RMA 500.1 & RMA 500.4 Amplifier Owner’s Manual
Rev. 09-Mar-10
Pg. 3/8
The Ground
Warning: Read this carefully
The ground wire should be connected directly to the battery of your boat.
Remember, the ground must carry the same high current as the positive wire.
To reduce the risk of noise, run all signal cables away from any power supplying wires.
Running the cables
Carefully run your power wires and ground wires to the battery. Use 4 gauge wires for your ground and
for your positive power cable. We strongly recommend using a 60 amp inline fuse for each amplifier,
installing it no further away than 18” from the battery for safety. A full RMA Wiring Kit can be purchased
separately through a Roswell Wake Air dealer and we highly recommend using our wiring kit as it
ensures high quality wiring and fusing.
Input Section
Due to the wide range of head unit output configurations all RMA amplifiers have an adjustable input
sensitivity or “GAIN”. The gain is not a volume or a power limiting control. It properly matches the input
of the amplifier to the output of the head unit and makes the amplifier more sensitive to input from the
stereo. With the gain up, the amplifier will reach maximum output at a lower volume setting on the deck.
At higher gain settings the amplifier becomes more sensitive to noise from the boats electrical system.
Try to run the gain at the lowest setting possible for your system for the best sound quality while still
achieving full power output.
There is no correct gain setting for all applications as head unit preamp outputs vary. Since speakers
have different power requirements to reach the same output, the gain is most often needed to compen-
sate for these differences. If you tried to set all the gains at half way, you would probably have found the
system did not sound very good. Using good judgment and listening carefully to each speaker is still the
best way to tune a system.
Crossover Controls
A crossover is a device the removes unwanted frequencies from a speaker or amplifier. A tweeter can
easily be blown by bass frequencies if they are not filtered out. A subwoofer will not sound natural if it is
playing mid range frequencies. A crossover removes the unwanted frequencies from the speaker. Care-
ful adjustment is needed to ensure that all speakers are playing the right frequencies and that they are
left with no low spots in the frequency response.
RMA 500.1
RMA 500.4
RMA 500.1
RMA 500.4
