$150 I think might be pushing it especially for home built equipment. However, I (we) don't know your exact requirements.
By surround sound, do you mean: 2 speakers reproducing left channel, 2 speakers reproducing right channel. One center channel with perhaps one left and one right speaker? And a subwoofer? Or do you require true surround sound with Dolby stuff etc?
I wouldn't use very high powered chip amps because you won't be able to get a transformer to power it that will be cheap enough for your budget.
You may want to look at LM1875 and or find some boards for them. For the subwoofer, if you want one, you might want to try a LM4780 paralleled like I did. Jims Audio makes a decent one. You'll also need an active crossover for the sub. I got one off eBay also.
I'd make one big power supply for all of them. You're going to need a lot of capacitance. If I had to guess, I'd say atleast 20,000uF for each rail, so around 40k uF total. I'd look for a nice high powered bridge rectifier you can chassis mount of put on a heatsink.
By surround sound, do you mean: 2 speakers reproducing left channel, 2 speakers reproducing right channel. One center channel with perhaps one left and one right speaker? And a subwoofer? Or do you require true surround sound with Dolby stuff etc?
I wouldn't use very high powered chip amps because you won't be able to get a transformer to power it that will be cheap enough for your budget.
You may want to look at LM1875 and or find some boards for them. For the subwoofer, if you want one, you might want to try a LM4780 paralleled like I did. Jims Audio makes a decent one. You'll also need an active crossover for the sub. I got one off eBay also.
I'd make one big power supply for all of them. You're going to need a lot of capacitance. If I had to guess, I'd say atleast 20,000uF for each rail, so around 40k uF total. I'd look for a nice high powered bridge rectifier you can chassis mount of put on a heatsink.
Hi fraser80, I don't know what phisical configuration you are looking for, but most new motherboards and laptops (with plug in sound cards) offer up 7.1 audio outs. A builder can concentrate on just several power amps as a start and get more sophisticated later.
Example: Asus P5E-VM DO
Example: Asus P5E-VM DO
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If not using a PC you willl need a stand alone decoder or an old surround receiver to cannibalize. A stand alone decoder would eat up most of your budget though.
EDIT: Actually, here's a decoder that's portable AND fairly cheap.....
Sherwood In-Dash DTS & Cicrle Surround Decoder X-DTS80 | eBay
EDIT: Actually, here's a decoder that's portable AND fairly cheap.....
Sherwood In-Dash DTS & Cicrle Surround Decoder X-DTS80 | eBay
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