Car Subwoofer for Use in Home Theater

[rattlhed]

I'm pretty new at this home theater thing, and through reading a lot of these threads, there's quite a strong knowledge base that participates in these message boards, so I was hoping someone could help me out:

I have a 10" sub in a box that use to be used in my car. I've since upgraded my car audio system, so my old 10" sub is just sitting in my basement...what a waste. I recently slapped down $700 on a home theater (Onkyo SR601 and pair of Polk R50 speakers), but a subwoofer was not in the budget, so I wasn't able to get one. The system sounds good, but I know a sub would add so much more. Now I'm wondering if that sub in the basement could somehow be added to my home theater.

My question is, is there an INEXPESIVE way to convert a car subwoofer to play on a home theater. Of course, the main problem is a car amplifier cannot be powered in a house, so I guess what I need is a dedicated amp for the sub, but I wouldn't know where to turn or what to look for. Plus, I don't know how expensive that would be. I don't want to shell out $200-$300 for an amp when I could just go buy a mid-range 10" home theater powered sub for the same price. My goal here is to use the spare parts I have to add to my theater and save myself some $$ since I probably won't be able to afford a home theater sub for a few months.

Also, a side note, if I'm going down the wrong path, stop me now. I'm assuming that a sub in a box from a car would be the same as a sub in a box for a home theater (sound quality wise). The sub is a 150 Watt Pioneer sub in a Q-logic (Crutchfield) box. If I were to hook this up to my home theater, but the sound quality would be crap, then I don't want to go any farther on this project.

Thanks,
rattlhed

[gatemplin]

Welcome to Club Polk,

To use that sub you should get a subwoofer plate amp from www.creativesound.ca , www.partsexpress.com , or www.acoustic-visions.com
Also you should use the T/S parameters to
design a new box optimised for a HT room, not a car.

But, I suggest you either save up for a better HT sub driver (Shiva, Titanic, Tempest etc) and make a DIY HT sub or save up for a commercial sub like SVS, HSU, Paradigm, Velodyne etc.

[warviper]

Maybe you can sell the car sub and add it to your funds for a ht sub.