I was thinking of buying some Mission speakers from Richer Sounds, ripping out the drive units and installing them in the car. They are selling bookshelf speakers for £50 a pair. For £50 its worth a try I suppose. I can always put the things back together and use them in the house if it doesn't work !

 

 

Okay - first reason for daftness.
Home hi-fi speakers are 8ohm impedance. Car hi-fi speakers are 4ohm impedance. So, unless you run a pair of speakers, in parallel, instead of the original one driver, it's not going to match impedance with the amp. Not a _very_ bad thing, but definitely not a good thing

Second reason for daftness.
One of the more justified reason why car speakers are 'spensive is 'coz they're reasonably well waterproofed. It's not often that a home hi-fi speaker will get rained on, and they don't last so well if they do!

To be fair though - they won't sound awful, and if you're only putting them in the rear shelf, then it's not going to get particularly rainy there. My only other comment is that home speakers rely on their cabinets for the quality of sound, so you'll probably be disappointed by the sound from just the speaker

 

Dont know about all this matching impedance lark.

If you put in a high impedance speaker it will be fine, it will just be quieter. Will need more power to drive the home speaker but the effect will be greater control with a higher impedance speaker.

Car speakers tend to haev a high signal to noise ratio compared with home speakers. This is to get as much volume as possible out of each watt in order to overcome engin wind and road noise. Normally at teh expense of quality.

On the whole, i wouldn't do it. You will be apying for other components like the cabinet. the bulk of the money when you buy a car speaker apart from porfit gos in cone and x over design. I would stick with that adn save your money for something better.

 

I second the impedance notes, but there is something else to consider. Depending on the time of year temperatures inside a car can drop to well below and well above zero. Home speakers are not designed to cope with these temperature extremes. My father-in-law used to be in charge of Philips car stereo speaker division.
He used to send Jaguars to countries with extreme climates and leave them (the cars) all day; temperatures would reach +60 deg. in some countries and -60 deg. in others and they had to work.

 

I wouldn't do it. The car environment, as has already been pointed out, is vastly different to the home environment for temperature, and moisture ingress, amongst others.

 

I could give them a coat of dulux weathersheild, and solder in a resistor to make them 4 ohms, or more likely I will fork out for some decent car speakers !

Thanks for the advice, sounds like a no-goer.

 

Resistor would just radiate the energy as wasted heat anyway.

Anyway, you can get nice components for £90 with mounting holes ready.

 

speakers complete with mounting holes??

Eh?

David

 

... in the right place

Like a 911 having the engine in the wrong place or an Evo having the intercooler in the right place kind of thing Asbestos suit armed and ready

[Edited by john banks - 1/14/2002 4:48:06 PM]