Car speakers vs Home theatre speakers

 

Richard Spring
Car speakers are cheap tough and well built. Hometheatre speakers range from small and cheap, to large, good quality where you can pay up to any price you like.

I would like to know if anyone has done a comparison between car audio and their beefier home theater counterparts. Specifically, is it worth dolling out thousands of dollars for a complete set of HT speakers, or would car audio speakers (with custom made boxes of course) scub up to sound similarly clear as mid range speakers at a fraction of the price?

My plan would be to get sets of 6 inch 2-way car speakers, a few 2 or three inch tweeters and maybe a 14 inch monster and house them in shielded boxes.

I have had this idea for a while now and are just wondering whether my logic is sound, or whether i'm missing some important factor.
 

Richard
oh, if forgot to mention, that i have all the equipment and necessary bits, ie can magnetically sheild..etc (dont know how technical to get on this board) I know this set up wouldn't be the mega-ultra-super-setup of doom...... but would it be cheaper than, and still be comparable to mid range HT speakers.

Besides... it might be fun...
 

D. Jackson
I have done this very thing and have wondered if others would thumb their noses at this idea. However,my system sounds great . I'm thrilled to death with it and have no interest in pursuing "real" HT speakers. I used 6x9 Jensen 3-way car speakers in my center and side speakers. Because these are 4 ohms and I was told there needed to be 8 ohm resistance to match my amp, I put two drivers in each cabinet and wired them in series to get the required 8 ohms. My rear speakers are 2 6.5" Jensen 3-way speakers built into triangular shaped cabinets to produce a "bipole" radiation effect. I have 2 12" VR3 DVC subwoofers( bought on sale at WalMart) in separate cabinets with each configured for 8 ohms. I have the subwoofer output from my HT amp connected to an inexpensive Kenwood stereo amp to drive the subs. On all cabinets,I used a Radio Shack book on speaker building as my guide for how large to build all the cabinets. The sound is clear,lifelike, and thunderous! Friends are heavily impressed with being able to feel the T-Rex's footsteps in Jurasic Park and to experience the Starships come from behind and over us into the front in StarWars. I'd say ' Go for it!" on this project.
 

Anonymous
I am doing a science project on subs, and I was wondering weather or not you can use car speakers in a house syestem and if you can you house speakers in a car system. If you can I would like to know what is the difference between them and what I would have to do to make them work, or I can't why wouldn't I ba able to?
 

Derek
There's nothing stopping you from using car speakers in the home and home speakers in the car. The only real differenced between car speakers and home speakers are;

Car speakers are usually shallower to fit into doors and clear things in the trunk.
Car speakers are typically more efficient because most car stereos produce less than 25 RMS per channel.
Car speakers are typically coaxial - with all the drivers in one frame.
Car speakers require thier own box and have some type of weatherproffing from sun and moisture.

Home speakers typcally have deeper bass, smoother responses and lower distortion. This is because they come with a custom / tested box.
Home speakers may already be magneticly shielded.

Where they really differ is in the subwoofers. Car subs typically are designed for the smallest box possible. The mass required to create a reletively flat response lowers it efficiency and car sub require sometimes 10 times as much power as a home sub (83 db/watt as opposed to 93 db/watt). That why it's not unusual for a car to have a 1000 amp just for the sub.

Other than that, let it rip.
 

xcvds
sdsd
 

Quest
And my wife thought I was mad for conceiving an idea like this. Wait till i show her this post.

Yippeee....now for some real fun
 

Anonymous
Hi,
I have a few questions to ake you.I just bought a VR3 1500 Watt* Double Band Pass Subwoofer W/ neon light Rings.
I was wondering what do I need to power my subs?
I know i need an Amplifier but I was wondering what would be the best Wattage would be the most eficent to power my subs. If you could Right back with an answer I would apreciat the time used to send it! ~~ Im only 16 and this is my first REALL good sound system Aside my Cd player and HEad PHONEs~~ PLEaz wright back Thank you very much!!
 

timn8ter
OMG. The difference between car speakers and home speakers is that car speakers are designed to be used in cars. Car = small space. Even computer speakers don't sound half bad if you're right next to them in your little bedroom. What happens when you put them into a large room? They sound like crap. A quality home speaker has drivers that are designed to move a large volume of air and disperse it over a wide area. Car speakers cannot keep pace with quality home speakers in a large room. Period. Car subs are designed to rely heavily on "cabin gain". IOW, the reenforcement of lower frequencies in a small space. They are also designed to produce a "bump" in the mid-bass area because that the sound kids like. The reality is that they don't accurately reproduce what the artist or sound engineer put down on the recording.
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