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Car stereo/amp question (lemmy.one)

submitted 1 year ago by db2@lemmy.one to c/technology@lemmy.ml

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I'm putting a smallish (200x2) amp in my car Real Soon Now. The factory head unit can drive the speakers well enough to sound good enough for background music or an audiobook, but when I really want to play music it sounds not awesome. Better than a clock radio from 1992 but not by much.

The thing is I want it both ways. When I'm playing an audio book I don't need the amp and want it to play directly without the amp in the speaker circuit at all.

This isn't something beyond my ability to solve, I could knock out a nice solution with relays and blinky lights and whatnot to do the job triggered by the antenna/amp line like the amp would be, then switch that from the dash. But if there's an existing solution that isn't stupid expensive I'd rather not reinvent the wheel.

Has anyone done this or am I the only one who would even want it?

One more important point: the amp will be using line level input, I'm going to install RCA lines for the future but the factory stereo has no low level outputs. It would be dead easy to do what I want if it did, but alas.

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[–] empireOfLove@lemmy.one 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

ah, you're worried about the bass being overpowering in some voices.

Most subwoofer amplifiers have a +12v trigger wire that must be connected to the radio so that the amplifier knows when to turn "on". Otherwise it would drain your battery constantly. It's pretty simple to add a toggle or push button on/off switch inline with that trigger wire so that you can choose when you want it on or off.

most amps also have a configurable lowpass filter that lets you select the cutoff frequency for the sub, so it will not drive any frequencies above that. Generally setting it to 120hz or less will make it not react to most voice without needing to turn it on and off all the time. I run the 12" 400w sub in my old Honda around 90hz cutoff, as the speaker really can't effectively drive anything higher than that, and it leaves basically all vocals untouched.