Building a Car Amplifier

[j.wright]

Hello all...

I am very interested in building my own car audio amplifier and was hoping you guys would give me some direction...

I would be interested in both chip based or solidstate designs.

I would greatly appreciate your advise and suggestions for good resources.

Thanks,
J

[Perry Babin]

If you're going to use a chip amp, go to that forum to get suggestions on which chip you should use.

Discrete amps can produce more power but are probably not a good choice if this is your first amp.

After you decide on the chip amp you're going to use, then you can start thinking about the power supply. For low power amps (up to 20 watts into 4 ohms), you can run them off of the 12v from the battery. For more power, you'll need more rail voltage so you'll have to build a switching power supply.

[j.wright]

Thank you Perry...

I would like to build an amplifier with roughly 100 watts per 4 channels plus around 500 watts to a sub channel.

So I will definantly need a switching power supply.

J

[Perry Babin]

Have you checked to see if there are any chip amps that will do 100/channel?

You'll probably want to build two power supplies. That would be easier than trying to build one for 900 watts.

[j.wright]

I have found a couple of chip amps that will meet my needs...

My big delimina... I need some direction on designing/building a switching power supply.


As for a Solid State design... I do not know where to start...

[Sparky OR]

Have you taken into consideration how much juice your cars charging system is going to need to supply this monster? 1000Watts at 12 volts equals about 80 amps not including loss wasted in heat. (Not to mention how much you'll annoy your neighbors! ) and I doubt whether DIY will actually save money, but it IS a learning experience. My 2c worth (old fogey)

[j.wright]

Sparky,

I am a sound quality guy... I don't plan to annoy too many neighbors. I can probably just go buy an amplifier for less money but what would I learn ?

I've been into car audio for a number of years and have wanted to try my own hand at building an amplifier that is custom fit to my needs...

[Perry Babin]

If you're not into printing (or having printed) circuit boards, you may want to find a couple of cheap amps and cut the audio section of the board away. That will give you the power supply and you can use the rest of the heatsink for your amplifier.

If you don't do that, you'll have to make the printed circuit boards for the power supplies. If you don't use kits for the audio amplifier, you will have to make your own boards (either printed or perforated breadboard).

Most people don't realize how much time it will take to do something like this but you can expect to spend more than 100 hours on it if you produce everything from scratch.

[j.wright]

Perry,

I know it will take quite some time to properly design and test said amplifier... but I really want to learn how to do so...

Any suggestions for good resources to study or refer to ?

[Perry Babin]

Are you going to try to produce the circuit boards yourself?