Weird Question, can you run a car amp in your home theater?

[beavis195]

Okay, I am too poor to go out and buy a powered sub for my home theater system, so can I find an AC-DC inverter that gives 12 volts and run a car amp off it? How thick would the wires have to be? What would I do with the ground wire? This is a really weird question cause I am confusing myself. Thanks for your help.

 

[Robb]

Not a good idea. Most little wall transformers are only rated at a couple of amps (most milli-amps). Not nearly enough capacity to run an amp.

Robb

I will admit that when I was sixteen, I had a car audio setup in my room run off a battery charger. Again, NOT A GOOD IDEA

 

[Jason_25]

I'm also too cheap for a powered sub. But I went out and bought a cheap late 80's sony stereo receiver from a pawn shop and used it to power my passive sub. Sounds GREAT and I did it all for about 100 bucks.

 

[MONMIX]

Originally posted by morrisey0
I will admit that when I was sixteen, I had a car audio setup in my room run off a battery charger. Again, NOT A GOOD IDEA

That is so hysterical!

 

[davesexplorer]

I saw radioshack has a transformer that will deliver 13.8 DC volts from a wall socket, im thinkin about it

 

[beavis195]

Thanks for the replies, but I have one question then, how do car audio shops power their amps on the show floor?

 

[Howard]

The shops use power supplies of course. But they have to provide many amps @ 12v so cost a bomb. It is cheaper to just buy a normal amp and run your sub off that. I'll bet you can get one secondhand very cheaply.

Just in case you want to know use the formula Watts = Volts * Amps.
So a 500 Watt amp at 12v uses 41.6 amps where as at 110v uses 4.5 amps. Ok

 

[Blake784]

There is one possible solution which is slightly decent(though its not a great solution)....a local audio shop here powers all of their audio equipment in their store(fairly powerful amps and several devices at once) with a regular battery and battery charger. have the battery powering all of your audio, and charge it at night(assuming you dont overuse it during the day), it works, though its a cheap solution...buy a real home amp, thats best solution