Battery Powered amp for the river - suggestions please

Status
Not open for further replies.
Jump to Latest
N

n8huntsman

Member
Joined 2012
#1
I'm going to build an amp to take on my annual beer float. Probably put it in an ice chest or something an float it in its own raft. I want to use a 12amp-hour motorcycle battery or possibly a car battery. I want the best sound possible for under $60. I have 2 Niles OS6.5, 8Ω outdoor speakers that claim to be good down to 5w. Currently Im powering them with a Hifimediy T1 TK2050 w/ STA510 and a connexelectronic smps300r and they sound great. If I could get a similar sound, I'd be happy but all the 12v amps I've seen are less powerful. What would give me the best bang for the buck in a 12v amp?
 
Last edited:
#2
I am partial to TDA3116...runs from about 26V to somewhere around 5V for the supply.

They have enough gain to be run directly from ipod or other small player.

There are some inexpensive ebay models that some people on this forum have said sounded ok.

I designed my own boards and (IMHO) it sounds awesome. 🙂

Happy hunting.
 
#3
I think Dug meant the Texas Instruments TPA3116D2 (not TDA). See the threads below. I am lucky enough to have a Dug-designed and made PCB and I agree it sounds great! 🙂 The TPA3116D2 is also very efficient (90%) and has a low quiescent current when not in use.

With two SLA batts in series you can get 24v which will really give these amps some power.

http://www.diyaudio.com/forums/class-d/237086-tpa3116d2-amp.html
 
Last edited:
#6
Can these really run on 12v? All the assembled ones from china seem to be 18-24v.

xrk971 said:
I think Dug meant the Texas Instruments TPA3116D2 (not TDA). See the threads below. I am lucky enough to have a Dug-designed and made PCB and I agree it sounds great! 🙂 The TPA3116D2 is also very efficient (90%) and has a low quiescent current when not in use.

With two SLA batts in series you can get 24v which will really give these amps some power.

http://www.diyaudio.com/forums/class-d/237086-tpa3116d2-amp.html
Click to expand...
 
#10
Summer is coming so it's time to get this started. I've finally decided to go with 2 or 3 12v batteries depending on which amp I get.
I would really like to add a sub but I'm not sure which amp I would need for that. The DDX320 won't work because it is digital only. That's too bad because then I could have one amp for both the sub and speakers.

If I go with a T3 or T4 from hifimediy for the sub and only used one channel (or use two subs), would I need some sort of band-pass filter to connect it to the sub to limit the frequency?
Is there a better amp for this purpose?
Thanks
 
#11
Look for an amplifier labeled as "2.1".

That means it has a sub amp on it.

You may have to do a little playing around to get it to sound good...I am not sure of the roll-off or level for the sub out channel.
 
#18
so I built this thing and tested it thoroughly and it worked great. I chrged the batteries up for the trip, got to the river, connected my phone to the amp and it played for a while and worked good. About 10 minutes later I was moving stuff around and started getting distortion. I thoufjt it was the cable so i replaced it to no avail. Short story, phone output was broken. I repeated with my gf's phone thinking it was just my phone, then same thing. I killed hers too. Since they are they same kind of phone we decided to try her iPod. About 15 minutes later, same thing. All three times the failures happened when moving stuff around. There are no exposed shorts unless its inside the amp. My outside wiring is sound. The only other thing that changed was that the batteries were fully charged, 13v each for 26v.
could the slight over voltage cause that or is it more likely something in the amp. One odd thing I always noticed about the amp is that when I connect it to power, even with the switch off, it throws a spark. I assumed that it wad just some high inrush current from some caps trying to charge. But it never hurt anything during my testing...
 
Last edited:
#20
the batteries are still at full charge, 26v. I've only used it for about 45 minutes. The distortion is coming from the the phones and the iPod. I tested them with the aux input in the car to confirm. They are all now ruined. Sound level is really low and muffled. Just not sure if its a bad amp or if the overvoltage can cause the amp to overdraw current on the preamp (phone) or something.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Top Bottom