Car s.woofer as active sub in home cinema system?

[admin_exported]

Hi guys ... I'd like to hear some ideas 😉)) .... I've got this car subwoofer at home for about 2 years already in box and a car amplifier mounted to it .... and now ... what's going on ....

I'd like to have some bass boost at home and the receiver in my home cinema system has only a pre-amplified subwoofer signal, so I got an idea to connect that subwoofer to it. The only problem now is, that this "active" subwoofer has a 12V DC input and my question is: " HOW WOULD YOU BRING IT TO LIFE? "

I couldn't find any converter from 230V AC to 12V DC on internet yet, although there may be some around.

And then I was thinking to PC power supply ... at the end of the day, it gives 12V DC and could supply a 400W appliance but I'm not sure about how would it handle so huge current surges and to be honest, those tiny cables scare me quite a lot 😉))

so what do you think?

thanks for any reply ...

 

[davejberry]

Buy a proper sub for home cinema.

The money involved, in my opinion, would be less than that spent trying to make a car sub anywhere near safe and decent for a home setup.

A 400w car amp would need at least 35 amps at 12 volts, smoothed and stabilised correctly if running at rated power. What about fan noise from a PC power supply? How would you switch the sub on and off....standby? How would you include, crossover, volume and phase controls to tune the sub?

Chances are it would sound pretty rubbish as well!

 

[Anonymous]

thanks for reply mate, there is very good car amplifier connected to the subwoofer so tuning it wouldn't be the problem and a PC power supply has always a small switch to turn it of with no consumption from sub or amp, the only problem is as you said the sound at peaks and that's why I asked for ideas or opinions, but yeah ... it looks like I should have a look after some proper home cinema subwoofer ....

 

[Anonymous]

Hi esso, its all dependant on the nature of your systems. I used to own a Cambridge Audio A500 with B&W 604S3 Speakers. Teamed up with 5, yes thats right 5 Audiobahn subwoofers all firing forwards. One of which was a 3000W Reference subwoofer from Audiobahn.

In a Low to Mid End system, it can work well and save money. One thing I learnt over the years though, is that a subwoofer designed for use in the home, takes up much less space and is much more easily tuneable to get the same sort of results as a ridiculous system I had about 6 years ago

I changed all of those ugly black boxes for 2 Monitor Audio FB212s and the Sound was easily just as loud and room shaking. Sound was more tuneful and musical.I found even with high end car audio subwoofers, they arent the most tuneful speakers.

Also there is a problem getting the right right box type to match the room - as most boxes for car subwoofers are designed to go into a cars space and not into a larger room etc.

 

[Anonymous]

hmmm .... looks like I'll have look after some home cinema designed speaker then 😉

thanks for reply guys

 

[Anonymous]

Think using a car sub is a big no. Try something like a wharfedale sw150 which you can pick up for a little as £150 and it will 'bang for the buck' sub, that or a mordaunt short ms309. Both pretty unbeatable for the prices.