jpac to speaker wiring

jonny5 · Post by **jonny5** » Fri Aug 15, 2008 4:11 am

i have a jpac in my new cab(another new astro city) and im using it with my consoles right now.....currently i am running the sound out the back of the cab and into my PC's soundcard.....but i would like to wire it straight into the cabs speakers....

now where the speakers connect up to the connectors in the cab it is a 4 pin connector, with four wires coming off(obviously)

2 are pinky red, and 2 are grey brown.....im guessing the pink/red are the power lines to the speakers, and the other 2 are the actual speaker lines....

now what i am thinking of doing is simply snipping the speaker lines and wiring into them from the jpac's speaker connectors and leaving the power lines hooked into the cab....or if possible just splice into the speaker lines so i could have it set up for jamma through the cab and the external in from the jpac....

does this sound correct, or should i go back and sit in the corner for a while more.....

neorichieb1971 · Post by **neorichieb1971** » Fri Aug 15, 2008 5:59 am

Unless the JPAC has an amp on it, your out of luck.

Consoles output line level output and Jamma cabs expect amplified sound. Your best bet is to find a 5V amplifier and wire it to the 5v jamma pin. Feed it through and just hardwire the output cables to the speakers directly. It shouldn't do any harm. There might actually be a 1 box solution for this as I can't imagine the JPAC creators left this gaping hole for anyone to sort out themselves.

dpful · Post by **dpful** » Fri Aug 15, 2008 6:07 am

*edit* previous post slipped in before I could finish writing this*

I'd think the two sets of pink and grey would be the positive and negatives for each speaker, the two pinks probably tied into each other at some point for mono, and the two greys tied into each other for a common ground. (stereo being one ground -negative- and two seperate positives).
With the speakers not being powered or having an amp attached (usually run by amp on PCB).

If that's the case, you'd have to install an amp to run the speakers, then run the wires from the JPac to the amp-- for mono only I think. If you wanted stereo, I think you'd have to run right out of the consoles. Either way, you'd need an amp for the speakers.
I've been making mame cabs, and I've been taking cheapo, generic computer speakers apart and using those amps. Even the crappiest sounding computer speakers are usually bad because the speakers and cases are tiny, and when hooked up to bigger speakers and a big resonant cab, they sound loud, natural, and great. It's easy to bust them apart and trace and splice the wires. Excellent cheap and cool stereo amps.

jonny5 · Post by **jonny5** » Fri Aug 15, 2008 10:08 am

hmmmm....cuz on the ultimarc site it says to just run the lines from the 2 speaker connectors on the jpac directly to the speakers......no mention of needing an amp

that sux tho....oh well

thanx for the responses

Chi_Ryu · Post by **Chi_Ryu** » Fri Aug 15, 2008 11:28 am

neorichieb1971 wrote:Unless the JPAC has an amp on it, your out of luck.

And, for the record, it doesn't.

dmauro · Post by **dmauro** » Fri Aug 15, 2008 1:48 pm

You can find 12v stereo amps for about $25 on eBay.

jonny5 · Post by **jonny5** » Fri Aug 15, 2008 2:06 pm

ahhh...i get it now....i could hook up one speaker...but if i want stereo i need an amp.....hmmmm.....how hard would it be to hook that up?

neorichieb1971 · Post by **neorichieb1971** » Fri Aug 15, 2008 2:15 pm

Its nothing to do with that.

A console sends an audio signal which is amplified by the TV or by a stereo receiver. A jamma board has an on board amplifier already and therefore the signal does not need amplification. It goes like this -

Console > Amplification > speakers

Jamma > Speakers

Therefore, if you send a console audio signal to the speakers in your cabinet your sending un-amplified audio and you won't hear anything, well maybe you might but it will be so low its obsolete.

dmauro · Post by **dmauro** » Fri Aug 15, 2008 2:31 pm

Too bad killercabs is down, there's plenty of stuff on there in regards to stereo wiring and consoles in cabs and how to get the audio to work. I haven't actually done this yet, but it seems like the best solution would be to get a connector that fits with the stereo connector in the cab, then wire it into the back of a stereo amp. Hook the stereo amp up to the 12v jamma (there's probably somewhere you can solder to on the jpac), and plug your console into the amp. This way you're not modifying the cab at all.

jonny5 · Post by **jonny5** » Fri Aug 15, 2008 5:12 pm

lolz....i posted in the temporary hardware forum on cave-stg....

give grantspain something to wrap his brain around....

me thinks at this point i will leave the setup as is.....it is kinda nice playing games in 5.1 surround sound

.....and that way i can control and tweak the audio stream through my PC

thanx for the help guys

brokenhalo · Post by **brokenhalo** » Fri Aug 15, 2008 6:19 pm

you know those 2.1 setups for pcs? i took the sub unit for that and stuck it in my cab behind the coin box and wired up a stereo audio cable from the "audio out" ports (which would normally be the satellite speakers) to the speaker lines in my new astro city cab. run audio from the ps2 a/v adaptor into the "audio in" on the sub. i forget what wire is pos and neg on the speakers, but tbh it doesn't really matter much as long as you use the same colors as pos and neg to maintain polarity.

i can take some pics if you need them