RMS Radio Rating
 

In my 89 S10 Blazer I have the stock UX1 radio, does anyone know how much power it gives in terms of RMS to each channel? I'm looking to get some stuff hooked up to it, and I need to know what the RMS power is per channel to get good speakers. I don't want to go too far away from the RMS rating so I don't destroy my speakers, but I know that whatever I get will be more than the rating. I just need to know if its 10 watts, 15 or maybe even 20. My friend just gave me his 12" Pioneer sub, and I know how to adapt it to a stock harness and radio, but for the speakers to keep up, I'm going to need new ones, and besides, the passenger side rear speaker is seized anyways.

So what do you guys think?

http://i210.photobucket.com/albums/b...127101025a.jpg

any speaker hooked up to the stock radio will not keep up with any aftermarket subwoofer. Id be suprised if each channel was actually producing more than 5 RMS.

IMHO as long as you never drive the speakers to distortion you'll never have to worry about hurting them. I also believe the entire debate as to whether distortion hurts speakers or not is pretty much a wash at lower power levels anyway. I couldn't imagine the RMS power output of those factory radios to be far over 5, maybe 10 watts RMS. I would highly recommend just buying another HU before anything anyway, and even then you really won't need to worry that much about power ratings of the speakers with <25wrms per channel on any aftermarket, especially if you just listen for distortion and turn it down when you do hear it.


^^^^ and he's right, there's no way they'd keep up unless you kept the gain on the sub down so it didn't overrun them anyway, which is one of the reasons the gain is there in the first place, the other and more important being to level match the amp with the input from the stereo. People seem to fail to realize the gain knob isn't a volume knob and that it can also be used to blend the sub(s) with the highs so you don't hear anything but bass.

and you do know music is dynamic, even if your deck put out 50 watts per channel rms, your speaker, rarely if ever will see all that power.

if people think underpowering really is the culprit to blown speakers, then every single speaker ran off just deck power should be blown

Yeah, I have 150 watt 35 watt RMS front speakers, and 300 watt 40 watt RMS rear speakers in my Camaro, and it sounds perfectly fine, even at full blast. And its all hooked up to the original radio which is an old Delco unit just like this one. I just wanted to get some feedback and see what you guys had to say about it.

Sometimes I wish that I could have gotten lower RMS speakers as to not go too far away from what the radio could be rated at, but then again as stated before, speakers rarely see their maximum output because music is dynamic in every sense of the word.

Right now, I'm planning on 260 watt 40 watt RMS front speakers, and 400 watt 40 watt RMS rear speakers for the Blazer, since I'm going to be hooking up a much more powerful sub to this old Delco unit.

All I have to do is figure out the factory integration again like I did in the Camaro.