home theater subs?

May Stands: well a home theater sub is going to be a 8 ohm sub (typically) and most car mono amp works best at 2 ohms. as a example the amp i have is 600Watts rms into 2 ohms, but only 300 into 4 ohms, and that would only be 150 watts into 8 ohms. so my 600 watt amp would only be puting out 150 watts. thats alot less. the crackling you heard is your amp clipping, and that is not good on the amp, if that continues to long, you will certainly test out the amps thermal protection. also was this sub in a enclosure, and i assume it was not a powered sub? (no electrical cord right?) if it is a powered speaker then you where puting your amp into the high level inputs on the sub, it was taking that and converting it to a signal and was expecting amplification from the internal amp, that needs to be pluged in. if its not pluged in then you may hear some bleed from the input side thru to the driver, but this is extremly hard on your sub, and could easily cause it purmanent damage, ! the high level input is typically for lowere powered amplifiers. Bottom line - It's not so much you have to have a "car" sub as it is you need the poper impedance, and configuration....Show more