Car Speakers at Home

[LZTYBRN]

I'm sure this has been asked here before many times, but I didn't see anything on the first few pages that really answered my question.

So, what equipment do I need to hook up car speakers and subwoofers in my room? Home amp? Receiver? If it helps, I plan on having two 10's and probably two 2-ways. Not sure what kind of power I want until I see how much the equipment costs.

[LZTYBRN]

Okay, maybe if I'm more specific I might be able to get more help.

If I want to use two of these and four of these what kind of amp/receiver setup might work? I want something I can just plug my ipod/computer/tv into..Don't mind if I need 3.5 to a/v adapters or whatever.

[zxsonnyxz]

I'd say look for a half decent(how cheap do you want this?) stereo-reciever and a 3-400W plate amp for the subs.

Any reciever should have the basic connection options you need.

Run the coaxials two at each channel at 8ohms (wire in series), and the subs to the plate amp like this:

[LZTYBRN]

Cool thank you, but how bout for the speakers? And do you know any good places I can look for the receiver, or maybe an example of one that will work for me?

Looking for something under $250.

[Socky]

You will need to wire the coaxials in series and the sub in series.

For the speakers.

http://www.parts-express.com/pe/showdetl.cfm?Partnumber=252-125

For the subwoofers.

http://www.parts-express.com/pe/showdetl.cfm?Partnumber=300-750

That is what you would need to power them, excluding the subwoofer wire, and speaker wire.

[LZTYBRN]

You will need to wire the coaxials in series and the sub in series.

For the speakers.

http://www.parts-express.com/pe/showdetl.cfm?Partnumber=252-125

For the subwoofers.

http://www.parts-express.com/pe/showdetl.cfm?Partnumber=300-750

That is what you would need to power them, excluding the subwoofer wire, and speaker wire.

Sweet, looks like that will work great.

I've decided to just use one of those subs though, so I think this amp would work well with it.

You said to wire the coaxials in series. Are coaxials just the audio (red/white) cables? How exactly do you wire that in series? I'm probably wrong, but I assumed you meant to run the cable from the source to the receiver, and then from an output on the receiver to the sub amp. But the only output the receiver has is under tape and VCR. So how should I connect the amp?

Edited February 20, 2011 by LZTYBRN

[zxsonnyxz]

The coaxials are the speakers with the tweeters mountet in them, the red/white signal cables are called RCA or phono cables.

You can look for a reciever with a pre-out or dedicated sub-woofer output to connect to apm, or you can use the B-channel high level output on the reciever and connect them to the high level input on the plate amp with normal speaker wire.

To wire the speakers in series you do just like you would do a sub: jumpwire from positive to negative between the terminals on the speakers and then the remaining positive and negative to the reviecer. But maybe you knew this...

[LZTYBRN]

The coaxials are the speakers with the tweeters mountet in them, the red/white signal cables are called RCA or phono cables.

You can look for a reciever with a pre-out or dedicated sub-woofer output to connect to apm, or you can use the B-channel high level output on the reciever and connect them to the high level input on the plate amp with normal speaker wire.

To wire the speakers in series you do just like you would do a sub: jumpwire from positive to negative between the terminals on the speakers and then the remaining positive and negative to the reviecer. But maybe you knew this...

I did know how to wire them, just never knew they were called coaxial, but thanks for explaining anyway. So In order to use the RCA input on the plate amp, I would need a sub-out or LFE output on the receiver? It wouldn't be okay to just use a regular audio output? Like the outputs on this receiver:

Kinda hard to see, but under each AUX 1 and AUX 2, there is a pair of RCA in and out. Since it's not specifically a subwoofer output, is that not acceptable to connect to the amp? The amp does have a low-pass filter adjustable from 40 Hz to 180 Hz, so I assume that means it won't send out anything lower than 180 Hz to the sub anyway.

Edited February 21, 2011 by LZTYBRN

[zxsonnyxz]

That would be totally acceptable, but then you wil only get the signal from that channel, so when you want to swith from say iPod to TV sound, the sub wont follow..

So as i see it your best bet would be to go with the high-level outputs to the subamp on that reciever.

On the low-pass filter: it does let through signals over the setting, but depending on the "steepness" (i don't remember the correct term in english) the soundcurve wil be steeper and it wil cut the higher frequencies more effectively. And if you have double filters, one in the reciever and one in the other amp, combined they wil give an even steeper cut. The reason i want to mention this is if you have "weak" front speakers you often need to adjust the sub higher to maintain volume output with both sub and midbass frequencies, but you wil also get more unwanted frequencies. And when your'e getting close to the frequencies that are higher than the sub likes to play, and in addition to subwoofer boxes with often no dampening, you can get bad resonance and generally bad sound. This is when you want to be able to have the most controll over the cutoff as possible. Or else it might just end up sounding like those horrible small home-theatre-package subs.

These are just my toughts though.. And sorry if i got a bit carried away and this got long

[LZTYBRN]

Thank you for taking the time to explain that. The reason I was asking about using the RCAs instead of the high level inputs is that I've never used anything like that before an I don't want to do it wrong. Should I just try both, and see what sounds better?

As for the wiring to the high level inputs, do I need to worry about the ohm load or the power coming from the receiver? Is the 100W from the receiver going to get canceled out somehow and "changed" into the 170W that the amp will be putting out to the sub?

The amp also has "TO SPEAKERS" under the high level in/out. Can I just hook up some more speakers there? Would I use the specs of the receiver when choosing speakers for it (100W per channel, at least 16 ohm speaker impedance)?

I made a picture of the wiring to make sure I got it right.

I know this is a lot of questions, but I'm new to this and I want to get it right. I really appreciate your help.