Reusing 'old' speakers

[BestBurritoSeller]

Iv'e got a single JVC SP-D432 Speaker, and I was wondering if I can set it as a single, speaker for my computer. I do not have the original system, ONLY the speaker.

How would I go about it? currently it has the positive and negative connectors and you cannot disconnect them.

What additional hardware would I need to drive it?

Any help appreciated...

[FliP0x]

How do the connectors look like?

 

If you don't have the proprietary hardware anymore, you can always strip the cables, solder them to an amplifier and connect it to your PC.

[jaslion]

From what I can find these are passive speakers. So you'd need an amp for it firstly.

 

Honestly the cheapest route here is to go to your local thrift store and find a decent amp and 2 other speakers for cheap. Then hook it up with this one as the center speaker and the others as left and right.

 

The reason for multiple speakers is simple otherwise you will not hear all the sound as windows always plays in stereo.

[mariushm]

You would have to get a mono audio amplifier or a stereo amplifier that can be configured in bridge mode ( to connect one speaker to both outputs)  and then connect the amplifier to your computer's stereo output / headphones output

You can convert the stereo output to a mono output by adding a resistor (1 kOhm would be fine) to each channel output : 

 

 

The triangles connect together to the negative of the two channels. 

 

Your speaker seems to be max 80w 6 ohm  so you'll need an amplifier that can do 4..8 ohm  and I'd look at 40-50w or more.

 

Here's for example a mono amplifier that's cheap and easy to use : https://www.ebay.com/itm/112145450716

 

Note.. it's not really 100w. The maximum it can do without distortion varies with input voltage and impedance of speakers. 

 

It can do 100w with a bit too much distortion with a 2 Ohm speaker and 26v input voltage. 

With lower voltage, the maximum power is less... for example 30w with 15v input ... with 12v from the computer power supply it can probably do around 15-20 watts, which is quite a lot for a small room and one speaker. With 18-20w from a laptop power adapter or something similar it could do more.

 

Volume can be set with that small potentiometer (or you can desolder it and solder a proper potentiometer with a bigger knob... )

 

 

The above is a class D amplifier, it's up to 90% or so efficient, so it won't get that hot.

 

Here's another example, this one's a class AB amplifier : https://www.ebay.com/itm/172465628774

 

Class AB amplifiers are less efficient, this one's around 70% efficient, so at high output it will get quite warm 

These ones are even more picky about input voltage, for example this one at 12v input it will barely do 5 watts output, but it can do 28w output with a 4 ohm speaker with around 44v input voltage. 

With a 18-20v laptop adapter, you'd get 10 watts out of this tiny simple amplifier, and it may actually sound better than the above class D amplifier.

 

 

 

 

[OfficialTechSpace]

Amps, DACs, and receivers typically aren't meant to drive single channels independently, but two or more channels simultaneously. You can always bridge two channels together into one, resulting in twice the output, but I'd be hesitant to recommend anything other than a second speaker or different speakers altogether. Those JVC's are just old and mediocre, even on the budget spectrum of things.

[H713]

9 hours ago, OfficialTechSpace said:

Amps, DACs, and receivers typically aren't meant to drive single channels independently, but two or more channels simultaneously. You can always bridge two channels together into one, resulting in twice the output

An amplifier isn't going to care if you only use one of the two channels. A very small number of amplifiers may be unhappy about leaving an unused channel floating with no input or output connected, but that's mostly limited to tube amps and a few badly designed 1980s amplifiers that had serious HF instability issues and would turn into violent oscillators. Even with tube amps, 95% of the time it's okay.

 

I don't like bridging power amplifiers unless I really have to. Not all amplifiers are designed for it, and even when they are, it's much harder on the amplifier. The load impedance seen by each channel is halved, so with a 4 $\Omega$ speaker, each amplifier channel sees a 2 $\Omega$ load. In an ideal world, bridging an amplifier wouldn't be a problem, but in the real world, where amplifiers can and do blow up, problems can crop up. Not all amplifiers have comprehensive protection circuits.

[OfficialTechSpace]

49 minutes ago, H713 said:

An amplifier isn't going to care if you only use one of the two channels. A very small number of amplifiers may be unhappy about leaving an unused channel floating with no input or output connected, but that's mostly limited to tube amps and a few badly designed 1980s amplifiers that had serious HF instability issues and would turn into violent oscillators. Even with tube amps, 95% of the time it's okay.

 

I don't like bridging power amplifiers unless I really have to. Not all amplifiers are designed for it, and even when they are, it's much harder on the amplifier. The load impedance seen by each channel is halved, so with a 4 $\Omega$ speaker, each amplifier channel sees a 2 $\Omega$ load. In an ideal world, bridging an amplifier wouldn't be a problem, but in the real world, where amplifiers can and do blow up, problems can crop up. Not all amplifiers have comprehensive protection circuits.

Never said the amplifier cared, just that they weren't designed to be used that way. They aren't designed to be bridged either, but I recommended that also. Didn't say there wasn't a risk in doing that, just said it's an option in order to utilize both channels.