speakers to this output to make sure all the speakers are working (of course at a low volume so you won't damage anything). All remaining four speakers should play your music. The sub will not play music but very low sounds, but you know that. Now that you got that out of the way, you can connect the speakers to the amp and proceed to do a similar test with inputs (RCAs). If one of your RCA cable has signals on it, you can test the amp by plugging this "good" RCA cable to each of the other 4 plugs on your Soundstream VGA800.5 a amp. If each time you plugged your good RCA, each of the 5 channels played some music, your amp is good. Then you can proceed to plug all yoru other RCA's. After this if one of your speakers still does not work, then that channel's RCA is not getting any signal. WHich is when you can check the source of the music, which is your head unit. Check the connections there and if all is good so far your HU could be the culprit. You can now switch RCAs on your Head unit to make sure it is not the RCA cable itself that is cut. Let us know your diagnosis!

It works!! The other channels on my amp were working for sure because I had sound so I just took the sub and hooked it up to the other channel...still no sound. I thought the sub was damaged somehow so I pulled it out of the box and rewired the voice coil jumper wires. It didn't work when the voice coils jumpers were hooked up like this....VC1- to VC1+ and VC2- to VC2+. So I switched it to VC1- to VC2- & VC1+ to VC2+....is that parallel? If that's parallel then how would it be hooked up in series? I'm just running 1 sub and it says wire the jumpers in series for 8ohms and parallel for 2ohms. If parallel is 2 ohm's would that be per voice coil....so it's actually 4 ohm's?

Thanks for the help!!

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Thuan

Your Soundstream VGA800.5 can be wired for the sub at 4 ohms or at 2 ohms for maximum power. Since you're saying your sub specs say to wire them in series for 8 ohms and parallel for 2 ohms, each coil is 4 ohms. Yes, you can wire them in parallel for 2 ohms. For that you connect both coils' - together and both coils' + together. Then use the - from both coils to the amp's -ve and both coils' + to the amp's +. As per your terminology, it is VC1- to VC2- (this connected wire goes to amp -) then VC1+ to VC2+ (this connected wire to amp's +). What you originally did was short the two voice coils individually, and I am assuming you connected the speaker wires from the amp to these two separate shorted circuits, so there was no damage. If you did the other way, you could have damaged your amp, or the self-protecting circuit would shut it off. If you want a drawing or schematic, I can make one up for you, just let me know.

ALso in response to your question on parallel and series, when you put two resistors(coils) in series, you add them so 4 and 4 in series is equivalent to 8 ohms. In parallel, you divide the average resistance by the number of items.

Two coils of 4 ohms in parallel:
average of the two parallel is (4 + 4) / 2 = 4
number of coils = 2
so result is 4/2 that is net 2 ohms.

You can read the section on resistors to get a more detailed explanation.