Connecting more than the standard 4 speakers into a car stereo?

Question

How would you go about doing this? Is there a device that somehow splits the channels so you can connect more speakers? I'm wondering, because I see these cars with 10 speaker systems, and I'm unsure if it's the head unit that has that many channels. Thanks.

Answer 1

Every car you see that has more speakers are hooked up to the amp. No speaker wires are coming out of the radio. ONLY RCA. Gives alot better sound because every speaker is amplified and each channel can be set to Highs only or Mid's only. Subs get their own amp.(should be mono)

Answer 2

Vehicles with "premium" 10-speaker sound systems typically have separate factory amplifiers with more than four channels.

Usually when you see a multi-speaker sound system, they're counting separate tweeters and woofers.  You can connect a separate tweeter and woofer to the same speaker wiring if you use a crossover to divide the sound.  The crossover sends the high frequencies to the tweeter and the low frequencies to the woofer, so it "looks" like a single full-range speaker to the radio output.  This is very common in factory systems that add an additional pair of tweeters in the front doors or dash, while still using only 4 channels of speaker outputs from the stereo.

In theory, you can connect as many speakers as you like to a single speaker output, provided you don't end up with an impedance too low for the amplifier.  For example, you could connect four 4-ohm speakers to the left-front output of your CD player, using a wiring scheme that keeps the combined impedance at 4 ohms.  However, the output power from the CD player will be split four ways, so if the CD player can put out 20 watts per channel, each speaker would only get 5 watts.  In any case, more speakers don't usually mean better sound.