Suround boom

Darren Wright

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Springfield, Missouri
One thing I've been working on during my week off was to install my Suround sound again. My wife fought tooth and nail to not have the wall warts, so I installed those in the shop and bought new Yamaha ceiling speakers for the living room.
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I had to add a couple of access holes to the heating duct chase, which will get wall plate covers, to get all my wires run without having to remove drywall.
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I have the sun room side opened up and will be removing the windows in a couple of weeks. Also will have speaker patch panels on this wall as well as in the closet where the equipment is currently. I just havethe cables patched for now so we can try out the speakers.
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The tv will be moving on the other side of where the closest window is. Audio and video equipment will be on this side. The large set of windows will become an opening, had to move the electrical above, which is why all the drywall is removed. The far window will be closed up.
 
That looks like a lot of work! Still, I would like to run the surrounds up in my ceiling, but just not much of a good way to get there from here.
 
Yes it was, I'm feeling it today too. :coffee:

Luckily I had a 4' long 3/4" drill bit, which needs a sharpening now. I had to drill through 4 headers, 3 of them vertically through the center (plywood filler between outer 2x10's). Those fiberglass pull rods from HF worked great, best $9 I've ever spent, used them the weekend before last to pull in wires for my FIL's surround sound too.
 
That's a nice clean look. No big bulky things to take up space or chords to try and hide. I wonder how the ceiling speakers sound. Are they designed for that specific purpose? I have a real old school set up and recall there were optimum locations for all the speakers....usually some place where they stood out like a sore thumb. Hard to fit these old Klipsch La Scallas into the ceiling:huh:

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That's a nice clean look. No big bulky things to take up space or chords to try and hide. I wonder how the ceiling speakers sound. Are they designed for that specific purpose? I have a real old school set up and recall there were optimum locations for all the speakers....usually some place where they stood out like a sore thumb. Hard to fit these old Klipsch La Scallas into the ceiling:huh:

The speakers sound good, but I'm waiting on an optical cable to feed the sound back from the tv to the AV Receiver to get full 6.1 sound as my AV Receiver is old enough that it doesn't have HDMI through-puts. The speakers frame is about 10" in diameter, there is a 6" speaker mounted on that at an angle so that you can turn and tighten it in the direction you want it to project. The tweeters on them are also somewhat adjustable for direction. I cut a bat of 4" insulation about 1 1/2' long and laid above each speaker, but mostly to keep the sound from resonating upstairs less. The sub box still sits on the floor outside of the AV closet, but it's under a table and not that noticeable.

I may replace the AV receiver down the road, but it sounds a whole lot better than just the TV's factory speakers. The main purpose was make hearing the tv easier when other noise is happening in the house. My wife tends to turn it way up to drown out the kitchen TV, which in turn gets turned up and it becomes a battle of the volumes. ;) Our kitchen tv gets used about as much and I'm seriously considering a surround sound there as well so we can hear it over the exhaust fan on the stove.
 
In this case...I'm glad we have a small house!! But some really cool ideas Darren since our living room and patio share the same wall and several holes for sat and what not's. Mucho inspiration and clean lookin' work!!
 
Ted, I meant to mention, most of the new AV Receivers come with a microphone you plug in and set it where you will be sitting. You run it through a setup process and it will make some hums and ticks and adjust the output to each speaker for the what it determines to be the best settings, pretty slick stuff.
 
Ted, I meant to mention, most of the new AV Receivers come with a microphone you plug in and set it where you will be sitting. You run it through a setup process and it will make some hums and ticks and adjust the output to each speaker for the what it determines to be the best settings, pretty slick stuff.
That's what I need! My receiver was top of the line ....in 1985:(
 
... I have a real old school set up and recall there were optimum locations for all the speakers....usually some place where they stood out like a sore thumb. Hard to fit these old Klipsch La Scallas into the ceiling:huh:

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Sweet!. I haven't seen any of those in a long time. I've got a soundman buddy in Las Vegas who, last I heard, was still using a pair of JBL 4560s in his living room.

As I've been getting back into the whole live music thing, I've been amazed at how the speaker technology as advanced since the early 80s. Gone are the days of lugging around huge bass bins and various horns. (We used to run a quad-amped PA, with subbass, midbass, mids, and highs. It was about 1,200 watts, which was decently big for a bar band back then.) These days, coupled compact subs and really clean and strong compact powered arrays can now put out the same amount of volume, while doing it cleaner and taking up a quarter of the space. And with 5,000 to 6,000 watts of amplification behind it.
 
Hard to fit these old Klipsch La Scallas into the ceiling:huh:

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Sweet. A buddy of mine still has a pair of Klipschorns in the living room that we built from some Speakerlab plans back in the 70's. That was back when you furnished your room around the sound instead of around the picture, eh? Come to think of it, I don't think he ever finished paying me for those; I'll have to give him a call :D.
 
Paul K was a very interesting person. I think his brain had a computer. For example: If he was going someplace to do a speaker demo he could go by way of his Cessena or he could drive. He had it figured---If the demo was 200 or more miles away, it was cheaper to take the Cessena. He also knew what angle to fly to get to the desired altitude; the rate of climb that gave him the lowest cost of operation. His speakers were designed the same way---mathematically and empirically designing the acoustics.

He was a fun person to talk with.

Enjoy,
JimB
 
Paul K was a very interesting person. I think his brain had a computer. For example: If he was going someplace to do a speaker demo he could go by way of his Cessena or he could drive. He had it figured---If the demo was 200 or more miles away, it was cheaper to take the Cessena. He also knew what angle to fly to get to the desired altitude; the rate of climb that gave him the lowest cost of operation. His speakers were designed the same way---mathematically and empirically designing the acoustics.

He was a fun person to talk with.

Enjoy,
JimB

Very cool that you knew him. :thumb: I'll bet he was fun indeed to talk to.
 
Paul K was a very interesting person. I think his brain had a computer. For example: If he was going someplace to do a speaker demo he could go by way of his Cessena or he could drive. He had it figured---If the demo was 200 or more miles away, it was cheaper to take the Cessena. He also knew what angle to fly to get to the desired altitude; the rate of climb that gave him the lowest cost of operation. His speakers were designed the same way---mathematically and empirically designing the acoustics.

He was a fun person to talk with.

Enjoy,
JimB

I agree...very cool that you knew him. His speakers are still going strong and these LaScallas have held their value.
 
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