Outdoor Speakers - Options Available?

Yak_Chat · Mar 07, 2008 4:54 pm

Quote:

Not meaning to distract from the topic, but what consideration are you giving to your neighbours in all this ? Wil they be suffering much "spillage" ?

Cabin the other option is ..... Crank up on the inside the house speakers - so you can hear it outside :shock:

Steve

Rodda · Mar 08, 2008 10:57 am

Yeah, like the other posts here state, it's really just background music - just makes the atmosphere when you're entertaining out there a little nicer.

Most of us are not 'young, dumb, and full of ......', so tend not to hold too many raves in the backyard these days. Putting a purpose-built solution of outdoor speakers in your place doesn't mean you're necessarily going to play music outside more often and louder - this can be achieved just as easily by either A. taking a 'boom-box' outside or B. turning your indoor system up loud (which many, many people do when entertaining outside). Installing outdoor speakers is more about the convenience and neatness of it.

My own neighbours more than keep up with their music outside, whether it's one side turning up their inside system so they can hear it out there, or the other side who have the stereo blaring from the car in the driveway while they tinker with it... I reckon we're the considerate ones

.

Cabinfever · Mar 08, 2008 11:30 pm

I'm merely interested in these issues because it often seems to me there are contradictory forces. On one hand backyards and blocks are shrinking from the old 1000sq/m standard down to about 700, and even 480. Yet there's also this whole "alfresco" and "outdoor living" thing where people are being heavily sold the backyard entertaining idea.

And the avatar ? It's from a wonderful 50s sci-fi movie called "Creation of the Humanoids". I saw it when I was a kid and it made a big impact. Never seen it since though :-(

I do somewhat resemble this humanoid :wink:

McReidy · Mar 17, 2008 11:18 am

Matt/Rod - carrying on from above, I have convinced the wife to allow me to install a couple of in ceiling speakers in our loungeroom instead of our existing speakers - now the question is what do I get?

I am currently looking for the right receiver for the job (with zone A & B for outdoors) but need to know what specs the speakers require. I have looked on ebay and there are heaps to choose from.

Basically our prerequisites are that they have to be white and support loud music on occasions!! We only want 2 (stereo) as we don't ever watch DVD's so surround is not an issue and can be added later if wanted..

So I guess the main question is what brand and how many watts (again being a cheapskate and not wanting to spend big $$$)

Rodda · Mar 18, 2008 4:02 pm

Hi Mike. Sorry for the delay in replying, I've just come back from being away for a few days...

You actually don't need much more than say 40WRMS per channel, really, although you might find an amp with up to 100WRMS per channel that's still well within your budget...

Just remember, if you think you're likely to want to 'crank' the system every now and then, make sure that whatever amp you get your speakers can handle that power, or near to it (actually, it's OK to have an amp that has a little more power in reserve so you don't have to push it to it's limit to get the power output you want...) ie. if your amp can put out 100WRMS then your speakers really need to handle as close to that (more won't hurt) as possible. If you drive speakers of low power handling with a more powerful amp all you have to do is turn it up a bit too much (this point varies, depending on your equipment) and you really can blow your speakers up!.

Keep this in mind - one of the main areas you compromise on, with in-wall/in-ceiling speakers, when spending less money tends to be the power handling! When looking around at these speakers pay attention to this figure (I see many with power handling figures around 30WRMS, whereas the in-wall/in-ceiling speakers we tend to use are mostly in the 60-80-100+ WRMS range - with prices to match

).

So, considering you want to go a bit loud every now and then, look at in-ceilings in the 40-50 (maybe 60) WRMS range, and and amp in the 50-70WRMS range (respectively)....

See how you go...

jinroh · Mar 30, 2008 2:40 am

McReidy

Thanks for all you help gents.. I think I will go with the speakers I linked to earlier.

Any thoughts on an entry level amp with the A (indoor), B (outdoor) , A+B (in & out) functionality?

i have spent some time looking at simple zone amplifiers to help me decide on how i should pre-wire the speaker cables. these are what i've found so far:

http://www.aaronhifi.com.au/product.php?prod_id=51
or:
http://www.sonance.com/products/electronics/detail/234

the sonance seems to suit me best as it provide output for 3 pairs of speakers (2 pairs for indoor dining/living/kitchen area, and a pair for alfresco). it's nice that both amps got auto on (signal-sensing) feature, so less button to push to operate the system :wink:

. but i'm not sure if there is sonance dealer locally. does anyone know one in melb?

i'm also looking to have in-ceiling speakers in the ensuite, and found this in-wall amp with a nice wall-plate controller:
http://www.actionhardware.co.uk/sales/product_info.php?cPath=119_153&products_id=1172&osCsid=a385e14724fbe20f7dedf4cf53cb1a5c

the plan is to have the wall-plate installed in the bedroom and connected to the music source (eg. CD, PC, etc). same problem as above, not sure if they can post it to oz. also, it's rated at 20W RMS per channel. might not be sufficient to deliver the music while having a shower :roll:

Rodda · Mar 30, 2008 10:43 am

Hi Jinroh (have I already mentioned that's an interesting nickname?).

I hate to burst your bubble here, but I think all three of the products you've listed above are not suitable. Basically, the two 'zone' amps you chose are part of larger systems and will not have much functionality, if they are usable at all on their own (they don't have input selectors meaning that is controlled by another component upstream. The Sonance one doesn't even appear to have a volume control meaning again, that's controlled by another component in the system).

P.S. Sonance is quite 'high-end' and has a price tag to match.

The other product, the 'in-wall' amp, is a: under-powered, and b: English which means it's designed to work with their standard of electricity supply (so may not be perfectly at home in our homes).

1 (obviously) or 2 'zones' is easy to do - all you need is ANY stereo (or surround) amplifier or receiver that has a 2nd or 'B' pair of speaker terminals (as the amp will control all of it's inputs, and it's volume, for both zones).

Doing more than 2 zones from 1 central solution puts you into the genuine multi-room arena...

Now, if you want an all-in-one box that will give you 3 zones, where you can select between 3 input sources in any of the 3 zones and (natch) control the volume, gives you 60WRMS x 6 (Marantz quality too) which is about right on the money given what's been said already in this thread, and includes it's own IR remote control (which means you can then also run a simple IR repeating system with an IR receiver in each zone if you like), then I challenge you to find a better product than the Marantz ZS-5300:

http://www.qualifi.com.au/index.jsp?ref ... duct=50714