FM Radio / CD installation

[morgandlm]

This is not strictly boating although concerns my boat! I have just bought a bargain (eBay) car type CD/Radio for the boat to replace a clapped out (much corroded) old unit. The new radio has four channels (Left & Right Front; Left and Right Rear) and would normally be connected to four speakers in a car. I only intend to connect two speakers (L & R) because I just intend to listen to the radio in the small saloon. The question is what do I do with the unused outputs? Do I simply leave nothing connected to the unused channels or should I connect some sort of load across them instead of speakers?

I vaguely remember that you should not connect two outputs (eg Left Front and Left Rear) to the same speaker, which would be my Mechanical Engineer's solution!

I'd appreciate advice from any electronics gurus or similar out there.

Morgan

 

[ShaunG]

You should leave the unused connections floating, i.e no load, however please ensure that they are well insulated. You may need to adjust the fader on the stereo to use the front pair only.

 

[Jonny_H]

Agree - they can be useful though in the future.

We have the internal speakers on the 'front' channel and the cockpit speakers on the 'rear' channel, we can therefore use the fader to get music exactly where we want it - works really well.

Jonny