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I don't want to jack the other HT thread, and I wouldn't presume to PM board members who don't know me. But there's a good group of people here who know their stuff, and I'd like to hear their ideas for this:
I moved into my family home about 18 months ago. My late mom bought the house from the original owner, who had it built around 1964-1965. He apparently had a few bucks, and had a carpenter/cabinet maker build him the 1960's version of the home entertainment center. Everything (Zenith 25 inch
TV - probably not the original), amp/tuner, turntable, Viking reel-to-reel, and two speakers were all installed in the wall between the living room and the laundry room. Later, he added a dual-deck cassette recorder and an 8 track player. Cabinet doors in the laundry room open up to give you full access to the back of the cabinets for wiring, maintenance, etc.
This week, my uncle was able to hook me up with a great carpenter, who was able to reconfigure things and get our Samsung big-screen into the wall.
He did a great job - it looks like the wall was originally built to house it.
I'm now inspired to finish a few more things. The speaker boxes (cubes) are approx 28Lx23Wx17Deep. Judging from other in-wall speakers in the house, I think he mounted 1-12" & 1-5" speaker to a plywood face and installed it flush in the wall. Then he covered it with grill cloth, and trimmed them out with picture molding to match the veneer.
The question is - what would you do for speakers ?
I'd like to keep the existing speaker boxes, cubes, whatever. They're a little high on the wall, not the best location, but I don't want to demo anything, other than to move out the old equipment. Put in modern bookshelf speakers that fit and recover the box or ???
I may keep the reel to reel just for a historical reference and conversation. I'm pretty sure it still works, though.
The living room is 21' long x 14' wide. Hardwood floors, big picture window,
sliding glass door, and rock fireplace. Looking to go in-ceiling with the surround speakers and new wire has recently been run.
This "wall of sound" has a kind of "Rat Pack" vibe to it, and the carpenters and decorator who've looked it over say "carefully update it, but keep it"
O/K, long read, but I appreciate your time and consideration. Tom
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...I don't know what speakers are good or whatnot, but damn let's see some pics of this old school vibe room! :)
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ac -
Thank you ! I'll try to post a couple of pics tonight after work...
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In wall/ceiling speakers have come a long way and there are some out there that sound very nice. That said they are also expensive when compared to floor standing or bookshelf speakers. Your best bet is to audition some which may be on the difficult side because not a lot of places have them set up in wall/ceiling. If you dont mind the money look at Triad (very Expensive) but probably the best, Canton Karat, Speakercraft (the Aim series has both in wall and in ceiling speakers and they sound very nice to me) price depends on the series of speaker but does get expensive. Polk and Boston Acoustic both make In-wall's and if the in walls sound as good as their Floors Polk/BA may be a good way to go. Ive got a set of Niles AT-8500's in the bedroom that sound great and picked them up on Ebay for less than 400 a pair new. Thats about half price or so. Look at Klipsch also I think they just came out with some that are suppose to have identical performance as their comparable floor standing speakers.
Your idea to get some bookshelf or floorstanding speakers and mount them behind the speaker cloth where the boxes are built is a good one. If I am reading correctly they are big enough. If you do this make sure the ports are forward firing otherwise they will sound terrible.
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Here's another way to go... (http://www.av123.com/)
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11000 cubic inches is plenty of volume to do something nice in a full range speaker.
What kind of capabilities are you looking for? Just home theater? How much sound pressure are you trying to generate?
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al'cole, jesster, mmd & tom brown -
Thanks for the replies and links. Worked real late last night, will try to post a couple of pictures over the weekend.
Tom Brown, the short answer is "I don't know" re: sound pressure.
System will be used for home theater (films, sports and concerts) and music in the living room. Wife and I have plenty of CD's, but daughter is an iPod freak, so I'd have to consider an interface. Possibly expand to other rooms down the road as $$$'s allow. Previous owner had primitive in-wall speakers in the dining room and bedrooms, but we removed those for drywall repairs and paint. Not worth saving, homebuilt one-ways, and sounded forty years old.
To give you an idea where I'm at presently, when I moved from my small condo, my "system" was a 31" Mitsubishi, an older Pioneer 5.1 (early dolby, no THX, etc), Sony 5 disc changer and Cambridge Soundworks center and satellite speakers, which worked well for me in a 950 sq foot unit.
We've upgraded to a Samsung 56" DLP and we're very happy with it. Just got it moved into the wall, so nothing else has been set up yet. We haven't tapped most of its potential yet. I like the hardware, but my wife wants it all as stealthy as possible. So I'm keeping the "old school" wrapper and upgrading one step at a time. Sort of like my half of the Sanger...
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This really sounds like a FUN project :)
For Jesseter... The Polk inwall ceiling speakers Polk TC series and up sounds really good.. Boston Acoustics designer series are a steller speaker and are easily one of the best sounding hidden speaker available.. People normally don't want to pay 1kpr or up for a speaker they really can't see, though.. I know of a few that have and they absolutely sound fantastic :) I'd take them over the other speakers listed fo-sho... Klipsch has made inceiling/wall spealkers for years. I put a pair in my parents home about 15 years ago. They sounded about 95% as good as the exact matched 800.00pr bookshelf speaker back then and still sound as good to this day ... Klipsch are very effecient and bright sounding speakers. I had a pair of Klipsch CF towers for years..They were about 1200pr back then.. I sold them to RD for 100.00 just to get rid of the "furniture" in favor of trying Polk in ceiling speakers. I've been quite suprised with the performance :)
Wonder if RD still has them speakers....hmmmm...
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Tom Brown, the short answer is "I don't know" re: sound pressure.
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To give you an idea where I'm at presently, when I moved from my small condo, my "system" was a 31" Mitsubishi, an older Pioneer 5.1 (early dolby, no THX, etc), Sony 5 disc changer and Cambridge Soundworks center and satellite speakers, which worked well for me in a 950 sq foot unit.
Cambridge Soundworks, eh? :idea:
If you want to build something custom, you might want to look at something like this Dennis Murphy 3-way design. For the money, they sound pretty amazing. If you ignore cost, they still sound pretty amazing.
MB-OW1 3-way (http://murphyblaster.com/content.php?f=MBOW1_3-WAY.html)
You can build them with the GR-research T2 tweeters and not lose a lot of sound quality. The OW1 is just a bit sweeter. I prefer the OW1 version but it's probably not worth the $150 to most people. A matched pair of OW1 tweeters costs more than the other four drivers combined.
Those speakers will not last long if you want to blast the hell out of them at full volume. They will provide a very dynamic home theater experience though, and it's unlikely you've ever heard bass extension like that, even from a system with a "sub".
I don't present the MB-OW1 3-way project as the best in speaker technology but I've never found anything that in their league for bang:buck ratio. You've got plenty of space to build this project into your existing cabinets with lots of room to spare. You can just ignore aspects like baffle diffraction and room placement. They'll sound good in your big honking cubes, just not as good as they would with their designed boxes and placements.
Just a thought...
