Car amp to power non car speakers?

Soldato
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Ok the scenario is this, Ive just gotten some rock speakers for my garden and I need an amp to power them. I cant afford one this month due to holiday and also dont really have space for the amp in my tiny little house Ive moved into.

I have a spare car amp kicking about which would be ideal to power the garden speakers and would be screwed onto the inside of a kitchen cabinet.

Obviously there is the signal wire to get around but thats just a voltage signal isnt it?

So will it work or would I be best off waiting to get a hifi amp? I wont be having them turned up loud at all so dont need anything powerfull.
 
Soldato
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You could use a car amp, but you'd need a pre amp to control source selection and volume. If you have a CD player with output level adjustment or a computer to plug it into you should be ok though.
 

daz

daz

Soldato
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k3v said:
are the impedances different 8 ohm for car and 16 house speakers? will it make them quiet?

Car speakers will generally be around 4 ohm whilst home speakers will be 8 ohm. Using speakers with a higher impedance than the amp is designed for will simply result in your amp not putting out as much power - which is perfectly fine. The only trouble is if you run speakers with a lower impedance than the amp was designed for.

I would be more worried about how you're going to get a constant 12V DC supply. The signal wire is just a 12V switch that tells the amp to turn on and off when the car ignition is switched on and off.
 
Soldato
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yeah good luck with that. car amps draw a massive amount of current when driving a load. hell a half serious amplifier will draw 5-10amps @12v doing nothing at all. A 500mA supply wont cut it mate.

You could go ghetto and rig an atx power supply up, but honestly for the price of a decent 12v supply, your better off just buying a cheap home-amp from cash-converters or somewhere similar.
 
Soldato
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Ah, ok I'll scrap that idea then. Just thought I might beable to use what I had without buying much else.

I think my best bet is to buy something off a well know auction site or cash convertors as previously mentioned.
 
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