Some odd questions about amps and wires... [Archive] - Audio & Video Forums

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Storm860triple
11-22-2003, 03:19 PM
My first question is about amplifiers. What is the difference between a car amp, and a home amp. I'm talking about quality of assembly, parts, performance, sound, etc. If you hooked a comperably "ranked" car and home amp, and hooked them up side by side, what would you find?

The car amp is generally much smaller, but seems to be packaged more efficiently, given that the entire case is the heat sink. But the home amp has the advantage of having a virtually inexhaustable power supply. No?

Where I'm coming from;
I have an NAD 7000 reciever(rated at 40 watts per channel), powering Bose AM5 series II on one set of channels, and Advent speakers on the other set of channels. I don't know the model of the Advents, but they have 10" paper woofers, and a soft dome tweeter. All connected w/Monster cable.

I have been considering getting an NAD amp. Then I wondered about the car amp thing. I had an extra amp from my car I haven't used -a Soundstream SX300 rated at 80 watts per channel I think. I hooked that up and it DEFINITELY made a huge improvement in the bass, and of course volume too. So how would an NAD(say a 216) be different?
Please comment.


Second question. People (myself included) are always concerned about quality cable. The stuff cost a lot of money, especially when you start increasing distances. What kind of voltage and amperage is actually flowing through speaker wire? And here's the wacky question. Why not use solid copper household electrical wire. No braided wire could ever compete with that for resistance OR amperage flow. I know it's ugly, but man, I can't imagine that any speaker wire could honestly work that well.

Last question. Bass. In most of the houses I have lived in I set up my stereo, made a few adjustments,a nd it sounded great. In my current house, the bass is REALATIVELY weak in some places in the room and unbelieveably storng in other areas. The bummer is that the bass is weakest where I want it the most, and the strongest in an adjacent hallway. I have moved both the Advents and the Bose's sub around a lot but in the same general area. But no improvement. I tried placing the Bose sub out in the middle of the room and that didn't do squat. I want all that hallway base in my living room! LOL. I can get the bass I want in the living room with the bass control, but then I feel like I'm going to blow out one of the bedroom windows! Any Ideas? Should I draw and post a pic of the room layout?

Storm860triple
11-22-2003, 03:42 PM
If I hook up the Advents and the Bose in parallel off an amp, that will increase the load on the amp to 4 ohms. Will that amp "double" it's output, or will the power going to each speaker drop, lowering the sound output from each pair? Thanks for reading/responding.

trollgirl
11-22-2003, 05:02 PM
I am going to leave most of your questions for others, and they may have something to say on this too, but here goes. I asked the same question on this site some months ago, and the consensus was that a car amp was not suited for the home - high distortion was cited as a reason. I say, go for it, but you will need a really burly 12 volt DC power supply. To start, you could use a fully-charged auto battery, but it will not power your amp too long, but probably long enough for you to decide if you like it. Let us know how it turns out...

Laz

Storm860triple
11-23-2003, 08:28 PM
I have already hooked up the car amp, the bass is WAY better. I kind of feel like I lost some imaging though. Does that make sense?

The powersupply is sufficient, IMO. I have a 12v, 1.5 amp charger powering a brand new, Interstate 600cca battery. That sends power through 4 gauge wire to a 1 Farad Capacitor, then onto the amp.
now I'm thinking that I'd like to get another Soundstream car amp, and set them both up, bridged mono, for each side, and run the Advents and the Bose wired in parallel for a 4 ohm load, which is nothing for these amps.

The Advents are "Legacy's". I don't know what year.

FLZapped
11-24-2003, 06:58 AM
My first question is about amplifiers. What is the difference between a car amp, and a home amp. I'm talking about quality of assembly, parts, performance, sound, etc. If you hooked a comperably "ranked" car and home amp, and hooked them up side by side, what would you find?

Car amps are usually rated at 10% distortion and in general will have higher distortion levels. Also, above about 12 watts(into 4 ohms), they will have a DC-to-DC converter in them to be able to properly drive the speakers. (or recommend you use lower impedance speakers)



Second question. People (myself included) are always concerned about quality cable. The stuff cost a lot of money, especially when you start increasing distances. What kind of voltage and amperage is actually flowing through speaker wire? And here's the wacky question. Why not use solid copper household electrical wire. No braided wire could ever compete with that for resistance OR amperage flow. I know it's ugly, but man, I can't imagine that any speaker wire could honestly work that well.

The current isn't necessarily the problem. It's the inductance and eventually skin depth that can be a problem in speaker wire, especially as you approach 20kHz.

However, with all that being said. Some twisted 12 AWG(and smaller many times) wire will perform audibly as well as anything else out there for the vast majority of set-ups.

-Bruce