Narrow speaker

I'm hoping to benefit from the clearly superior Google-Fu that you folks here have.

I currently have bookshelf speakers for my surround speakers. I need to get these out of toddler reach and we don't have furniture to put them on (they've just been on the floor behind furniture). Due to the layout of the room, wall-mounted speakers won't look good (they'll peak out over at least one window casing). I'd like to put some in-wall speakers in, and I'm having trouble finding ones that will work because of the weird construction on one side.

The right-rear speaker will have no problems. Just a standard wall with a slightly undersized stud bay, probably around 10-12 inches of space. Plenty of room for most speakers. But the left-rear speaker is the problem. It needs to be put into a small section of wall that juts out into the room a little bit. No more than about 10" TOTAL, and the framing likely takes up most of that. So from my measurements, I'm left with a cavity about 4" wide.

There are no speakers like this. Not that I can find. And that's where I'm hoping you guys can do better than I did.

These are surround speakers, and I'm not much of an audiophile anyway, so all I'm really looking for is some atmosphere. The stuff coming out of a surround speaker is icing to me, so I don't care if it's coming out of 4 2" drivers. I just need something back there. Can you folks find this for me?

*edit*
Oops, I should mention that I'm not looking to spend a lot here. I've found one or two items in the hundreds of dollars, and that's more than I spent on my front three speakers together. I'd like to keep this under $100 for the pair, or at least for each.

All the ones I've seen are quite expensive. What about ceiling speakers?

Ceiling would be ok, but I'm trying to keep the work down. And wall speakers would let me mount them at a good height.

I found these, which have a cutout dimension of 5", but frustratingly I can't find them for sale anywhere.

Those would be the absolute maximum width, too. I measured again, and the width of the area I have to deal with is just barely under 6". But that goes right up to the wall. So the actual width is probably a maximum of 5" for the cutout, as long as the finished width isn't too much greater than that.

*edit*
Ugh, I called the only site I could find that still listed that speaker and he said it looks like it's been discontinued. Fantastic.

If you're mounting them "in wall", then all you really should need are bare speaker elements, and some grills to cover them with.

Car audio speakers are often available in small sizes, including elongated ovals, and have grills included. You can paint the grills whatever colour you choose before installation.

Cheers

Instead of specialised (read expensive) in-wall speakers why not cut a hole, make a neat frame and a small internal shelf/mount

I have a pair of Acoustic Energy AEGO 2 speakers

They are tiny - 4" high, 3" wide, 3" deep
The case is metal and they're very nice speakers. I love the sound they make!

They come with a surround box (which you probably won't need) and sound really really good. Personally I'd look for some 2nd hand on ebay

Hmm...I hadn't thought about the DIY approach. What parts would I need? How would I fasten them to the wall?

Cut opening in drywall to size. Hot-melt glue wooden cleats to the front/back drywall edges inside the opening, about 1/2" below the opening. Fit a 1/2" thick piece of plywood on top of the cleats to act as a shelf, flush with the bottom of the opening. Sit speaker on shelf, pulled out just proud of the drywall so it looks good. Be happy.

Ha! I think I get what you're saying. I'm not sure I'm wild about it though... Also, it sounds different than what you suggested in your previous post...

Oh, sorry. I was replying to your reply to LittleBlueThing's suggestion of mounting mini-speakers on an internal shelf.

For car speakers, the hole in the drywall would be cut smaller than the rim of the speaker. They then just screw to the face of the drywall (using plaster plugs) in (typically) 3/4 places, sitting proud of the wall surface. The grills then usually just snap in place over top of them.

Ah, I see where the mixup was.


But don't the car speakers need something more than just speaker wire going into them? Every time I've seen a pre-built speaker, there's been some sort of board along with it, like in the attached photo...

Car speakers only need the speaker wires going to them.

Home speakers *usually* only need the speaker wires going to them. Unless they're self-powered but wall-mount speakers usually aren't self-powered.

In the photo you show, that "board" attached to the speaker is just the crossover for the tweeter/woofer. It's entirely passive electronics and doesn't require a separate power supply. So the speaker pictured only needs the speaker wires going to it.

The only issue you'd have with putting car speakers into a home wall location is that most home speakers are a different ohm impedance than cars speakers. I don't remember which is which, but one is usually 4ohm and one is usually 8ohm impedance if I recall correctly. So if you want to use car speakers in your walls, make sure you know what their impedance is, and whether your home stereo can handle that.

At the very least, putting car speakers in as your rear surround speakers will result in large volume mismatch between your front and rear speakers, possibly a large enough difference that you won't be able to compensate for it in your amp's speaker balance adjustment settings.

Thanks for the tips, Tony. I'm pretty sure it's 8ohms for home theater. I once installed some weird 6ohm boat speakers in a shower, but the amp could handle it and it worked, so hey!

I was wondering if that was something to handle the distribution of the audio to each driver. Makes sense that it's a crossover.

I'll look into the car speakers. Unfortunately it looks like my receiver's rating is for 6-16Ω, so I'll have to account for that in my search. Thanks, folks!

I'm also hesitant to mount things straight to drywall, and given how close it seems I'd need to put an anchor to the cutout, I'm concerned that it would blow out the drywall. Perhaps some toggle bolts... I'd also need a good way to attach the grill. I could do construction adhesive, but I'd like something a tad more removable than that...

Another way to do it would be to make a wooden (eg. plywood) mounting plate that attaches to the surface of the wall (again, plaster plugs). This could be as large as you like, sanded and painted, with a centre cutout for the speaker. The speaker itself gets screwed to the the mounting plate (front or back side, depending), and the grill then attaches on top of it, on the "show" side.

Hmm, that might be good, if the grill could sit flush with the drywall. I'd still have to figure out a way to attach the grill, though. Maybe magnets?

I'll have to do some research. I still need to find a speaker that would work. When I search for "8ohm car speaker" I don't get the most impressive parts back...

Yeah, 4-ohms is pretty much the standard for most car audio systems. If you find cheap enough (Eg.) 4" speakers though, you can just double them up to get 8-ohms (and fuller sound!), using a pair for the rear-left, and another pair for the rear-right set.

Perhaps too fussy for you. That in-wall monoprice you posted a picture of looks pretty. Expensive?

$80/pair

They look seriously cheap

Mmmm $43.11/pair for the smallest 5.25" size. Perhaps still too wide for the ~4" stud cavity.

Having thought about it some more, I would just cut away some of the stud depth to allow a wider (than 4") speaker to fit, perhaps 2" of the 3.5" stud depth. Easy to do with an oscillating multi-tool, or perhaps a jigsaw or sawzall. Possible with a hammer and chisel too, but that might shake other stuff loose.

The Monoprice speakers are good for the price. They're way too wide, though.


I might not have described this well enough, but the stud doesn't run that way. Cutting 2" would go right through it and well into the drywall face around the corner. I've attached a photo of this weird stubby wall to give a better idea of what I'm talking about. I want to attach the speaker to the left-hand side of that wall. I could put it on the face, but that wouldn't look great and the depth of those studs would probably leave me the same amount of space...

Spaces like that often have multiple studs and very small hollows.

The ones in my house certainly do - I got pics when they were put in...

-jk

May I suggest putting a compact 'bookshelf' speaker on the existing shelf where the small white electronic doo-dad thingy is sitting?

You can buy a white speaker, or paint one.

So the idea is to get the speakers out of toddler reach.

Is that to protect the current speakers from the kid, out the other way around.

If it's to protect the speakers, you could be solving a non problem.

The other way around, you likely just need to secure the wiring.

On the third hand, if this is an excuse to install speakers in the walls, just do what is needed. You could build out that stub wall just enough to hold the desired speaker(s).

Glenn - it's all of the above. I think building out a new bit of wall might be more than I'm willing to do, and it would close off some of the open feel we have now.

I like the idea of getting a bare speaker and covering it up. Seems like it would take the least space and nearly the least work.

It still bugs me that this isn't a product that exists. It bugs me more that there WAS a product, but it was discontinued. I guess the reason for both is that there wasn't much demand...