First off, your going to need a power supply for the car amp. Your going to need something thats between 12-14v, with a fairly high amperage output, depending on what amp you have. I have had good success using high powered computer power supplies for this purpose.
I am going to assume that you want to hook up an amp for a subwoofer - if you want to hook up an amp for speakers, the basic principal is the same..
Next, you are going to need to get the signal from the receiver to the amp. This is going to vary depending on what equipment you have... Theres a few things you will have to look at. If your amp has high level input on it, it should make it fairly simple to hook up, otherwise you may need to use a high to low level converter to use the RCA inputs. The signal that you are going to use from the home receiver could be either a sub output, if it has it, or just the regular speaker output. Now, some receivers are going to use a low level signal for the sub outputs, so if this is the case, you would have to run the sub output into the RCA input of your amp. If the sub output is high level, you can use the high level input on the amp - you will have to refer to your home receivers documentation to figure that out. By using the sub output, this will allow you to control the sub options right from the receiver.
The other option was to just use the speaker outputs into the high level input on the amp.. Now, depending on your receiver, this may or may not work.. If your receiver has a separate output for the sub, then it is most likely using a high pass filter on the speaker outputs which will not allow any bass into the speakers, so you will not be able to use the speaker output for a signal to the amp. However, if your receiver doesnt have a separate output for the sub, then this is what you will have to use, and make sure you connect it to the high level input on the amp.
Once you have power to the amp, and a way to get the signal from the receiver to the amp, the last step is hooking up the amp to the sub, and then to properly tune the system.
-Stu
MECP Certified Advanced Installer
