Can I use the Havoc 12" woofer in the home? If so what's the difference between a car subwoofer box and a home woofer box? This would be my first home woofer build. What do they mean by shielded/ not shielded?

the only diffrence is you tune a lot lower and you wont get the boost like a car.

Shielded speakers refer to magnetically shielding around the magnet of the speaker. This prevents distortion on old CRT style TV's and monitors.

What about the watts difference? I know that a car amp can easily push a havoc but do we need say around 1000 watts for home theatre amp to push the havoc? Can I shield the car subwoofer? If so how? Sorry for the noob question but first timer in a home theatre build. I actually want to get a 12" havoc to replace my 10 JL W7 and use the W7 as a home sub. Any help would be appreciated.

You can get the Dayton plate amps from Parts express. The 500 or 1000 watt version would work great.

As already stated, the main difference is the recommended enclosures for car take into account for car cabin gain.

2.7-3.0 ft tuned to 22-23 Hz looks good, but good luck with the port length!!!

Might want to try sealed. . .

Brian

I can't use the car slotted L shaped subwoofer box can I? Do I have to use the round port? Also do I need to put anything in the box? Anyway I can shield the woofer?

3 cubes tuned low is what you want. You wont have the cabin gain to help you with the low notes so thats about the easiest solution. I'd also look at a TL setup if you have the room.

I can't use the car slotted L shaped subwoofer box can I? Do I have to use the round port? Also do I need to put anything in the box? Anyway I can shield the woofer?

You can, and more than likely will have to. Still not easy.

Example: 3 ft tuned to 23 Hz with a 15 x 3 slot port - port has to be 70" long.

I guess you could do a pair of 40" long 4" aero ports and let them stick out of the box. . .

Brian

With the input power being much less than an in-car application, you won't need that much port area

Little less on the port area will make the longer port length more managable

As said before, a TL (transmission line) might be fun to do. That is, if you don't mind experimenting. There are some good websites with 1/4 wave stuff on them and a standard straight (non chambered) TL is fairly easy to design. Alot of people get get results with them... at least they claim good results. Other than that... just follow what everyone is saying, and play around with the placement in the room.

so it would be fine to hook my btl up to my home reciever

EDIT-sorry for the off trackin

Edited December 10, 200816 yr by stuartgoodenough

so it would be fine to hook my btl up to my home reciever

You would want to hook it up to a dedicated subwoofer amplifier (running off an output from the receiver), not just on a random channel of a home receiver.

will it ruin it if i do hook it up to my sub out put on my reciever

Not sure. Might not hurt the sub, but your receiver might not like it. How much power does the sub channel do?.. or is it just an output that is meant to go to the input of a dedicated sub amp?

just for a sub

You can't hurt a BTL with a home reciever, at least not one that I have ever heard of.

You may hurt the home reciever if the BTL impednace is lower (very likely) than the minimum of your reciever (usually 6-8 ohms)

I don't know why you would do this unless you are running a passive crossover and running the highpass to your mains and the lowpass to the BTL voice coils..... Again, beware of minimum impedance....

If you had say a dual 4 ohm BTL (do they even make these?) and a reciever capable of 4 ohms, you could build a killer sub/satellite passive system with a BTL in a big box... Would probably be louder than anything passive you could buy sans a horn-loaded sub of some kind....