I want a home theater made with car audio!

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I'm really curious and interested in eventually building an entire home audio system using car audio stuff. I just really love the way car audio products look, to be honest. I love the way fancy electronics look, and I like to show them off (to myself at least, lol), right down to the wires and fuse blocks and everything. Has anyone come across a definitive resource for making a home audio setup from car audio? Thanks in advance,

Rockworthy
 
Due to the power supply requirements for a high power system, this is generally impractical. Expect to spend ~$400 on power supplies if you want anything near 1000watts (seems like the minimum for car audio guys).

Unless you have a multimedia head unit or an amp (like the Autotek MM 5.1) that has the proper decoders for home theater/surround, add the cost of a decoder.
 
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Oh hell, I will recommend two.

Onkyo TX-SR series HT Receivers starting with the 600's...Or, the Panasonic XR series HT Receivers, like with an older XR45 (I have two and they will never leave my possession). Both very good, and relatively inexpensive...

Can't go wrong with either...
 
Find a 12vdc 60amp switching power supply ( http://cgi.ebay.com/POWER-SUPPLY-AU...0?hash=item2a004a7a74&_trksid=p3286.m20.l1116 ) and a decent sized agm battery ( http://cgi.ebay.com/KINETIK-HC1400-...in_0?hash=item20ad60b7a0&_trksid=p3286.c0.m14 ) to smooth the voltage. That will be enough for the power you listed unless you continuously run it at maximum rms. You will need to turn off the switching power supply when not using the system... to conserve electricity. The battery will keep the memory up in your head unit.
 
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Wow killer, thanks for the switching power supply idea, I had never heard of that before. Looks like that power supply is made by an audio company too, so perhaps there are more people thinking of doing this than I assumed. Maybe car audio shops/displays are the people who are using these power supplies? Very cool though, thanks for the link that's a great resource that looks like it'll do exactly what I need.
 
Not a problem, let us know what you end up using. :)


Wow killer, thanks for the switching power supply idea, I had never heard of that before. Looks like that power supply is made by an audio company too, so perhaps there are more people thinking of doing this than I assumed. Maybe car audio shops/displays are the people who are using these power supplies? Very cool though, thanks for the link that's a great resource that looks like it'll do exactly what I need.
 
Just two front speakers, btw, not 5.1. Left, right, and sub.

Cheers! Not sure your intentions for a CDplayer, or HU, but if you go from a standard CD/DVD player, connect it through a pre-amp, to your car amps. But, you can use one of these Astron supplies, the RS-70A(with no meters) for $260, or a RS-70M(with analog meters) for $300. These supplies are expensive, but you won't need to use a battery, which is really not a good idea for indoors, nor need to worry about filtering.
 
There are or were some 12V digital surround processors. Some were married to particular head units, others worked standalone. Prices were generally over $500.

I scooped a couple of Panasonic CY-AC300 units off the clearance table at a local car audio store at $25 each. List price was about $700. I hesitate to fully recommend this model, since it doesn't come with a remote for volume... you'd need to mount the wired remote/display by your chair. (Or hack the controller to use an IR remote.) It has a built-in center channel amp, which may or may not be useful.

A better choice might be the Audiobahn ADD51t. Those were available on clearance for $150 a couple of years ago. It has a remote, and is more compact than the Panasonic.

Really, unless you can score one of these things dirt cheap, it's far more sensible to buy a surround receiver. Especially now that HDMI support is essential for maximum sound quality from hi-def sources. Some Pioneers have line-level outputs to connect external amps, if you really want to mess around with separate car amps and batteries and chargers or giant Astron power supplies.
 
Really, unless you can score one of these things dirt cheap, it's far more sensible to buy a surround receiver. Especially now that HDMI support is essential for maximum sound quality from hi-def sources.

I agree, to a point, but surround-sound and listening to music are two different things in my book. The best system I had was just a car amp and two high-end speakers(CD player, Harmon Kardon preamp, Butler TD1500, Dahlquist DQ-10
s). It sounded good for movies too, but obviously the system was built for tunes. :)
 
Almost all components in a car are rated to work over a large power range, from 8-16V or whatever, without requiring regulation. There isn't going to be much in the way of high-power regulation, and even if there was, you're never going to be able to just "borrow" 5-7A off of some device, as no device is going to regulate power to have 5-7A in excess of what it itself requires to operate.
 
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