Garage surround sound/ speakers

[trifiveshawn]

Hello first time posting here, great site ive looked up some things while working on my barn and its been very helpful. I have a 40x60 barn that I have wired, insulated, hung osb and painted. im now wanting to put speakers in all 4 corners to spread my radio out so I don't have to crank it all the way up and be deaf in one part of the shop. I was looking for affordable.. yey im cheap lol. Any suggestions or ideas would be appreciated

 

[Test Tech]

I used a dc supply and a car radio and 4 3-way 6 x 9's, but my garage is much smaller than yours

 

[rexdibble]

I went to the wal marts and got a home surround sound system! My garage is way smaller than yours but it works great. For its size I'm very happy with it. I have a lot of stuff so I wanted to keep it compact. Think it cost me 40 bucks!

 

[machine_punk]

Get an old home theater receiver...they have as many as 7 outputs for speakers and they have plenty of inputs for whatever you want to listen to. On stereo inputs, they just 'make up' the rest of the channels and put sound through the rest of them. The bonus is that you can put a subwoofer somewhere in the garage (hang it from chains in one of the corners).

Brands which have worked well for me and relatively inexpensive: Yamaha, JVC, Onkyo. No need to go for new, look for used units on CL. I have an old JVC unit, which I replaced with a Denon, that I plan to use in the garage.

Speakers are the same thing...just find some decent, used speakers on CL. If you don't mind doing a little more work, get the new, inexpensive speakers and crossovers from a provider like Parts Express, and build your own MDF cabinets. The other option is a 6x9 full-range car speaker...they are built to survive brutal environments and still sound OK (your car).

Depending on the size of your space, you could also get away with a set of the computer surround sound speakers....they usually have all the amplifiers built into the subwoofer cabinet and you connect the satellite speakers to plugs in the woofer. Of course, you are going to need to extend those cables (use lamp cord from the big box stores)

Kev

 

[Silvercbr]

We did something on the cheap in our basement game room. Took an older Yamaha receiver we had laying around that had a "headphone jack" aux input. Then bought a Bluetooth adapter from Monoprice.com for $20. Now we can stream music from iPad and iPhones to the receiver wirelessly. Also, the receiver is hidden in the storage room with the max volume set on the receiver. Then the volume can be adjusted remotely via the iPad or iPhone but can never exceed the max volume set on the receiver. That way no drunkers can just crank the music to the volume they want.

If you need speaker wire, tv mounts, or pretty much anything AV, I have had great luck with Monoprice.com. Way way cheaper than buying retail and great quality stuff. They do sell speakers but I would shy away from them. I bought headphones from them and the sound quilts isn't that great. All my tv mounts, speaker wires, AV cables, etc in my house are from them. And no I don't work for them, just had great luck with them, and paying $5 for an HDMI cable is way better than paying $25 at one of the retail box stores.

 

[Notch1988]

My last shop was 24'x40' and I had wired it for surround sound. Bought a surround sound receiver but never bothered to install the rear speakers. I found that with just the two mounted about 11' up I had no trouble hearing them. Even my neighbour across the alley made comments about having no problem hearing them.