As you might know there is plenty of difference in the price of home amplifiers and car amplifiers. If it was possible converting a car amp for domestic purposes it would be great ,at least this is what I think. The problem comes when I had to clearify this , I talked with salesmen, searched about this but finally the answer was IT WOULDN'T BE WORTH DOING IT !

Now, could you please tell me why this wouldn't be worth ?

Well, I don't see that it'd be all that hard to do... Converting the 110 AC to 12DC with enough current to supply the thing would be the hardest part. After that you could take some speakers, shove them into some boxes, wire it up, hook in the inputs, and away you go.

Maybe they're saying it'd be simpler to just buy some quality home equipment instead of building a car system in your place. Car equipment tends to be more expensive and not necessarily better made, sort of thing.

You could use a car amp...but weigh the costs associated...

1) Would need a high wattage 12 volt DC Power Supply
2) Would need a preamp for volume control (though the Line Out on my SlimX portable is attenuated...so it's hooked directly to the Pioneer amp in my car)
3) Would need to tie the antenna lead off the amp to the PS (to turn amp on/off using PS switch...easy to do)...normally the head unit in the car does this (In the car, tape deck turns on amp...for the SlimX mentioned above).

That's all that I can think ATM

xen-uno

edit: per 1) ... you could use a high wattage computer power supply (300 watts or so), but many PS's don't turn on unless there's enuff load (I think a car amp qualifies tho)

How much would the things mentioned above cost ?

Is it worth trying it out ?

PS? Sorry, but I'm not very much into car audio.


Old amp (from friend or from flea market) - cheap
Speakers - these do cost a lot (if you can't get used ones)
Battarey + charger - depends (friends have any spare ones?)

If I could gather everything I needed and it wouldn't cost too much, I would try.

Ps. Sorry, this message is too holistic to be of any use.

PS = Power Supply

Thanks Guys.

I haven't tried it and in reality I don't know much at all about car audio, but the ideal has been in my head for years, I'd love to see a simplistic small sized car CD player built into the wall along with speakers. I don't however know how car speakers would sound inside of a room, after all the speakers are engineered for the small boxy confines of an automobile.

I've seen home lounge chairs in various magazines ($2000 and up) over the years that have built in car-like stereos down along the side or buried underneath a flip-up arm rest. They always had car-like speakers near the users head, some of them even had subwoofers under the seat. I don't know if those chairs were using actual car stereos and speakers or not, or if they were just manufactured as such to fit within the limited confines of the chair.

Just for the curious ones :
(note this doesn't qualify as audiophile)

Last year I was offered an old 3way speaker (the other one was broken) and decided that it would be nice for my PC (I have a cheap boombox connected to the output of my integrated soundcard).

Initially, i connected it to the output of the boombox (speakers are detachable) but that wasn't much good.

Then, i remembered i had a car amplifier (old and cheap one too), of those small ones, which curiously, fits exactly in a 5 1/4'' bay in my PC!

Connected it to the power supply ( yellow cable ), the input to one of the outputs of the mixer table (to give some preamp), and the output to the speaker.

I don't have much volume, but the bass has improved considerably


From this, I take that indeed, a PC power supply would suffice for the thing (and they are cheap, ~20€ )


Of course, you can always use a Battery charger too, but those tend to offer low Amperage. Still, i used one once for a car radio too, with some small speakers.

A friend of mine already does this. He's connected a car amplifier upto an AT power supply, and used his pc soundcard for the audio, and connected some home stereo speakers upto the amp. It sounded pretty good to be honest, very surprised. However, when he connected a car sub woofer to it (about 500w), when he turned it up loud the PSU tripped out. Maybe a higher wattage power supply would have helped.

Hope that helps!

You can always go to a big electronics store (e.g Mediamarkt or ElectroWorld in my case) and take a look at how the guys there have hooked up the car stereos that are used for demonstrations. You can even ask someone what they use and how much it costs.