Audio setup for living room + porch + garden

[evosound]

Hi everyone,

My brother is celebrating his birthday and needs a setup for his living room + porch + garden.

I'm not looking for anything crazy, just to play some 50's music

I am torn between wireless speakers (but the prices are very high for decent quality), or getting something like Pyle PCA1 mini amp, and then hooking them up to 4 Dual LU43PB speakers. This would be under $150 budget.

I would need 1/2 speakers in the living room, 1 porch and 1 garden.

Any suggestions?

Would the mini amp be able to play the piggybacked extra pair of speakers?

 

[avengineer]

A couple of things. Looks like there are two areas where you plan to place only a single speaker. Now, if you're really playing '50s music, you might be fine, but if you get into the '60's, you'll have an interesting problem. When stereo burst on the scene, a lot of music was mixed so that the fact you had stereo was unmistakable. The would place vocals on the left, band on the right (a lot of Beatles stuff was released this way), so with one speaker, you're going to miss something pretty important. You'll either have a a-capella vocal solo, or a karaoke band only. Even out to the latter half of the 1960s this was still being done. The Mamas & Papa's classic "Dedicated To The One I Love", played in stereo, but with only one speaker becomes either just the Mamas, or just the Papas. Not good. So, if you really want only one speaker somewhere, you'll have to make sure that your stereo music source is somehow mixed to mono before you hit your amplifier.

I haven't heard the speakers, they look ok, nothing special. You might consider one of the T-power amps in place of the Pyle, and save yourself some money. I have one of these:
Amazon.com: LP-2020A+ Lepai Tripath Class-T Hi-Fi Audio Mini Amplifier with Power Supply: Electronics

It's used for background music, and computer sound only in a non-critical location, seems to work just fine. Check the price too. You can buy two of them and have independent volume controls for at least two pairs each of your speakers, no piggy-backing required. You can mono the source up at the input using Y cord.

As to sources, if your bro will ever get into computer audio (which he should, he'll love it), using iTunes (free) and his music, you can wirelessly stream audio to an AirportExpress or two, feed those little amps with it, and you can have streamed playlists all over the house with central and independent volume control at the computer. It nudges your budget a bit, but adds a whole lot of functionality.

Sonos stuff will be outside your budget significantly, but adds simplicity of setup, iTunes library playback, and individual control of what plays in each zone, with the option for "party mode" to play the same thing everywhere. Much more expensive, but really easy to deal with.

 

[evosound]

Hi thanks for your reply. Good recommendations, and yes I think I would like to avoid the Sonos or AirportExpress as they are already almost the cost of the budget.

So if I were to get the Lanai amp that you linked, you recommend getting two amp (for two speakers each, so two pairs of speakers for each location) and then linking them to one input? How would I do this?

So if I had an iphone/laptop as the source, I would use two 3.5mm to 2 RCA Y splitter but with an additional 3.5mm splitter in front of it to have two Y splitters going to each Amp?

Iphone < 3.5mm splitter <3.5mm to RCA - Amp Input

 

[markw]

With the low sensitivity of those speakers (86 db) and the low power of that amp (15 w @ 4 ohms @ 10% distortion), don't expect anywhere near loud and clean.

But, with that budget you don't really have too many options. Maybe a garage sale vintage receiver?

 

[evosound]

Would you have a better recommendation for speakers or even amp setup at a 100-150$ budget?

 

[markw]

As I said, maybe a garage sale vintage receiver.

Realistically speaking, you really don't have too much wiggle room with that budget.

Maybe you could rent something locally.

 

[evosound]

Thanks for the reply.

If I do buy two amps, and two speakers, and use a 3.5mm splitter from the source, to get to the two amps, and then to two pairs of speakers, wouldn't this improve things?