OK, this is the setup. I’ve got an old pair of Eltax Titanium speakers, only one of which is functional, which were heading for the dump. I’ve decided to try and convert one into a kind of standalone amplifier/speaker combo. The speakers are floorstanders, so there’re plenty of room inside the cabinet to add stuff. My initial thought was to add a kit amplifier, such as this and have it powered by a wall-plug transformer like this - that seems the easiest solution from a safety point of view. Then just connect a jack plug socket to the imputs of the amplifier. I’d use it by plugging the output of a portable CD player (or similar) into the the jack plug socket with a jack-to-jack lead.
So, questions: Does this sound plausible? Have I got the maths right? The PSU will supply 12 watts at 12 volts, which is within the range of the amplifier module. The back of the speaker cabinet states “4-8 ohms” - can I assume that that will be a suitable load for this amplifier?
If anyone knows of any good websites that deal with this sort of project (and I’m sure there must be some, but those I’ve found seem to be a bit severe - they seem to just supply circuit diagrams) I’d appreciate any suggestions.
OK, one final question…it occured to me that I could mount an old CDROM drive inside the cabinet and use that as an input source to play CD’s. How do I go about calculating how much extra power would be required to run the CDROM drive? Most specs I can find online say about 1.5 amps max @ 12 volts, which would mean the power supply linked to above would be inadequate. However, it seems likely to me that most of that power would be used to spin the disk up to speed, and since it would only be playing at 1X speed (rather than 48X or whatever the max speed of the drive is) a lower capacity power supply might be enough. Any thoughts? If I hooked it up just to test, could I cause damage by underpowering it? (I know I’d also have to supply a 5V line to the CDROM drive).
Any advice much appreciated!
P_D