How to Hook a Car Surround Sound System to Your Home System

A car surround sound system is actually a lot like the system for the home except it tends to be smaller than it would be for the entertainment room. If you are considering hooking up the car system to your home system though, here are a few steps to help you through the process painlessly.

Step 1 - Determine the Wires

While they do have many similarities, the car and home speaker system may have different colored wires so the directions could be off. Compare those from each system and decide which wires are audio and video as well as the speaker wires so you know which will hook up to which.

Step 2 - Hook Up Stereo

The first hook up will be from the stereo receiver to the speaker. Since you are working with car speaker wires you may have to buy extra wire to lengthen the wire that comes with it. While your car is only a certain size, the room in which you are hooking up the system could be much larger. When you hook up the speaker wires you will want to double check you are hooking up the right sides with the right wires.

Step 3 - Attach All Components

Now that you have the wires from the receiver and the speaker hooked up, you can attach the components to each other so they will all work in sync. You typically will not have to hook up the television speakers because they will be attached and you will be using the car speakers for those. Make sure the DVD player is hooked up to the TV and any other components that you may like such as a Blu-Ray player. You may need to buy an HDMI cable as this will not come with the car system.

Step 4 - Check Your Work

Now that you have each of the different components hooked up to each other you will want to plug in the system and see if everything is working properly. Because you are using a car surround sound system you may want to think about the changes it will bring to the volume. Often a home stereo may be louder than a car system so you will want to take that into account when hooking up and deciding if this is right for you.

If there is a slight problem with the speaker wiring you will want to take it apart right away and fix it because although it may not sound bad now, a speaker problem could wind up ruining the entire speaker or system in the long run. Another thing to consider is that you will not want to plug everything into the same outlet. You can use a strip cord to plug a few things in but make sure to spread everything out so you are not blowing your system.