structured audio.

So back this past summer at a yard sale I found a pair of bookshelf Technics speakers. I think I paid five bucks for them. They matched the ones I bought way back in high school that I’m still using on my home system (partly because I’ve never seen anything for not a huge wad of cash that sound better and partly because they just keep kickin’). A little while later I scored another subwoofer at Goodwill (the first one I found - a Klipsch - is being used on my studio monitor setup) - an 8” KLH that was in perfect condition for twenty bucks.

And then I got to thinking ... hmm, I could put these in my bedroom. More importantly - since my walls were still missing - I could modify the speakers to in-walls and run all the necessary audio cables and such and move on the plan I came up with a while back to get structured audio in my bedroom.

So I got to work with a Wonderbar and hammer -

and in no time I had them all taken apart (they were all just glued anyway). I rescued the crossovers from within each box and set them aside. Now the real work ensued.

I realized I needed to route all the inside edges of the front baffle in order to give them a lip that would hide the uneven hole in the sheetrock I would be cutting for them. And then I had to cut strips of the black contact-type paper veneer from the sides I was throwing out and glue them onto the 1/8” edge I created after routing. It was a bit arts-and-crafts but it turned out looking pretty good. And so - with all of that done - I now had a pair of in-wall speakers (for $5 and an afternoon's worth of work).

I calculated the volume of the boxes before I cracked them open with the Wonderbar and converted the measurements to what I would need the volume to be in the wall. But first I had lots of cables to run from the bedroom to the basement closet. Two 48’ lengths of in-wall speaker cable (I had gotten a 250’ spool from Amazon for $20) - and the rest of the structured wiring ... four Cat-5 runs (two for a new outlet where I’ll be putting my desk and two for a possible future TV and Mac Mini/Apple TV), a 50’ length of Toslink digital audio cable (picked up again from Amazon for $30) assuming the TV/Mac Mini will have digital audio out (my receiver down there I’m using initially doesn’t have digital audio in but I wanted to at least get the cable in the wall for now), and I bought a RG6 splitter to split the cable coming in the house in my bedroom going down to the basement for the modem - the split goes in the bedroom wall up to where the possible TV will go. Last but not least - I had the thought of moving the electrical outlet from the floor up to where I’d be installing some 2x4 brackets for the TV mount - that way if I do get a TV and mount a Mini or something up there the power will be right there.

(that's looking up through the hole I cut in the basement ceiling to the wires coming from the bedroom - I had to use my fishtape across the basement from here to grab them and yank them through to the closet on the other side)

(in the networking closet - the speaker wire and my old receiver I bought back in college that will serve the purpose of bringing audio into my bedroom)

(the outlet I moved up from a foot above the floor to 5' up and behind where the TV would be mounted)

I had already wedged some 2x4s in the walls to make the same volume as the speaker boxes - 

The rest of the process then for each ‘box’ in the wall was to mount the crossover network and stuff it with some acoustic fill I got from some Infinity speakers I grabbed out of a 'free' bin at a yard sale a few years back (I may remove or adjust the amount of fill based on how dampened the speakers are once I get them installed after the sheetrock is up).

And the wall looked like this (complete w/ those 2x4 horizontal brackets for hanging a TV wall mount centered between the speakers) -

So now it’s time to hang sheetrock. It’s crazy. I think I’ve had these walls torn apart for something like, oh - I dunno - three years. At least. I lost count. But tomorrow I will hang drywall and that will be that. So before I can I had to test to make sure everything worked - so I had to connect the subwoofer to the binding posts in the wall - then connect the speakers to their respective crossovers and hook the wires up in the basement to the receiver and fire it up -

It worked! But the last little bit I needed to test was to make sure that the VNC would work to drive the server downstairs from my old Powerbook - thankfully the Chicken is still available for 10.5 cos the screen sharing built in works spotty at best. Yeah - I’ve probably mentioned how much of an un-fan I am of 10.5 ... but anyways - the Chicken worked great and my plan to turn up the volume on the receiver louder than I’d ever need it - then control the volume of iTunes on the server through my laptop (and track selection etc.) - worked perfectly -

So the only thing that remains is a little RFI that I may need to get a powerline filter to kick. Otherwise everything is up and running and all set to hang sheetrock tomorrow. Oh - but I might run a couple more speaker cables ... for surround sound.


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Cost of project

- $5 Technics bookshelf speakers I found at a yard sale that I converted to in-walls
- $20 KLH 8” powered subwoofer from Goodwill
- $20 250’ spool of 18-guage in-wall speaker wire from Amazon
- old Pioneer receiver I had lying around (but something similar - an old receiver - could probably be found easily on Ebay or craigslist for less than fifty bucks)
- $20 Leviton 8-in/out single-gang speaker wall outlet
- several days worth of work modifying the garage sale speakers to in-walls and running all the cables and building the stuff in the walls