Sound

[Midol]

Ok, a little bit of car sound system knowledge might help here.

Lets say i have the two front speakers, two rear speakers and a sub woofer, now i have two output audio cords from my laptop with no head unit and i have an amp stored my in closet.


Is there any easy way of wiring the laptop up to the cars sound system, if so, how do i go about including a sub woofer and splitting the two av cords into the various speakers and woofer.

Is there something i can put in my car that will just have the inputs then split it into the pieces for me?

Thanks.

 

[Dishdog]

Just to make sure you want to put your laptop into your car right? not put the speakers in the house.

 

[Midol]

ummm

Not really.

I forgot, i meant to say computer as im sticking an actual computer in there but i am on a laptop so i forgot.

But yes, i am putting a computer in the car because i hate cd's.

 

[The_Other_One]

You know they have MP3 players for cars. Like ones that just pug into your cigarette lighter with built in MP3 players and FM Transmitters!

Now, if you're trying to split it up with like 5.1(well, I guess 4.1 in your case ;P) You'd have to rewire the whole thing. Most cars have independent wires for each speaker, but the head units are only 2 channel. You would need a pair of amps, or a 4 channel amp for the 4 front/back speakers then another amp for your rear.

If you just want to play 2.1, many after market radios have AUX inputs somewhere. Mine does, but you have to get a $70 peice of plastic -.- Or, they have FM Transmitters that play sound to a radio station. They are pretty good, but you need a pre-amp out. They are rather weak so it's easy to get them distorted(which is why the above MP3/Transmitter combo is pretty good)

 

[Midol]

You know they have MP3 players for cars. Like ones that just pug into your cigarette lighter with built in MP3 players and FM Transmitters!

Now, if you're trying to split it up with like 5.1(well, I guess 4.1 in your case ;P) You'd have to rewire the whole thing. Most cars have independent wires for each speaker, but the head units are only 2 channel. You would need a pair of amps, or a 4 channel amp for the 4 front/back speakers then another amp for your rear.

If you just want to play 2.1, many after market radios have AUX inputs somewhere. Mine does, but you have to get a $70 peice of plastic -.- Or, they have FM Transmitters that play sound to a radio station. They are pretty good, but you need a pre-amp out. They are rather weak so it's easy to get them distorted(which is why the above MP3/Transmitter combo is pretty good)

I shall type out my idea:

Well, since i am an idiot i decided to code an mp3 player which is almost done which when i put in a cd it immediatly starts ripping the cd to the harddrive and places it in a folder with the artist, album crap yeah you dont need to know that part and i am getting a little 8inch touch screen for the interface in the car with a computer in the back with quite alot of space and in the head unit space a dvd rom which i can use to watch dvd's (Later i'll be hooking in some headrest screens and a 18'' screen from the roof) and the dvd drive will double as the cd player which copies the songs over so i only ever need the cd's once.

I figure if i get 2 300gig drives i am not really going to need to delete any music for a loooooong time.

Anyway, so this 4.1 idea, so can i just run the cord out of the out hole which splits into the two audio things, then i was checking out online and i can get something which the white and red audio plugs go into and it converts it to 4 (2 sets of the same thing) then strip those and hook those into something (perhaps the 4 speakers using an amp somehow) then the other two run to a sub?

Does that sound plausable?

 

[The_Other_One]

I actually started on a similar MP3 player just never finished it... Perhaps I should try it again Or more less just an in car computer...

What you probably should do seeing as music really isn't surround sound, just run 2.1. You could probably just run 2 channels(left and right) right into your head unit and not have to alter much of anything else... See, as I said before, the head unit is just 2 channles. And obviously, without some amps, you won't be able to power the speakers with anything using the amp from your laptop.

If you want to get really creative, here's something you could do... Remove your head unit then rewire everything to go though a 4 channel amp(assuming you have one for the sub as well) Either stick your monitor where the unit was, or make a little dummy plate there and use say a little 2 or 4 line LCD to give you a quick reference of what the comps doing...(winamp has a great plugin for most little LCDs) Perhaps add a knob or 2 so you could contro lthe volume of the amps. It shouldn't be too hard to either have one in the speaker line or actually modify the amp's gain control.

All in all, if you understood what I was trying to say, that shouldn't be too hard. The hardest part would just be wireing everything up. Hmm...that really has me thinking now. LOL, perhaps I need to do this to my jeep. If all is done right, you could probably even get a tuner for your computer and just use that for a radio, and perhaps have a remote slot loading drive stuck in there for audio disks!

 

[catalyst1]

They also make self-contained vehicle mp3 players. I know they have ones that read mp3 CDs, and I think they have ones with built-in hard drives.