I have a 4 channel 600 watt connected to 4 door speakers. Driver door speaker started cracking bad and loud. The only way to stop it was to shut down the power. I replaced the speaker with new pioneer speaker and have the same problem on the same door. Is it a bad channel in the amp?

1st thing is amps outputs have to be properly "loaded" this value is given in "ohms" if your amp says minimum speaker "loading" impedance is 4 ohms ( I suspect it does) then you may load that 1 channel down to only 4 ohms or amp will be damaged , most speakers are rated in ohm's Impedance (look for Greek symbol for omega) look for its rating somewhere on it doing the electrical formula math if you connect two 4 ohm speakers in parallel to one channel ( +=+ / -/- ) this divides down to 2 ohms (not good) but if you take same speakers and connect in series together (+to-/+to-) this gives you eight ohms (better) , the watts rating is a figure for you to determine the amount of power the speakers will take before failure , hence just because you connect 200 watt speakers to a 2000 watt amp is no indication that speaker will take all 2000 watts ( it will fail long before that point ) watts do ADD together like the above example two 4 ohm 250 watt speakers connected to one channel of amp in series will look like ONE 8 ohm 500 watt speaker to amp of course over 16 ohms load speaker volume will greatly diminish and amps have max impedance loads for them as well although there not often published
this is why I love the old TUBE!!! amps they load all the way down to 2 ohms and go up as far as 32 ohms load with no problems , they sound better as well across the board as well

Get a meter and check the resistance on the speaker. Looks like a speaker may be blown but with the description of the crackle noise from the slide controls you might have a bad pot in the unit or the pot has come loose from the board. This could explain why the speaker blew out

Easy to check. Swap wires on amplifier output and if the problem is still on same door then is not amplifier

The amp is going into protect on the two channels powering the speakers. Turn down the gain on those two channels. You also may want to consider crossing over the speakers a little higher than they are now.

The rating on those speakers are way too high. 6.5's and 6x9's will take 50-100 clean watts tops before they start to break up.

The best solution to get it perfect is....unplug the subs. Turn the gain on the speaker channels all the way down. Then turn up the deck 80% as high as it will go. Play a song. Then increase the gain on the amp until the speakers are as load as they go without distortion. Shut off the car, replugg in the subs and do the same thing. Gain on sub channels all the way down, deck then to 80%, find a bass heavy song, then turn gain up until subs become distorted. If you do this procedure your speakers and subs will be "gain matched" to the proper levels.

Good Luck

It is likely that there is a failure of one of the amps in the unit. It could be a cracked circuit board, bad solder, bad volume control, or a bad compnent in the power amp section for one side. HOWEVER something does NOT compute here as you can't connect more than one speaker to a 15 Watt Crate amp... Maybe you have two of these amps.

You will not be able to do that with a 4 channel amp. You can with a two channel amp, but not a 4 channel amp. You can get, depending on the amp, 300 from half of the amp to one speaker.

600 Watt to 1000 Watt 4 CHANNEL AMP for the four 6X9's and a less powerfull 4 Channel amp thats at least 200Watts to 400Watts peak for the 3 3-1/2 kicker speakers. Because if you try to connect the 3 3-1/2 speakers to only 1 4 channel amp that the 6X9 speakers are on you risk of overheating the amp and blowing the speakers too!!!

It's not bad, but at 400 watts, it's a bit underpowered
It'll be plenty loud, but the amp will distort before the speakers do, particularly if your subs are wired in parallel (as dual-driver boxes are typically wired)

Listen for distortion, and turn it down a bit if the sound gets fuzzy or static-y sounding

Hello jon_jonmay,

Wiring 4 speakers to each of 2 channels, you will need to wire them series-parallel and run them at 4 ohms. If you wire all 4 parallel, the load will be 1 ohm and the amp is only stable down to 2 ohms.

According to your manual, the 201s will deliver 50 watts into each channel at 4 ohms . So it will be supplying about 12.5 watts per speaker which is about what you get with the average factory radio. They will work OK, but they're not going to be very loud.

Hope this helps.

how many watts is the amp and speker are you sure you are not putting too much?