Stereos?

[Gubb]

I have been given a sub and an amp from my brother, who sold his car (to buy a Bandit), and is moving back to nelson, thus no longer needs them.

I have no reason to put them in my car, as I don't need another reason for it to get broken into again, but my question is, can I hook the sub up to my home stereo without any problems?

I got told to watch out for the impedance, whatever that means.

Any help/abuse appreciated.

[Mully]

You probably could, eventually, but the voltage will be all up the shit, so you have to mess around with it to get it to work. It's up to you whether that worth the effort or not.

I'll chuck it on Tardme, one of the doof doof brigade will buy it, and then go to a shop and buy a proper domestic system.

[The Pastor]

car speakers are 4 ohm and home speakers are 8ohm, or somthing like that.

You can get it to work, get a 12V supply (that can handle a bit of current draw) and hook up a car stero (headunit amp sub speakers) to it.

Mount it all in a wall or somthing.

I'd wack it on tm and get a stero system.

[Gubb]

Cheers for that, sounds like far too much effort, shall chuck it on TradeMe if none of my mates are interested.

[Teflon]

Depends on your amp. If it's a high current amp, you shouldn't have any problems.

If you own a cheap system, ( receivers, mini systems ) don't hook the sub up, you'll end up fucking it from under powering it.

[The Lone Rider]

No problem to do it, it's all a matter of matching impedances and wattages.

The subwoofer will require input from a certain impedance and wattage.

There should be a symbol on it stating the impedance - i believe a number with the ohms symbol

Next is to make sure your power output from your amplifier matches your wattage on the sub speaker.

I assume this is a sub speaker inside a cabinet? If it is in a cabinet, make sure the impedance and wattage ratings are for the whole cabinet, not the single speakers inside (some subs have more then one speaker inside) - usually this is easy to tell by if you only have one input on the cabinet.

You can run a speaker with a lower power rating then what the speaker is rated, but it will run very deficient.

However for impedance and wattage you don't want either over the rating.

Impedance levels, if mismatched and depending on how mismatched you can end up with a result of buzzy sounds, weak volume, or internal damage.

Lastly, is it a powered sub or unpowered sub cabinet? Big difference there as well


Frankly.. I say sell the damn things and use the money to buy a sub.

I could get it running, but even knowing what I'm doing I wouldn't bother. Especially car audio subs and amps. What a joke!

Oh and a few hints for getting more bass out of your system:

1. Put your damn speakers on the floor. Try it. Bass propagates better that way.
2. To produce good sounding bass, you need a big speaker cone. Bass is a lot of atoms compressing and you need a bigger surface area of the cone to be pushing them. Those small subs suck - but if you have no choice put it on the floor. And if its one of those ones with the ported holes in the back, make sure its on the floor with the port about a 1 to 1.5 feet from the wall so the bass porting from the back reflects quicker back towards you.

[Gubb]

Cheers for all that Llama.

The Stereo is 6 Ohms, and the Sub and Amp are 4 Ohms.

Not gonna bother even trying, will flick 'em on TradeMe and see what happens, was only asking in the slightest hope that they might have been compatible, because I didn't really want to sell something my brother had just given me.

Don't NEED more bass from the home stereo, just thought it may have been an easy solution.

[The Lone Rider]

Cheers for all that Llama.

The Stereo is 6 Ohms, and the Sub and Amp are 4 Ohms.

Not gonna bother even trying, will flick 'em on TradeMe and see what happens, was only asking in the slightest hope that they might have been compatible, because I didn't really want to sell something my brother had just given me.

Don't NEED more bass from the home stereo, just thought it may have been an easy solution.

You can change impedance levels but it's probably more cost and bother then it's worth.

I know in recording studios one way to change impedance levels is using things like Direct Inject boxes, but they are also used for other things.

And frankly my DI box cost like $80 or something on trade discount. Unless you could build your own, imagine what something like that would cost for general consumer products.