Ever since i was rear ended and my car was totalled, i pulled out my entire sound system and it has been sitting around. i wanted to put it to use in my home. I did some research and saw some people used a computer power supply to get the 12v necessary to run the amp. I was wondering if you guys had any insight/experience/advice that could help me through this process. I figured i could just build boxes for my 6 1/2 inch speakers, got to some place that sells cheap home theater recievers to run those and that would work. But i was confused on the subwoofer setup. Help!!

I bought a JL from this stupid ass kid for $10. For shits and giggles one night, I decided to see what would happen plugging it directly into the wall outlet.... I would SO pay another $10 to do that again. LOL

Car audio equiptment should only be kept in the car because they are made to handle x amoutn of power. Moving the equiptment into the home you could technically get a transformer to transform 120 volts to x amount of watts, but it would be tricky. My dad used some Jensen subs once upon a time in the house speakers, I have no idea how he hooked it all up, but it sounded like garbage. Just go buy yourself a kick ass bass cube and call it a day.

There's a lot more to take into consideration. Impedance is one of them. Generally speaking car audio is generally 4ohms, where as home audio tends to be 8ohms. The lower ohm load on the receiver could damage it if its not rated for such a load. Also, you would have to find a receiver with a plain line out. Dont want the receiver to amp the signal before it gets sent the the car audio amp and amp'd again.

Maybe he is talking about using everything, including his HU? I did this before, but not alot of power. I used a car battery charger to power everything. Not the safest idea!

How do they set the equipment up for demo use in stores?

This is true, because i do have a alpine cda 9813 thats just sitting around that i could use in this setup...basically ive got it all, 4x6 1/2's infinity's, 2x 12" subs, one 1000W amp, the alpine hu, and all the necessary cables.......any ideas? i mean all of this is just sitting around, and its a good system.....

It's probably not a good idea. Not only is it dangerous, but you run the risk of damaging your car audio equipment along with whatever home theater stuff you plan on buying. I would recommend hanging on to your car audio stuff for a future vehicle or selling it so you can buy proper home audio components. Trust me, you'll thank me in the long run if you end up frying your car audio equipment along with a new home theater receiver. If you have to do this though, I would ONLY recommend using the speakers with a home theater receiver. An amp or car deck would be a pretty high fire risk if it is used in your home via AC power.

Originally posted by develitate
It's probably not a good idea. Not only is it dangerous, but you run the risk of damaging your car audio equipment along with whatever home theater stuff you plan on buying. I would recommend hanging on to your car audio stuff for a future vehicle or selling it so you can buy proper home audio components. Trust me, you'll thank me in the long run if you end up frying your car audio equipment along with a new home theater receiver. If you have to do this though, I would ONLY recommend using the speakers with a home theater receiver. An amp or car deck would be a pretty high fire risk if it is used in your home via AC power.

If done right, I really don't see a fire risk. You can set it up exactly as they do in Demo rooms. So you would need a good power supply. I really don't know how using it all together would damage anything unless you are talking about mixing home audio with car audio. That I wouldn't recommend either. If you are going to use car audio stuff, then only use car audio stuff. Don't mix and match!

I know some guys here own car audio shops. How do you hook the stuff up for demo use? As long as car and home audio equipment is not mixed there shouldn't be a problem. Powereclipse and I hooked up his old subs to our DJ amp one time, cool for a couple massive beats but then we smells smoke.

I did this in college. All you need is a strong 12v power supply and a car amp. YOu power the amp with the 12v supply, then you use the sub-out from your home stereo to run to the input on the car amp. The impedence of the sub will match the car amplifier. You can't however just run it off your home theater speaker outputs.

A computer power supply will only handle the smallest of car amps. Even if the power supply claims "2000watts" or whatever, read the small print on one of the 12V outputs, usually it is only 100-200w RMS per output.

So your "2000 watt" computer power supply will only power a tiny 200w amp. (The 2000 number is from adding ALL the outputs together, at their peak power levels.)

The car audio stores have huge 12v power supplies that cost much much more than a top of the line home theater receiver. A great receiver can be had for under $200, and you can probably sell your car amp to make up most of that expense.

Also, anything over 10" subwoofer will sound like shit in a home theater setup. Again, you can probably sell your car subs for close to what a nice home theater sub costs.

Why in the hell would you do this?

My friend whose dad owns the nicest car audio shop in town and has a huge ass house has done this. He had a huge projection tv and a big ass couch and behind the couch built a box the length of it and put 4 15s in it i believe. Wow at watching tv over there with it on. I'll ask him how they did it next time i talk to him.

Originally posted by thedawg
A computer power supply will only handle the smallest of car amps. Even if the power supply claims "2000watts" or whatever, read the small print on one of the 12V outputs, usually it is only 100-200w RMS per output. So your "2000 watt" computer power supply will only power a tiny 200w amp. (The 2000 number is from adding ALL the outputs together, at their peak power levels.) The car audio stores have huge 12v power supplies that cost much much more than a top of the line home theater receiver. A great receiver can be had for under $200, and you can probably sell your car amp to make up most of that expense. Also, anything over 10" subwoofer will sound like shit in a home theater setup. Again, you can probably sell your car subs for close to what a nice home theater sub costs.

Exactly, that's why I said "Good" 12v power source. I can't remember the specs on the one I had but it cost me $75 from RadioShack (10 years ago $75, probably more today) and it ran the amp very well. I also didn't use a huge amp because I didn't want to overpower the stereo speakers.


Why would you do it? Meh, why not? People shave their door handles, put big stupid wings on, put on turbo kits instead of buying a pre-turbo'd car....so why not?

You can hook up a sub to a home audio amplifier as long as your ohm loads are correct. I was running 2 jl 10's on my home amplifier, but they are 8 ohm speakers run to seperate channels. Just check your ohm loads.

it's not THAT hard to match impedance... :wary

this ain't rocket science as some of you guys are making it sound like. with some VERY basic knowledge about electronics it's not that hard to work with stereo equipment. otherwise you would need electrical engineers to work as audio techs.

Follow this link and you can find 2 power supplies that will convert your AC to DC, either will work. Many places sell them, but its radioshack, so you can find it close to you.

http://www.radioshack.com/category.asp?catalog%5Fname=CTLG&category%5Fname=CTLG%5F009%5F001%5F005%5F000&Page=1

I just completed upgrading my home stereo system with some car audio stuff that I had lying around. It's amazing what you can accomplish when you're snowed in for 2 days. Here's a quick rundown:

Sub - 15" Eclipse 88150
Amp - JL 250/1
Power supply - some 40 amp 12 volt regulated thing I had around
Cap - Alumapro 15 farad
Box - 3/4" MDF, sealed, volume of 3.45 cubic feet. Calculated from diysubwoofers.org

I had to use a capacitor because the power supply could not deal with the peak current that the amplifier wanted. If you can find a computer power supply, you will probably need a capacitor like me. I used a 15 farad, but that's probably overkill. The thing runs for like 10 seconds at full power after you turn the power supply off!

wow that's pretty neat :thumbsup

how's the sound?

It hits pretty hard, and it shakes the whole room. It's not as clean sounding as my old 12" Eclipse was in my car, but it's damn loud. Maybe after I fix some of the leaks it will sound better.