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They say there is no such thing as a stupid question
- Thread starter Seth DuSith
- Start date
My little Kicker sub has a dual voice coil (DVC) driver so it can be wired for 2 ohms or 8 ohms. DVC is pretty common in the car stereo world.
Car subs are built for cars with a small enclosed space, not large rooms. Plus you get nothing out of them past sub range. Waste of time and money.
A car is a very small room - the wavelengths you're making are larger than the enclosure dimensions - the whole "room" pressurizes at the lowest frequencies. Because of this, the sub in a car doesn't need to move very far at the lowest frequencies to get flat response - below resonance, the excursion of a woofer is constant with regard to input voltage, and that, in a small, sealed environment, gives you a nice, flat response down there.
In a larger room, where the wavelengths aren't bigger than the room dimensions, you need increasing excursion with decreasing frequency, so a car woofer won't give you the same low end. You'll get something at resonance, but above and below, car woofers won't do much - a dull, thuddy sound is what you'll get.
In a larger room, where the wavelengths aren't bigger than the room dimensions, you need increasing excursion with decreasing frequency, so a car woofer won't give you the same low end. You'll get something at resonance, but above and below, car woofers won't do much - a dull, thuddy sound is what you'll get.
Often, also low sensitivity. You might need a 1000W amp to be heard and your "1000W peak mythical power output" speaker might die at 100W.
I did use an old, circa 1980 hi-fi speaker with an amp full range across just the woofer with a tube amp, but that was real 80W RMS and the low sensitivity allowed me to dime a 15W guitar amp into it and not go deaf instantly. But that's only if use for recording and these days you can use a cab sim plugin in your DAW.
When that died I tried a car subwoofer that was around, also low sensitivity, and it was fine if you wanted recordings to sound like someone playing in the next door house.
Yours is not a stupid question. I had a loudspeaker dealer and repairing suggest a car speaker for me. A sub might not have enough of a range for you. Is it passive? As long as you have the right power handling and impedance, you'll be OK.
I've done it before in a pinch. No equipment was damaged doing it, but running a SWR Grand Prix + 600w Yamaha rack mount power amp made a fraction of the volume of a 300W GK Backline combo I bought off a friend a short time later. Low efficiency and not much range where you can cut through a full band mix.
With DSP , restoration processer and full range speakers certainly one could make some good noise
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That's a good question, actually. I don't know enough to answer you, but don't deprecate yourself unfairly here.
I used old stereo speakers with a GK800 as my practice amp when that was the only amp I owned. It can work for some.
As others have said it probably won't work well at all.
I would do the experiment and post the results just for fun
I would do the experiment and post the results just for fun
That's a perfect description of how non-musical a car sub sounds when you play a bass through it.
Curious why you think it wouldn't last long. Most subs (even medium quality) typically have rubber surrounds and are incredibly robust. Even the OEM sub that came in my car has a Kevlar cone and rubber surround.
