What to do with my subwoofer.

[EscapeSam]

I have a Sony SS-WSB91 sub woofer, it has a 1.5 ohm independance and it's been sitting around my house for awhile now and I want to know what to do with it. Is there any way it can be hooked up to my car to work? It's 12" and it would be very handy if I didn't have to go out and buy a sub woofer. I believe it came from some home theatre system in my house. What can I do with this? If worst comes to worst I'll probably just sell it.

[Graham_A_M]

Yeah, just doing some research on it, its hard to find any specs on its RMS power handling and the like. I found it quite odd that its 1.5 ohms, since thats exceptionally rare for a home theater passive subwoofer (meaning one that you have to power with a separate amp, case in point yours). An active home theater sub would have an amp already built into it, so you just plug the power into the wall, hook up the RCA's and go.
With yours, you'll have to hook it up to an amp or even a receiver. Unfortunately very few home audio amps can handle such a low impedance of 1.5 ohms, (it rarely drops below 4 ohms, 2 ohms is the least Ive seen) so I just found that to be quite odd. It'll work well in a car audio setting though, as with a monoblock amp (most can run down to 1 ohm, or even .5 ohms). It'll match up to that particular sub quite well. With whats called "monoblock" amps, they typically have one channel/output. So the lower the impedance is (less ohm resistance), the more power the amp will put out. So lets use this random Sony amp as an example. I just googled "Sony monoblock amp" and found this one.

330W x 1 RMS into 4 ohms, 600W x 1 RMS into 2 ohms, variable
From this.
http://store.sony.com/class-d-mono-subwoofer-amplifier-zid27-XMZZR3301/cat-27-catid-All-Car-Stereo-Receivers-Speakers
Make sense at all?

Given its very low price point (you can buy the sub used online for around $20, plus the speakers for not much more). Id assume the power handling is quite low with it, perhaps 100 watts RMS. So you can try your luck with it, but dont be expecting anything that'll blow your doors off. It'll be better then stock, for sure, but not by much. Thankfully you can find an amp for it, that'll be around that power range (probably 200 watts RMS) for under $100-200, less if bought used.

All in all though, I'd keep that as an option, but I wouldn't count on it performing anywhere near your expectations.