Does anyone know a way or a place to look that would tell me how to convert my car amplifiers into amps for my subs in a home entertainment system? Thanks
Hey my friend has his amp and deck, rigged up to one of those Eliminator car battery booster things. his dad did some wiring stuff and now he runs two 6x9's, BOSS R-535 Amp, MTX 10" sub, Pioneer cd player all in his room its super sweet.
It's really a waste of time and money to try this, to be honest. That's the short answer: don't bother.
Long answer is this: The reason it's not effective to do this is, in order to give the 12VCD amplifiers the power they'd need in a 120VAC environment, you'd need either a regulated power supply capable of supplying hundreds if not thousands of watts, and one that size would cost you more than just buying a new amplifier made for a home system. Also home speakers run at 8 Ohms, which means that your "1200 watt" class-D amp would only produce 300 watts in your house. Pretty big drop in performance there. The alternative to a regulated DC power supply, is using a trickle charger, and a bank of RG deepcycle batteries. If you use a normal car battery you'll most likely end up killing yourself, since car batteries produce an odorless, colorless, and highly toxic gas as a result of their use. This is also why you never put a lead-acid ar battery in the trunk or passenger compartment of a car, and always use Optima yellow-top batteries for this environment (RG deepcycle). By the time you buy $160 yellowtop batteries, a good 120VAC battery charging unit, and build a circuit to regulate the power supply so it won't give the amps less than 12VDC to avoid clipping damage, you're once again over a realistic price range. Some will try to tell you that a PC power supply will work, but keep in mind that when you see a "400 watt PC power supply" that "400 watts" is derived from 120VAC, not 12VDC, and it's split across both the 5V and 12V lines. The 12V line may actually only supply about 5 amperes of current, which isn't sufficient to keep an amplifier properly fed. This question is asked over and over again, and the end result is always the same. Even if you do get it to work, it'll sound like crap, and probably set something on fire. Just go buy a good home audio amplifier. There are plenty out there on eBay. Check out Adcom or Rotel. If you're really a cheap b*stard go to partsexpress.com and buy a plate-amp for home subs, and use that. It's relatively cheap, and they sell everything for DIY home made subs for home theater.
if you're being serious, most likely no. it would depend on the voltage of the battery and the charge rate as well as the discharge rate for the battery.
Randy, bad idea. There is a drastic difference between a battery charger and a power supply. Unless you love crackle and pop sounds out of your speakers and hate your equipment (which will have a short life) you should not try it.
The ONLY way to safely power 12v DC equipment in the house is with a regulated 12v power supply which has a constant output rating equal to or greater than the RMS power draw of your amp... and that will cost you a fortune. Cheaper and better off to just go buy a 120v AC home stereo system.
Randy, some head units do have dedicated subwoofer outputs but if yours doesn't then you'll have to either use a stand-alone crossover or an amplifier with a built-in crossover.
Assuming your amp does not have a built-in crossover: You can get away cheap with what's called a 'choke coil' but you don't have much flexibility there without a lot of trial and error...and more stuff that will give you a headache. Your better bet is an active low-pass crossover like what you can find in the following link. This is a cheap one but will probably work fine for your application.