Suggestions on what to do with speakers in my mame conversion cab

[fjser]

So I just gutted a Street Fighter 3 cab that was formerly a Primal rage cab.  There are two speakers at the top below the marquee, and low and behold, behind a metal plate on the bottom right fron of the cab (next to the coin door) is a huge sub woofer. Seems in great shape, although I dont believe it was wired up to the SF3 board (it seemed to be running off the JAMMA sound).

Anyway, how would you handle this?  I was hoping I could get into the lower right part of the cab where the woofer was to add additional storage and place my creative lab 4.1 speaker sub woofer in, but it looks like its compltely boxed in. Is there an easy way to hook this and the two speakers up to a sound card? or should I try to cut into that section of the cab?

[somunny]

I powered the speakers in my cab with a car amp.  480 watts, which translates into about 80 watts rms to the speakers.  It's connected directly to my pc's sound card via stereo rca cables and powered via a 25 amp, 12 volt power supply.  Convoluted, but loud. 

If you really want it to thump, you might want to look for a four channel amp and bridge two of the channels for the sub.  Of course, this option can get a tad pricey, so it all depends on the results you're looking for.  My cabinet doubles as a jukebox so I wanted big sound.

Coop

[MaximRecoil]

I don't know about an easy way but you would need an amplifier(s). First of all, where is the amplifier that it originally had to power the pair of mids and the sub? The easiest thing to do would be to find an exact replacement of that amp if the cab doesn't still have it.

As far as recommending aftermarket amplifiers, you would need to know the specs of your speakers for starters. As far as the pair of mids go, what is their impedance? This will usually be 4 or 8 ohm but there are some oddball 6 ohm speakers out there too. What is the impedance of the sub? Is it single or dual voice coil? If you don't have the original amp(s) then it would help if you found out the specs on the original amp(s) as well. Then you would know what sort of power your speakers will handle.

If it were me and I didn't have the original amp(s); and was dead set on using the original speakers in that cab; I would use a separate adequate power supply and a 4 channel car audio amp (like Somunny

[paigeoliver]

Dude, you people are nuts. Most arcade games had a single 5" full range speaker which is already capable of getting way too loud. The very best sound setups had 2 speakers and a rare few games had a single subwoofer. Most of mine are capable of getting painfully loud on $10 PC speaker amps, car audio amps and such are not needed.

[Craig]

Dude, you people are nuts. Most arcade games had a single 5" full range speaker which is already capable of getting way too loud. The very best sound setups had 2 speakers and a rare few games had a single subwoofer. Most of mine are capable of getting painfully loud on $10 PC speaker amps, car audio amps and such are not needed.

True. I find it rediculous the way have their cabs set up. Rid the fat sub and get a cheap stereo amplifier to power the speakers. 

[paigeoliver]

The audio in the games isn't high quality enough to truly take much advantage of high quality speakers, and most of it is monoaural and was not expecting a sub and thus doesn't have that low bass in the first place.

Except Turbo. Turbo has a huge 12" sub and it uses it. Although mine has had it replaced with a 6x9.

[Hoagie_one]

big sound is good if you are also using your cab as a jukebox

[somunny]

big sound is good if you are also using your cab as a jukebox

Yeah, I mentioned that in my post.

[wakerlet]

Dude, you people are nuts. Most arcade games had a single 5" full range speaker which is already capable of getting way too loud. The very best sound setups had 2 speakers and a rare few games had a single subwoofer. Most of mine are capable of getting painfully loud on $10 PC speaker amps, car audio amps and such are not needed.

A space duel cab I owned had 4 speakers 

[MaximRecoil]

Dude, you people are nuts. Most arcade games had a single 5" full range speaker which is already capable of getting way too loud.

Annoyingly loud and a good sounding loud = two different things. You can crank up a 5 watt $20 boombox until the sound is distorted and loud enough to irritate you but loud and clean is a whole different story. A 5" full range speaker simply can not reproduce bass at any significant volume level and although certain well-built ones do great for mids with a good amp, the setup in a typical old arcade machine isn't it.

The audio in the games isn't high quality enough to truly take much advantage of high quality speakers, and most of it is monoaural and was not expecting a sub and thus doesn't have that low bass in the first place.

That's isn't true. I have yet to find low quality sound in any arcade machine built since the 80's. The old ones used pure digital tones generated direct from a sound chip, similar to the way midi files work on a PC these days. You can't ask for a much higher quality source than that. You are right at the source rather than it being a recording with inherent loss. It would be like the difference between plugging directly into a keyboard (which is another digital tone generator) and sending it though an amp and speakers; and plugging into a CD player that had a recording of the tones generated by the keyboard. Which do you think will be more pure?