Question about hooking up car sub to receiver

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FRAGMAN BOB

Limp Gawd
Joined
Jan 25, 2005
Messages
292
This may have been asked a thousand times but I couldnt find anything on it. I was wondering about hooking a car sub up to my reciever on my computer. Right now I have a spare 15" 2.66 cu.ft. sealed box. It has no driver in it. Can I buy any driver (albeit 4-8ohms) to put in there with a plate amp of appropriate wattage then connect that to my sub out on my receiver? Is that right or do I have an extra chromosome?
 
Why buy a car driver? It will work, but why not get something meant for the home? Your box is a liiiitle small for this driver, but it should work well: http://www.partsexpress.com/pe/showdetl.cfm?&Partnumber=295-468

A good amp for it: http://www.partsexpress.com/pe/showdetl.cfm?&Partnumber=300-752 (the 300W is a bit cheaper and will work well too: http://www.partsexpress.com/pe/showdetl.cfm?&Partnumber=300-750)

You can also get a pro sound rackmount type amp, Crown and QSC are popular. Can get a Crown XLS202 or XLS402 fairly cheap.
 
there realy is n difference then price. home and car are two different markets that cater to different demographics. as long as you stick with brands that are reputable.

personally i own and svs sub and some of there drivers are manufactured by TC audio. svs also uses bash amps and they seem to work well. imagedynamic is a good car audio company. stay away from car audio amps though. people around here have asked about this before and converting 120v to 12v for a car amp is retarded.

as long as the driver meets your requirements its fine no mater where you get it. dayton stuff is good for the money as well.
 
Sure, that'll work fine. All that you need to concern yourself with is that the amp can handle the current load the driver will place on it, and that it has sufficient power to drive it to a level that will make you happy without clipping. There's no magic car drivers or anything and I suspect if you searched enough you could find a driver marketed both for home and auto use.

There are two things you need to check though:

1) Make sure your receiver really has a powered sub output. This is actually fairly rare. Since almost all home theatre subs are self powered, most receivers do not have a powered sub out, just line level. If that is the case you'll need an amp. Not a problem, just make sure you check so you aren't surprised.

2) If your receiver does have an amp, make sure it is a decent sized one and that they aren't BSing about the ratings. Subs need more power than most speakers because they have to move a lot of air for bass and because our ears need more volume at lower frequencies to perceive equal loudness. While a 50 watt amp is probably more than sufficient for mains speakers, you may find it anemic on a sub and risk driving it too hard. If the receiver amp is less than 100 watts or if you believe they may overstate the rating, then I'd really advise getting an external amp. The whole point of a sub is to get some heavy bass, it'd suck if you can't do that.

If you do need an amp, you can use a car amp, though that will be more effort since you'll need a DC transformer. Best idea is to track down a Class D amp made for subs. Generally lots of power for the price and they don't generate much heat.
 
it would be dc inverter... transformers only change AC voltage and ampage.

how much do you want to spend on a driver? you need to know that to decide what amp to get.
 
thanks alot guys, I didnt know if I HAD to use a home driver. Now I just need to find a 15 that likes a 2.66 sealed. Is there some place I can find a better selection of home sub amps? I can only find a few plate amps. I'm looking to keep the sub and amp under 200.
 
My apologies to captain pedantic here. However if you want to get REALLY pedantic, transformer is correct. To transform is just to change the composition or structure of something. Thus a transformer is a device that transforms, and a device that turns AC in to DC would be a transformer. Yes, I realise that there's an electrical device called a transformer, doesn't change that it is correct usage of the English word. Those fictional robots in the movies are also transformers, despite being robots and not magnets and wrapped wire.

Please, let's drop the silly pedantry. My point is that if he wants to use a car amp, he can't plug it in to the wall he'll need a power source, an AC step down transformer with an AC-DC rectifier if you want to be precise.
 
Ciggarilo Himself said:
Hmmm...So could I power a car amp with a computer psu?
Click to expand...

I wouldn't try it. Computer PSUs are designed for, well, computers. There's numerous reasons not to do that. In the event you are talking about a PSU just for that purpose (as in one not hooked to a computer) you'll have to mess with it to even get it to turn on as they don't come on unless the motherboard signals for it. If you are talking about one connected to the computer you risk overloading the 12 volt lines and causing your computer to crash.

Supposing you want to use a car amp, just get a good 12 volt (or 13.8 volt) DC rectifier like one of these. That will do what you need.

However, unless you've already got the car amp, the better idea is to just buy a home, pro, or stage amp as that will take mains voltage directly.
 
def can't use a car amp if you need to you use any real sort of power. I think I am gonna go with one of those dayton's and maybe an eD 350w plate amp. *waits for next paycheck*
 
Sycraft said:
My apologies to captain pedantic here. However if you want to get REALLY pedantic, transformer is correct. To transform is just to change the composition or structure of something. Thus a transformer is a device that transforms, and a device that turns AC in to DC would be a transformer. Yes, I realise that there's an electrical device called a transformer, doesn't change that it is correct usage of the English word. Those fictional robots in the movies are also transformers, despite being robots and not magnets and wrapped wire.

Please, let's drop the silly pedantry. My point is that if he wants to use a car amp, he can't plug it in to the wall he'll need a power source, an AC step down transformer with an AC-DC rectifier if you want to be precise.
Click to expand...

A transformer refers to something specific in electrical lingo. You can try and cover up your flub by acting all butthurt and getting all pedantic (he wasn't being pedantic, he was being accurate, there's a difference), but it just makes you look more foolish. Next time just admit you used the wrong term.
 
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