• 12-21-2003, 17:31
    derek5000sd
    Car Audio on Home Systems?
    I recently purchased a surplus of mobile audio goods and have some extra car subwoofers lying around. I was wondering if it would hurt them (or even work) to connect them to my home stereo. It is 6 ohms and 300 watts per channel. THe subwoofer can handle the watts. I was just wondering if it would hurt it or even work on the system. Thanks. :)
  • 12-21-2003, 19:35
    Easy E
    Yeah
    It can work most car subs wont be able to play low enough to work well in home audio. Also you need a an amp and a crossover for it to work. I use my tempest home audio sub in car and home audio works great :)

    Thats my 2 cents.
  • 12-21-2003, 22:54
    matchip
    but what about the power rating, you see, sometimes that our car amp 100watt per channel and we powered out sub with 200watt to 500watt per channel. in the homeaudio, our amp with 5 channel usually 75watt to 120watt max, would that defect the sub we are using? or do we not get the best of our sub?

    i think car audio are much much expensive than home audio... :(
  • 12-22-2003, 07:18
    Pioneer_Fan
    There are a lot of factors that make things different.

    Power is a factor of voltage and current. In home you have 120 volts, car you have 12. So generally in a car you need high current amps to put out lots of power. Hell most HU have a 10 AMP fuse in them, and car amps start at 20 amps and up. Many home amps don't draw more than a few amps ever.

    Now as far as speakers, car speakers generally have lower resistances (4 ohms and down for car, 8 ohms for home). I think this is due to the fact that the lower the resistance of the speaker, the more current the amp will put out. In a car environment where the voltage is low, power must be derived from mass amounts of current. Having speakers with lower resistances helps.

    The other thing is speaker design. Car subs need to fill a small enclosed car. Home subs need to fill huge rooms. Both make the same sounds but for two different environments.

    As far as using car subs in a home environment I don't think its a good idea. Car subs aren't designed to behave like home subs. Also most home amps want 8 ohm loads while most car subs are 4 ohm. If you blindly hook it up it will force the home amp to push far more current than it was designed to ..... possibly burning up the amp.
  • 01-02-2004, 11:31
    mike patton
    I used to run a pair of MMATS Wavedrive D-15s in my bedroom. Here's how it worked:

    I hooked up the subs to an old Akai integrated stereo amp. Then I plugged the auxillary input on the Akai into the sub-out on my Pioneer receiver. Presto, powered subwoofer system. This system had two major flaws: the amp couldn't handle the low-impedance load, and I had nothing to use as a crossover.

    Overall, I'd say it worked pretty well, and cost me all of $300. Long story short, I eventually blew the amp and bought a Paradigm PDR-12 powered sub.

    As for car audio being more expensive than home audio...I don't know where matchip shops, but I've never seen $18,000 car audio speakers...