Powering a speaker of a Powerbank?

C

Cheesus182

New Member
Hey guys,

I found an old Canton Plus S speaker at my parents house. Its in perfect condition and I would love to use it as a portable Bluetooth speaker.
I was thinking about simply getting a small amp, putting it behind the drivers and connecting it to a Powerbank. One of those simple ones you use to charge phones with.
The speaker outputs a max of 70w and the closest amp to that I could find is a 100w amp.

I don't really know much about electrical components but the amps I've been looking at all had an input voltage of 8-20v. The best I could find with a powerbank is a 9v output.

Couple of questions.
A. Am I even looking at the right thing?
B. Does an affordable powerbank that could power a 100w amp even exist?
C. If I hide the Amp behind the drivers and potentially even the powerbank, would they still sound good or would the quality suffer drastically?

Thank you very much for the help guys and if anyone has a better alternative to converting this speaker into a portable Bluetooth one I'd be really happy to hear it.

Thanks!
 
You could definitely run one of those small Class D amp modules from a 9v power bank though how long would depend on the reserve capacity of the bank itself. Since you've only got one speaker you can get a mono module and just make a summing cable going to the input.

I doubt it would effect sound quality much if you try to put everything inside. You are going to be running a single speaker instead of a stereo pair so it's not going to sound as good as it can but it should sound pretty nice.
 
OMGCat! said:
You could definitely run one of those small Class D amp modules from a 9v power bank though how long would depend on the reserve capacity of the bank itself. Since you've only got one speaker you can get a mono module and just make a summing cable going to the input.

I doubt it would effect sound quality much if you try to put everything inside. You are going to be running a single speaker instead of a stereo pair so it's not going to sound as good as it can but it should sound pretty nice.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the reply!
Definitely going to give it a try with a powerbank. I think capacity wise I'll get the biggest one that I can fit comfortably.

Last question. The Canton Plus S lacks a bit of bass. I have a subwoofer from and old 5.1 system lying around. Now I hooked up the Canton speaker to the built in Amp from the sub and they sound great together so I was wondering if I could combine the two into as small an enclosure as possible.

The question is, first of all how much space is too little space for a sub to work and also, can I simply connect the Canton speaker to one output channel and the subwoofer to the other output channel on the amp module or will that cause issues?

Many thanks!
 
Phone powerbanks are 5VDC out and (I may be wrong), current limited to 2A. That isn't much to work with.
 
OP said he found a 9V one. OK. Don't worry about getting a 100W amp. The power rating on a speaker is MAXimum power. It doesn't require that all the time. In fact, most of your listening will be in the 0.1-10W range. Higher peaks maybe, but continuous power that high will be very loud.

Look at the small chip amps as suggested above, Lepai or others. You can get 10-25W pretty cheaply. They don't sound bad.

I'm not sure I understand the deal with the sub. Usually a powered sub takes power output from your amp, extracts the bass signal, feeds that through its internal amp, and feeds the rest of the output to the OUTPUT jacks which are then connected to the other speakers. You do have to have a power amp of some kind at the upstream end of the chain. The small amps we're discussing can do that job. Just wanted to make sure it was clear what's going on here.

As for enclosure size: a woofer or subwoofer is tuned to its enclosure, so it's not generally a good idea to start futzing with the enclosure size. Without some serious engineering based on measurements, it is unlikely to be as good, much less an improvement. So leave the enclosures as is. You can stack them, particularly if you put some rubber feet, hockey pucks, or HVAC vibration pads in between.

Hope this helps.
 
Oh, in regard to your last question, hiding the amp 'behind the drivers', do you mean inside the cabinet? Depends on the relative size of the cabinet and other objects. I'd suggest sticking or mounting them to the rear of the speakers so you can get at them easier. Then you don't have to worry about messing up the internal volume.
 
toxcrusadr said:
OP said he found a 9V one. OK. Don't worry about getting a 100W amp. The power rating on a speaker is MAXimum power. It doesn't require that all the time. In fact, most of your listening will be in the 0.1-10W range. Higher peaks maybe, but continuous power that high will be very loud.

Look at the small chip amps as suggested above, Lepai or others. You can get 10-25W pretty cheaply. They don't sound bad.

I'm not sure I understand the deal with the sub. Usually a powered sub takes power output from your amp, extracts the bass signal, feeds that through its internal amp, and feeds the rest of the output to the OUTPUT jacks which are then connected to the other speakers. You do have to have a power amp of some kind at the upstream end of the chain. The small amps we're discussing can do that job. Just wanted to make sure it was clear what's going on here.

As for enclosure size: a woofer or subwoofer is tuned to its enclosure, so it's not generally a good idea to start futzing with the enclosure size. Without some serious engineering based on measurements, it is unlikely to be as good, much less an improvement. So leave the enclosures as is. You can stack them, particularly if you put some rubber feet, hockey pucks, or HVAC vibration pads in between.

Hope this helps.
Click to expand...

Did not see that. If 9V is that for a phone or bike lights? Main thing is you don't wan't it to limit current.
 
Good point about current output. Should look at the mA output of the battery pack and the input mA requirement of the amp.
 
I found my self a nice little amp as suggested above and a 12V Li-Ion battery to go with it so thank you very much for all the suggestions!

With regards to the Sub, sorry about the confusion. What I meant was whether I can simply take the driver from the sub, mount it in a cabinet and connect it to the Left Channel output of the (new) Amp and connect the Canton to the Right Channel output of the (new) amp.
I have never worked with speakers before so that might seem like a daft question.

@toxcrusadr - What is the loss of quality roughly like if I did mess with the sub enclosure? The current subwoofer enclosure is about 20cm (7.87 inches) * 12cm (4.7 inches) * 17cm (6.7 inches).
If I would now combine the two Canton Drivers with the sub driver in one Enclosure that is roughly that size, would it ruin the sound or could I maybe get away with it?
 
If that sub has its own amp I would leave it alone, because low bass consumes half of the amp's power output, so the more amps the better. That leaves one channel unused on the new amp, but more power available for the one that is used, and one of these days maybe you'll find a pair of speakers to hook up anyway.

That's a very small sub enclosure. Looking at the specs on the Canton (down to 45 Hz), I almost doubt you're getting that low with this sub, but it depends on what it is. Can you post a pic or two? The Canton has some serious heavy little drivers in it and should perform quite well.
 
Hm, I'll leave the sub alone then. Thanks for the tip.
I've attached a couple of pictures below, I hope those help. The Canton definitely has some bass and it sounds amazing but it lacks that little bit of a punch when it comes to Electronic music for example. When I have my sub hooked up, I always set it to around 10% "power" because thats all it really needs but those 10% make quite a difference in my opinion.

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1R-MAFPcYEWQgxXaFVyUaNxldcbtaRNrF
 
Only that the deepest bass in usable amounts generally requires larger speakers, in order to move enough air. They can do a lot with small speakers (the Cantons are a great example) but at some point extracting a lot of bass from a small speaker makes the sensitivity go down. Not suggesting you have to have bigger speakers, but if you need more bass than you can get from this setup, a larger sub or speakers with bigger woofers is probably what you'll have to do.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

S
Transparent Power Conditioners
2
Replies
34
Views
4K
howiebrou
howiebrou
H
PC2602M Protection Issue
2 3
Replies
51
Views
7K
avionic
avionic
LotzaMatza
Speaker components confusion...
Replies
10
Views
318
LotzaMatza
LotzaMatza
S
Transparent Power Bank Redux
Replies
0
Views
608
salm
S
Romeo Wolf
Learning & designing schematics & discrete circuits
Replies
8
Views
194
gadget73
gadget73
Back
Top Bottom