Clarion XMD2 upgrade

[RickR90s]

Hello everyone. I have a 2002 Clarion XMD2 receiver powering four JBL MS6200 speakers. I want to add a marine amplifier and would like to know if this is possible.

The back of the deck has a red and a white (RCA) jack coming out. Would these be used to plug into an amp? What kind of amp should I buy? 2 or 4 channel? Will either of these power all four speakers? thanks so much.

[ski4evr]

You will have to find an owners manual and see if those are amplifier pre outs. A lot of amplifiers will also accept high level inputs also (speaker wires from deck). A four channel amplifier will give you the ability to fade the audio. If you use a two channel, the speakers will be connected in series at two ohms. The amplifier would have to be stable at this impedance. A four channel would be easier. If you used a 5 channel, you could add a subwoofer at some point with no other devices needed. Here is a really nice 4 channel. http://www.jlaudio.com/m400-4-marine...plifiers-98271. All manufacturers have one similar.

[nukemustang]

There is a tab at the top, it links to the owners manual for the XMD2 radio. The manual says it has 2-channel output, so yes those would be the RCA jacks to connect to an amp. The 2-channel vs. 4-channel is another discussion that many factors that go into, like the ohm rating of the speakers (most are either 2 or 4 ohm), the amplifiers ratings and capacities at various loads and how the speakers are wired (in series, or parallel). Other questions are things like are you going to re-use the current speaker wires and how to CC wire them from the factory or are you going to run all new wires. If you want, you should be able to use a splitter to have the 2 RCA leads feed a 4 channel amp.

I hate to give you a blanket answer, but you can wire a 2 or 4 channel amp to power the speakers, if the amp has the capacity (load rating) and based upon how you wire them. you can google for 2 (or4) channel amp with 4 speakers and click the images tab and there are myriad of ways to combine speaker ratings and amp ratings to match things up correctly for both the speakers and amp.

Hope this is clear as mud.

[RickR90s]

Thank you both so much. I'm going to get a four channel amp.