Thread: Car Audio Equipment as Home Audio Equipment

I see a couple of issues:

1 - Most auto battery chargers are "trickle" chargers. They slowly restore the charge on the battery. It's very possible to drain the battery even if it's on the charger by using more huice than the charger can replenish.

2 - Decent home audio hardware is cheaper than decent car audio hardware.

3 - This setup would look ugly as sin.

4 - You would be the laughing stock of your dorm for this setup.

when i'm working on my system, i use a battery charger to run it. but anyone would want to do that indoors is beyond me! maybe if its a optima...nevermind...don't do it!!

try using a car subwoofer outside a car, it will sound like crap, because car speakers are designed to use frequency reflection inside a car to give better sound, don't believe me hook up a car speaker outside the car and then inside the car.

If you have a setup, like housing or a display then you can use mobile audio equipment. Alot of people do it, because they are smaller, and look better.

The only problem would be powering you amp. Find some kind of converter.

The HU is simple. Power it off a computer power supply. Red is 12V ignition, Yellow is constant 12V, and black is ground. Many people have installed car audio onto their PC case as an amplifier.

If you want to power it, have a look on ebay, I picked up a 13.8V @ 32amp power supply cheap, would easily power the unit.

Or search for RF radio power supplies, they are high amperage power supplies, either at 12V or 13.8V.

Don't quote me, but I think the audio gear would work at 13.8V as that is how much output there is when the alternator is running?

And one of my mates had the audio gear out of his old car running for his home stereo, and it sounds good, you just need to make sure that you set up the enclosures properly, but it was great, looked very nice under his TV as well.

I've seen this done before. It is easy enough to do. But as others have said, it will be ugly, and won't sound as good. But if your on a budget, and can't afford both, you could do it.

Dude, it won't be necessarily ugly, you can always make a custom box. Put the PC power supply inside the box, and then cut the front for the single DIN. You can always cut it so it has the same dimensions as a home theater receiver.

Thanks for the replies. I'm not too worried about it looking bad, I would build a custom box for it. I have some experience building subwoofer enclosures. I'm building a 2.5cu.ft. fiberglass enclosure for someone right now.


Once this is done, I'm going to be working on either a new sound system for my dorm room or redoing my car interior. I was just throwing the car audio question out there to see if it was a viable option.

I ran a pioneer premier with a gamecube power supply a few years ago. It wasnt enough to run my double din kenwood dvd player but to just listen to music it was more than enough and didnt cost me anything. On some head units you can bridge the rear speaker leads for a sub (I think my pioneer had that option) and then you wouldnt need an amp. if you have the parts laying around its worth a try. good luck