Speaker question

[farscapesg1]

Soooo, I have a RCA HTIB (Home theater in a box) speaker set that I've been using for the last couple years. The key is that I've never been able to connect the rear speakers. In our old house, my wife didn't want them mounted on the walls because we knew we would have to move one day.

Now we have a new house that we plan on living in for at least 10 years and she gave me the go-ahead to get them installed. Unfortunately, the new house has a 2 story living room I've described the room to a contractor we use at my work for running cables and he basically laughed at me when I said I wanted to install the speakers.

Here is the floorplan of the house. There is a hanging wall between the living room and the kitchen/breakfast area which is where I wanted to mount the rear speakers.

Anyone got any ideas? The contractor's advice was to get a wireless speaker system, but I'm worried about the reliability and sound quality from those. Should I give up on the surround-sound idea and live without the joy of 5.1 sound on DVDs I'm not a huge audiophile, but watching DVDs is annoying because the sound effects are always 10 times louder than the voices, which I'm guessing is becuase we always forget to tell it to play in Stereo instead of Dolby 5.1.

 

[Gavinfoxx]

You should go to a dedicated home theater forum like avsforum...

even non audiophiles can hear a difference when they finally get a well-set-up system, and if you want to spend some money, you can get a LOT of bang for your buck...

Remember, most speakers should have their tweeters at about ear level, maybe a little bit above.

And are you setting up the center speaker correctly? That is THE MOST IMPORTANT SPEAKER, because it is the one where the voices are!

 

[vischo]

Do you have a basement? Drop the lines from the back wall down to the basement and over to the other side of the room to your AV reciever etc.

 

[DrStrangeBrew]

My uncle got a set of wireless speakers several months ago & is really happy w/them (sound quality, output). They're line-of-sight, but even when someone walks past them there is minimal-sometimes no interruption. Remember they still need power, so you can't mount them *anywhere* in your big open family room, but they are very flexible for positioning.

 

[farscapesg1]

Do you have a basement? Drop the lines from the back wall down to the basement and over to the other side of the room to your AV reciever etc.

No luck. Houston, TX. Half the people down here don't even know what a basement is

 

[farscapesg1]

My uncle got a set of wireless speakers several months ago & is really happy w/them (sound quality, output). They're line-of-sight, but even when someone walks past them there is minimal-sometimes no interruption. Remember they still need power, so you can't mount them *anywhere* in your big open family room, but they are very flexible for positioning.

I could get power to the one at the back corner by the breakfast area, but there is no power outlet for the other corner of the room at the foot of the stairs and the foyer. Not to mention, I'd have to have power cables going from the outlet up to the speakers, which the wife would never go for. If she had her way, the speakers would be flush-mounted in the wall but I'm trying to make use of what I have without spending a lot more money on this.

 

[Dave159]

hmm id love to help you out im a surround sound expert lol, i would never give up the joy of surround sound so my first question of many to come lol is what is your budget this is a key question lol

 

[LaChupacabra]

Bose makes an accessory that supposedly only works with their 5.1 and above systems (http://www.bose.com/controller?event=VIEW_PRODUCT_PAGE_EVENT&product=accessories_setup). I say supposedly as a nice way of saying "LIES!"

You can get an adapter (usually from your local Best Buy or Circuit City's car install department) that will take regular speaker wire and put an RCA end on it. Once you do that you can make any set of rear speakers wireless. The Bose adapter works pretty good, but don't try to drive any floorstanding speakers with it. Bose does not publish how many watts their speakers draw, if you try something that will pull too much from the SL2 it'll burn out pretty quick.

 

[IDversusEGO]

you are either going to have power wires or you are going to have speaker wire. What's the difference? Also, it is pretty cheap (at least in my area0 to have a power outlet added. a good set of speaker stands will have hollow centers to run the cables up so that they are "invisible". of course, you could just give your wife a few bucks, tell her to go shoe shopping and set it all up while she is gone. She may bitch at first, but it probably wont look as bad as she thinks.