fitting car stereo in my house.

alanhiggyno1 · 10-01-2012 3:01pm #1

hi guys have 4 car stereos lying around so thinking of fitting 1 in my bedroom if possible.i have the speakers and power supply from old pc and amp so just wondering if anyone has ever done this before.any tips wud be great.thanks

coylemj · 10-01-2012 6:13pm

Aerial?

alanhiggyno1 · 10-01-2012 6:54pm

Yep have that from previous car I had scrapped so looking for advice to do it.thanks

ZENER · 10-01-2012 8:41pm

How much power can the PC PSU deliver on it's 12v rail ? Do you intend powering the stereo and amplifier from this ?

Most PSUs only supply up to 1 or 2 amps on the +12v rail, not enough to power most car radios at resonable volume with 4 speakers let alone an amplifier as well !

ken

alanhiggyno1 · 10-01-2012 9:46pm

I do yes my psu is 400 watt so just looking to see if it's strong enough.

cnocbui · 10-01-2012 9:51pm

My secondary hifi system is almost entirely comprised of car audio components, so it can be done and can yield very good results. But as Zener said, you need a pretty good power supply to get the components to work properly. Mine can deliver 30 amps.

To be honest, unless your components are of high quality I don't think it is worth the bother unless you can get a high current PSU for free or cheap. You would likely get as good or better performance from a decent iPod/PMP dock which might well cost less than a decent PSU.

If you have a separate head unit and amp, the main work is going to be in making a decent wiring loom to deliver power to the components. If you do have a separate amp. consider not bothering with the head unit - unless you listen to much FM radio - and just provide a 3.5mm plug wired to the line inputs of the amp, so you can hook up a PMP to the system. That is what I do, except I can hook it to the TV as well.

dharn · 11-01-2012 2:24am

are there not 12v transformers available, or would a battery charger work

gman2k · 18-01-2012 2:03pm

I was looking into this recently, and a 12v CB power supply would do, as it outputs in DC.

I was thinking of hooking up my redundant car stereo in the kitchen - fully built in.
I have a Sony xPlod amp, a subwoofer tube, a capacitor etc.
The real deal is to have a head unit with bluetooth, so you can use your phone wirelessly in the room!

ZENER · 19-01-2012 2:09pm

gman2k wrote: »

I was looking into this recently, and a 12v CB power supply would do, as it outputs in DC.

That's the right idea but you'll need more than a 50W supply. Most car head units claim to deliver up to 40W per channel. I know that these figures can be quite optimistic at best but if you add a power amplifier to the mix that PSU just won't cut it. As suggested above you'll need something that can deliver upwards of 20 amps. That said, if it's purely for background low volume music, from the head unit only with 2 speakers, you might get away with it. A decent CB PSU will have a regulator that will protect both it and the devices connected to it.

Battery chargers are un-smoothed and unregulated so unless you like lots of 100Hz hum added to your music then better to avoid

The PC Power Supply definitely won't work for that kind of power. The "400W" refers to the total output from all the different rails added - -5v, +5V, -12V, +12V, 3.3V etc. Most of the power is delivered by the +5 and +3.3 rails.

Sounds like a nice project though and could be quite neat if done right !

Ken

fitting car stereo in my house.

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