Can It Be done???

[1642parkerr]

Hi,

This could be a COMPLETLY dumb question, if it is feel free to tell me. I've looking into getting a new stereo system, but am sorted of on a tight budget (Im a college student). I don't know all that much about home system, but do know a thing or two about cars. I was wondering, could I take quality car speakers, build on box around them, and mount them to my wall? I can't see why it wouldn't work, but then again.... Would it sound bad, better, would it matter? Could I use three or four way car speakers instead of compenent? Same with a subwoofer? What about power? If I used a car amplifier could I convert it to 120v power? Or would I be better off with a house amplifier/reciever. I'm sure I would need a house reciever, but where can I get one at a decent price? ANY HELP would be fantastic.

Cheers

 

[markw]

Sorta

Well, you could use car speakers and build an enclosure around 'em, but enclosures are (should be) carefully designed to fit the speaker and the room they will be playing into, otherwise they will not sound good. IOW, you can't just slap 'em into just any box and expect decent sound. And, enclosures designed for the car are jut that ...designed for the car's fairly small environment, not a room.

As for the electronics, by the time you procure a 12 converter beefy enough to power them, you will have spent more than had you simply purchased a home unit, and the home unit will sound better and have more of the features you would probably want in a home unit.

...you don't have to spend a fortune to get decent home sound anymore.

As for where to get this stuff, where do you live? (US, Canada, Europe, Big City, Sticks, that kinda stuff

 

[skizzerflake]

That's a project that might be interesting if you don't mind spending money and a lot of effort on something that might not work very well. Car speakers are built for different accoustical purposes from home speakers. If you mount them in a box, unintended interactions between the box and the speaker will probably give you very questionable performance. It's also hard to build an enclosure that is tight enough that it doesn't rattle or leak unless you are experienced at that sort of work.

As for amplification, you would need some sort of voltage converter and by the time you buy materials and equipment, you might end up spending as much as you would on some basic home audio equipment with lesser results and a lot of effort.

Any basic receiver will perform well plugged into some decent speakers and companies like NHT and HSU make fairly cheap equipment that performs quite well for the price.

 

[Seth=L]

OK, first things first. What is your budget?
Second, car amps in houses are not cost effective. Say you have a car amp rated at 500 watts rms, the conversion necessary for the amp to work correctly and not shut down is kind of extreme. The converter would have to be able to output a tremendous amount of amperage, little over 40 amps, such a converter would be very expensive, likely more than $1000 from my understanding. It would be much more cost effective to purchase a receiver. A descent brand new receiver can be had for $200-300. You could get a used one for less. Do you have interest in surround sound or just stereo? If just stereo I can be even cheaper. Look on ebay, and in pawn shops for a good deal. If you ever aren't sure about anything you can just come back here and ask one of us and we will help you as much as possible.

The speakers, since most car speakers have low resistance, they make great demands on amplifiers, so a cheap receiver and car speakers is a bad combo. I would go to Best Buy and give the Insignia NS-B2111 bookshelf speakers a listen. They are $50 a pair and are really good starter speakers especially for small rooms.(note they are not sheilded so placement next to a computer or any CRT tube style monitors or TV's shouldn't be next to these speakers, maintain at least a foot and a half between the speakers and CRT's or Harddrives). The Insignia NS-B2111 speakers aren't made by Insignia or Best Buy, but by a company called Radiient that sells similar speaker for nearly 4 times the price of these gems. By gems I mean they look nice too.

Hope this information was helpfull to you,