Replacing the rear subs in my car, Any idea what the deal is with the wiring to them?? There are 2 speakers per side, (sub and the small fill speaker) but 6! wires going up there! The diagram in the shop manual is about worthless, as it really does not describe to what speaker the wires go! From what I'm seeing it looks as if one speaker get 2 sets of wires going to it, but this just seems wrong, and if it IS correct, is it the sub of the fill that get the double set?? My car was botched by a shop before I got it, and have no idea how 6 wires go into 2 speakers.....HELP!!

 

If its a dual voice coil woofer maybe its getting two channels.

 

Those are Dual Voice Coil speakers, essentially 2 speakers in 1 cone and it's provides a little more volume for their size... you can run more watts into them. make sure you have the polarity correct when connecting. I'm not sure if Jaguar is running a Left and right signal to both speakers or just the same signal to each side but bass is typically recorded mono so it shouldn't really matter.

 

Lets assume, were just going to be using a single voice coil sub (because we are), and keeping the little fill speaker. Any idea what set of 2 wires should be eliminated?

 

If you use 1 2ohm voice Coil subwoofer then you are going to be leaving half the power on the table from the factory amp. There are 2 channels feeding the speakers.

 

Looks like each side is getting a specific left or right signal to each speaker twice so you can eliminate the +/- for the 2nd channel for each sub on each side. C2ME01-2, C2ME01-5, C2ME02-2, C2ME02-5

 

If you go with a single voice coil, one way to offset the lower wattage going into it is to get a speaker with a higher DB sensitivity rating. I'm pretty sure the stock ones have a low DB sensitive rating. Keep in mind these are 2 ohm voice coils and if you go with a 4 ohm, you'll lose "half" of the wattage going into it which will also decrease volume. Decibel rating decrease, wattage decrease and perceived volume is not linear so losing half the wattage doesn't mean half the volume.

There are a number of 2 ohm, dual voice coil subs you can buy for about $100, I think kicker makes a fairly decent sub. If want to go all out, I think Focal has one too but not sure.

 

Speakers in photo are what I went with, Infinity Kappa 800's 2 ohm, 89 db Hoping they sound better then OEM! I have to assume the second voice coil is acting as a type of "midrange"? If not and both wires are sending out the same frequency, could I just double up, and send the 2 wires into the same + or _ input on the single speaker?

 

Nice speakers. If you think volume and clarity is lacking after installing (some people say the factory power amp is part of the issue) I think most on here who have upgraded their back speakers with the original location, end up adding an Audio Control ACM 1.300. It has a speaker level in and enough power for a sub along with a remote volume control with some DSP to clean up the sound.

 

Good luck and please report on your experience
I am a noob but have been reading lots to work out what to do.
i think most of the compromise of the rear setup (maybe 80%) is because those oem ones are mounted in free air (outside of enclosure)
and probable the other 20% ( just guessing) is because they are lower quality units.
so logically putting in nice units will improve things by 20% .but miss the elephant in the room.

What system is your meridian?
If you have the base 330w it will under drive your 800w speakers and you only end up accessing maybe half of its potential, made even worse if by using only 1 channel (2 wires) which is 50% of the rear signal rather than 4 wires for the original dual coil
The second voice coil is on the subwoofer driver to enable it to handle higher power. The midrange has its own wiring so thats why there are 6wires .

You are in a good position to test and if not adequate then run a new mono amp as suggested already . And if still not enough then moving your infinities (either one or both ) to their own enclosure if you can spare the boot space

 

It's not "free air", you would have no bass at all as the front wave and the back wave would cancel each other. The install is considered IB or infinite baffle. In other words, the enclosure is so big as to be "infinite" with regards to the internal space that the driver sees.
IB installations can be awesome, if done right. The F-Type is the opposite of done right. The baffle and all the side panels resonate.
I agree that the install is 80% of the problem if you include the tune that is built into the system. The sound from the subs are a muddy mess. It would be interesting to hear how the new subs on just one pair of the amps leads sound.
OP, while you have all the trim panels out you are deadening them?

 

sorry rob but it is actually classified as free air. Infinite baffle means there is a seal between the front and the back of the woofer cone so the two sound waves can never meet such as sealed parcel shelf through which the subwoofer is mounted. Imagine a subwoofer box as big as a car or football field, that’s IB. When the sound waves can meet it is classified as free air.
Ultimately this doesn’t really matter as it is still crappy.

I have just found out when mounting in free air you can only run the subwoofer and half it’s RMS rating otherwise you are risking damage as no air cushion behind it ( such as in a sealed or ported box) to stop excessive excursion of the cone.

I have ordered a infinity kappa for my install as well when I saw the cool 2- 4 ohm impendence switching

 

The neat part about getting called out is doing the research to support your position. https://www.kicker.com/app/misc/supp...Guidelines.pdf

And find opposition research. https://www.caraudionow.com/free-air...ofers-defined/

I will accept that IB has been more narrowly defined by some as a very large enclosure. This isn’t the way I remember it defined by the Audio Cyclopedia when I got it out of the library in 1975 when I started building sub boxes. I was 15.

I think this “free air” subwoofer thing has come around since then. In either case, you do need a nice stout baffle. With free air, apparently you need a 29hz filter so the cone doesn’t flop around like a fish.

I accept that in it’s existing state, the Jag has a free air application. And it’s still crappy. I think someone at Meridian forgot the filter.