How to use a car amp in the house?

[nikos]

I have a class D car amp that has a 90Amp fuse.

I've seen the radio shack AC to DC adapters that are 10-20AMPs.

What is the best way to get to use this thing indoors?

I want to power a JL Audio sub.

I have basic understanding of electricity...

Will a home fuse of 20Amp be able to produce 80-90amp through an inverter, just by the fact of lowering the 120V to 12V will I get 10x the Amp in reality?

Any specific parts you can suggest?

Thanks

[cotdt]

you can use a computer power supply

[Mazeroth]

Sell the car amp. Buy an amp that will work with your house electricity. Do a search for plate amps at partsexpress.com. Be sure to use the link above to do your shopping at PE :T

[peterS]

you would need multiple power suplies on multiple curcuits

this would be very expensive, unreliable, and energy ineficient

buy a plate amp

the jl sub is also a bad idea
the Fs is too high for "home theater" use
its better than nothing but far from ideal
you may just want to look at a kit from PE

[cobbpa]

I agree with what everyone else has said about keeping the car amp out of the house.

What JL sub? Some may be worth the work, some are not.

[Fryguy]

It's always not worth it to do this.

Just buy a behringer a500, or ep1500 and get more power than your car amp makes in a safe, usable manner.

[cjd]

you can use a computer power supply

Not for very long...

Car amps can draw a lot of amperage. Computer power supplies can not deliver that. They may have other problems since they're switching supplies.

If you want to test a car amp out, there are solid 10+A 12V power supplies you can buy. However, a quality 12V power supply to run it permanently costs MORE than just buying a quality power amp like the Behringer A500.

C

[eisenhower]

get a car battery and a charger for it.

[joecarrow]

That's actually not a bad idea- but it would be better to get deep-cycle batteries, since they're more able to deliver power for extended periods, rather than just the initial surge that car (starter) batteries are good for. My girlfriend's wheelchair batteries can put out over 500 watts all day long, with peaks of well over 1kw. Unfortunately, it would be well over $200 for the proper batteries and chargers to make that work well, and then you have a lot of hazardous materials in your home.

If you REALLY want to run that car amp inside your house, something like this is a start: http://www.partsexpress.com/pe/showd...number=120-558

Still, I have to agree with everyone who suggested that you should just get a home audio amplifier. It will probably sound better and take up less space.

To answer the original question about if your home circuit will be able to take it- here's how you figure it out.

Roughly, 90amps x 12 volts = 1080 watts of input into the amp.

Your house does 20amps x 120 volts = 2400 watts.

It'll probably handle it, but the power supply I linked to will only deliver 40 amps. It's not 100% efficient, so it will take more from the wall than it gives to the amplifier.

[nikos]

Thanks for all the replies.

I was trying to see if its worth using it as the amp is laying around, without making any substancial purchases... *under $100* I was hoping there was a wall plug converter similar to the small 10A variety from radio shack in larger Amp configurations... No biggie and I definately dont want to have the fumes of the battery every time I charge it....

I think I'll stick to the way I have it now...and maybe try and sell the car amp.

now I'm powering it from the Rotel Amp and it works very well. The digital amp is a little monster and stable at low ohm.

Nikos

[AndrewM]

Well your amp has a 90amp fuse on it, so figure you need to supply that same amount of power.

90amps at 14v (car power) = 1260 watts
90amps at 12v = 1080 watts (but you'll lose some max power using "only" 12v)

You're not going to find an AC to DC power converter that can handle that kind of current in your price range. A PC power supply, even the very expensive 1Kw+ models still aren't designed to push out that kind of current across one lead.