Can a Home Theatre or Surround sound system help?

my 1-car garage is 8'hx20'Lx10W and is made of brick with Sheetrock Roof and wooden 3-part Door that slides up to open, there is space between the door when it's closed and the wall of the Garage.

My predicament is that I live in a very quiet neighborhood and I hang out on Saturdays inside the garage, in the beginning I had 2 old style [1970s] Pioneer 15" 4-way Speakers but was told by my neighbors that the "Bass" sounded very loud so I got rid of them and used just one 12" 3-way speaker and still was told the same thing, I believe that the Garage acts as a speaker enclosure itself which would explain why the Bass sounds so loud "outside" of the Garage, in other words, I have much more bass outside than inside.

A friend of mine then suggested that I try to copy the situation of an Automobile, this seemed to make sense because when you are in a car that uses 6x9 speakers, it sounds loud but when you come outside and close the door you hear very little or nothing so I went and purchased four 6x9 Pioneer speakers and a 4-ohm receiver, I placed the speakers in the "ceiling" of the Garage about 5' apart and when the music is playing at low volume with the Garage door closed, you hardly hear anything outside but you have to pump the volume to get any kind of decent "Bass" and when the volume goes up then you hear the music outside so this almost worked as when you go directly under any of the speakers, you get the full blast and when you walk away from it, the noise lessens considerably but not enough for my neighbors.

I went with a friend to Circuit City and there was a demo of a surround sound or Home Theatre set, I don't know which, it had 4 very small speakers hanging overhead on poles and a sub on the ground, we were both totally amazed at the sound you get when you step in between those 4 small speakers area, the set cost $3,000 though. Anyway, what totally freaked me out was that when you step out of the circle of speakers you hardly hear anything and this was in the middle of the store and not in an enclosed room so I am wondering if this is what I need? A surround sound or Home theatre system so when I go outside of the Garage I will not hear much?

Will welcome ANY idea/advice please that will help me listen to my music with some Punch and still be friends with my neighbors, thanks.

 

Your subwoofer is still going to carry. However some receivers, my Denon does, have what they call a "night mode" where they reduce the bass so it doesn't carry as much and you can still have the volume loud enough to hear the conversations. This may help.

 

Just out of pure curiosity, what's the difference between the Denon's "night mode" and simply taking off some Bass on your system please?

 

It's basically just a one touch equalizer preset. It lowers the bass, and raises the voice frequencies so you can watch a movie without the explosions and rumbling upsetting your family or neighbors. You can also raise the crossover frequency at which the subwoofer kicks in.

 

or even prob add sound deadoning materials (like you do with a subwoofer box)

or turn it down. hehe. ;-)

peace

 

if you really want to set up a nice system and not be so loud outside youre going to need to do more than buy different speakers. You can use a boombox and it will still carry outside exactly the same as anything esle.. as as for those mini speakers, if yorue talking about the bose. they are definately not worth the money.

go with paradigm minimonitors or something if youre looking for small speakers., bose is a complete rip off that uses genius marketing to target the class of buyers that doesnt have much knowledge about speakers, but are willing to pay the extra dollar for the best sound. The average yuppie will buy these, thinking its the only way to go. but in actuality bose reviews are horrible and extremely overpriced, compared to the real ht companies.

but, the garage is not insulated like your house it .. brick or not, it will carry outside. If you want to mellow out the sound yorue going to need to put in something to break up the sound. Im not sure what your use of the garage is, but if you really want to make it sound quieter youre going to have to put up insulation in or on top of the walls. Even just fill the garage up with stuff will help slightly.. boxes, carpet, shelves, anything that will soak up the sound a little. Car speakers are no different, if you look at the enclosure in a car.. that is why you cant hear anything outside. It is full out things inside plus there are at least 2-10 layers of some type of insulation throughout the car.


drummers like to use that foam stuff that they tack up on the walls.. im sure that would help some. Although it would be ugly, its a pretty cheap fix.

but if you have neighbors that complain that much, i doubt anything you will do will make them happy. its going to be audible no matter what if you turn it up that loud.

 

Hi there Mikehende nomatter what you do, yu are still going to hear sound but here is a page for you to loo at that is about soundproofing. Its not gonna cut it out completely butif done right will do a very good job.

http://www.drumdojo.com/tech/soundpro.htm

 

btw,
the night mode is NOT simply bass reduction. On my kenwood reciever it for sure does NOT do anything with the bass level at all. What it does is normalize ALL the sounds to oine level. So when you have talking it increases the sound and when you get the loud parts it lowers the volume. This way you can watch it at a lower overall volume and still hear the talking and not be blown away by loud explosions and such.

Any reduction in BAss you notice is most likely from the lower volume you are listening to it at. as that is what its designed for. I doubt this will save any problems in this guys case.

It sounds to me like the neighbors are going to complain about anything regardless. Bass carries no matter how you look at it. If you do NOT want the bass to carry then you need to get rid of the bass!

You could buy a CHEAP home theater speaker set for under $100 that comes with 5 speakers (small) and one sub. You can adjust the volume on the sub to be much lower than the volume of the rest of the system. And then just hang the other 4 speakers up in the 4 corners of the garage. You canb hook those up to your current amp. The small speakers wont be able to make enough bass to disturb a sleeping baby, then you just need to fine tune the colume and crossover point on the sub.

That would work and sound just as good as any $3000 speaker system.

 

unless you have $3000 to spend on a garage speaker setup. In that case You can give me the $3000 and I will fly to your house and setup a system that performs as good or better for you!!

 

What I had considered first was what a lot of Busineses use in my area, which looks like speakers that are in between Satelites and regular speakers meaning, they would usually be like 4 small speakers on the wall close to the ceiling placed in all 4 corners of the room and those speakers give off "Bass" but you don't hear it outside of the room, this would have been perfect if I could figure out the 4 smallest speakers to get that will give off a lot of Bass but I can't come across a particular "Brand"? Any ideas how to find this info guys? In case you're wondering why I don't just go in and ask what Brand any one of these Busineses use, it is becuase I would like a little more Bass than what they have as my 6x9's give off more Bass than theirs.

 

bass is pretty relevant to speaker size. the bigger the speaker the more bass you will have.

Those little speakers are what I am talking about for the corners, then just run a sub (which usually coems with the kit) for your bass. You wont be dissapointed and you can fine tune the bass amount after you figure the volume you want to listen to it at. Plus it has a built in crossover so you get true bass, and dont get vibration from talkign and such.

 

OK, I am settled on trying a surround sound system in the Garage, question, seeing that the volume is very low comparatively in "Rear" speakers, does it make sense to get a 5.1 speaker system? I see a lot of 3 speaker surround system selling all over the place so I am wondering if the 3 is better than the 5 for "Audio" purposes?

 

the rear speakers are only quieter because of the sound mode. Since I assume you already have an amp I am suggesting that you hook up 2 speakers to your left channel and 2 to the right channel. This way you will have 4 speakers total with 1 in each corner. But the volume level should be almost identical.

You just need to double check that the speaker system has a "high input" on the sub. Usually it will have 2 speaker plugs labbeled "in" and 2 labeled "out" this is a passthrough so the sub can filter the sound through the crossover. UNless your amp has a sub out, or even just a "rec out" through the tape input or something. Then you could just use the RCA plug from the amp and run it to the sub. This is the "better" way to hook the sub up.

ALso make sure the sub for sure has a crossover freq control, as well as a seperate volume control.

You should then still actually have 1 center channel speaker left over with nothing to do with. You could use this maybe in the center of the room, but you could only hook it to either the left or right channel.

Hope that helps.

 

Don't quite understand one thing here, if I have a surround amp that has 4 channels [front, rear, center, sub], seeing that the "rear" has a quieter mode
1] are you saying that I should connect 4 satelites just to the "front" channel, 2 on the left and 2 on the right?

2] Regarding the "center" speaker, seeing that the amp has a separate channel for the center, why shouldn't I use it on that cahnnel instead of wiring it to either the front left or right channel?

Thanks.

 

go back and read what I have said up till now, it seems you are confusing yourself.

I have a few questions though.

1) what amp DO YOU HAVE NOW???? I am under the impression that you have a regular sterio 2 channel amp? I would NOT think you ran 1970's 15" pioneer speakers on a home theater amp in your garage in the first place?

2) Do you think I am telling you to buy an amp as well??

this is ALL I am saying to do.

KEEP the amp you have now, buy a home theater SPEAKER SET, not a home theater AND speaker set. Then use those speakers with your current amp.

If you have a home theater amp in the garage then you MAY have a A and B speaker output. I would hook up 2 speakers (l + r) to channel "A". I would then hook the other 2 speakers to channel "B" and turn BOTH channels on. This will make the system NOT allow you to run it in home theater mode. But all 4 speakers will have the same volume levels. You can then run the sub in a corner and get all the bass you want.

My other instructions were assuming you had a regular 2 channel amp and I was telling you how to hook it up that way.

I hope this is clear now.

Let me know if you have any more questions, or something is still not clear. People say I have a hard time explaining myself for others to understand

 

Appreciate the help, let break this dwon into 2 parts please so I can consider both options:

1] Yes, I have a 4 ohm Receiver that can take 4 speakers, regarding the Sub, please explain the connection for it using my Receiver whcih has 1 Aux, 2 Tape [1/O's] and the main in and out.

2] I have a Sony Home theatre system and love the DSP fields that come with it and for that reason, I would like to purchase an older [so cheaper] Home theatre AV Receiver like say, a Kenwood that has the same DSP fields. What I need to know for sure is if there is a way to have equal volume coming through ALL 5 satelite speakers when playing music?

 

let me address #2 first

NO, you cannot have all 5 speakers being used at the same time with a home theater amp and have equal volume on all 5 speakers. The best you can do is having equal volume to 4 speakers, but you end up with the EXACT same setup as using your amp you have now and NOT buying the home theater reciever.

#1) Just use the amp you have now. Run all 4 speakers to the left and right channels on it as you normally would any regular 4 speakers. Hang them in the corners of your garage as you wish.

For the sub it will make a lot more sense when you look at it. Basically you have 2 choices to hook it up. I am only going to tell you choice number 2 since that is the esiest (not neccesarily the best though)

There will be 2 speaker terminal looking things on the sub, as well as 1 rca jack, one power jack, 2 volume nobs, (one will do volume, the other will be the crossover) and 1 power switch. The only things you ABSOULUTLY MUST HAVE on the sub is.....

2 speaker jacks - These will be the push in design with a black and a red push button. This is a HIGH LINE IN. You will run 2 sets of speaker wire to the sub. You will connect the left and right from your AMP to the left and right on the sub. The sub will take that signal, convert it to a low signal and then filter the bass to suit your crossover setting. (keep in mind this is more detailed and complicated than it sounds) all you really need to know here is "run 2 speaker wires from the amp to the sub, connect them to the speaker jacks! DONE!

1 volume control knob - You MUST have this as well so you can fine tune the bass volume in relation to the actual music volume. Its pretty self explanitory


IF the sub you bought does NOT have both of those things mentioned above take it back and buy a speaker set that comes with it. It wont work the way I am explaining it if it is missing either of those 2 items.

As a side note, if you really really insist on spending the extra money a a home theater receiver as well you will ONLY get 3 speaker sterio, or the "hall effect" where they add echoes to the rear 2 satalite speakers. I dont not think this is what you are after. The way I am saying to do this will cost you no more than $100 for the whole speaker set. You may have to shop around and you will end up with a no name speaker system, but for the volumes you will end up with I dont think it matters. I have NEVER been sold on spending a fortune on "good" speakers anyway since they rig the sound tests. EVen generic speakers sound good when configured right witht he right sound played through them. Thast what they do when you go to the store and listen to their $3000 speakers.

 

Ok, so I need a "powered" sub for this to work, will look into it an dget back to you, thanks.

 

I am looking around for a good deal on a Powered Sub and would like to ask about 2 issues now please:

1] I don't really understand the connection of the Sub to the Amp, when you say:

"run 2 speaker wires from the amp to the sub, connect them to the speaker jacks! DONE!"

[a] From "where" on the amp do you run the speaker wires to the Sub seeing that I will have both A+B speaker channels used up for the 5 satelites? Also, You say that there will be only 1 RCA Jack on the Sub, do I need to run an "Audio" cable from the Sub to the Amp? If so, from the 1 RCA jack on the Sub to "where" on the Amp?

2] Remember I was saying that I wanted to get an AV receiver mainly becuase of the "DSP" fx that come with them? Well, I stumbled upon this:

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=5780655907&rd=1&sspagename=STRK:MEWA:IT&rd=1

Doesn't this item make sense for me to get? This way, I will get the DSP fx and also, I can now control the level of "volume" that goes to each speaker, what do you think? Thanks.

 

mike,

That seeround thing is not doing anything fancy. And as soon as it starts doing its "non fancy" adjustments you will end up with uneven sound levels at different speakers. That is how these fancy sounds are created, by altering sound levels to different speakers, adding echoe's, combingin channels and so on and so forth.

If you REALLY insist on having these sound FX then go get a cheap home theater amp and deal with the uneven sound levels.

I was under the impression that you wanted this to sound good in your garage?? Once they alter sound on music it just doesnt sound right anymore. Do you really want it to sound like 50 cent (insert famous singer of your era here if you wish) is rapping on stage in your garage or something?

Just know that any sound processer makes uneven sound levels at different speakers. The 4 channel amp you have now will have equal sound levels at each speaker.

With THAT knowloedge you can decide what you want, and how you want it to sound.


About the powered sub. The reason I said what you "NEEDED" on the amp was to allow you ONE method to hook it up. The reason I did NOT talk about how to hook the RCA plug is because you will not NEED it for the install I explained. Mostly because your amp will not support hooking it up that way.

Once you have the sub in your house and look at the connections you will understand what I am saying. Until then its like trying to figure out what happens after you die, when you are still living here!! You just wont be able to figure it out.