Sound system???

[tonguesandwich]

About to head down to walmart and get 6 car stereo decks to mak a sound system. Before I go is their anyone using or know of a better system then the car deck one?:googly:

[time2dive]

Last year I bough an inexpensive surround system, about $50. It had 5 audio inputs as well as a sub woofer and 5 audio outputs as well as a sub woofer. This gave me inputs for 6 whatevers, mp3 cd..... Came with speakers also....May have to buy another.

Tim

[DarkShadows]

lol why are you picking up six? I'm a big car stereo nut. I have my old Alpine Deck hooked up in my garage and it works great. I guess it would be cheaper using the walmart cheap ones instead of buying a whole bunch of portable 'boombox', and of course the car decks are smaller.

[kciaccio]

MP3 and computer speakers. $30 for MP3 and $10 for computer speakers.

[tonguesandwich]

The sound that I am getting out of computer speakers is not very loud. I have several brands and 2 or 3 different kinds of MP3's. Is there something to look for when buying the computer speakers. I have a few 5.1 amps but they will only output one source at a time.
It would be nice to have a central unit for the sound and not have to run power cords every where. I don't mind running the speaker wire. Any thoughts???

[Moon Dog]

Check the Goodwills and thrift stores for a good vintage system. :)

[tonguesandwich]

I want 6 because I have different areas I want to pipe different ambient sound into. Is anyone using guitar amps as their sound output. My top of the line Pro Props have come with them. Does anyone have a cheap Source?

[pyro]

how about a mixing board
they have them from 5 - 10- channel--ex.- http://www.e-av.co.uk/info.php?id=4597

[tonguesandwich]

wouldn't you still be able to only have one output at a time?

[Phil]

I think your car receiver idea offers a durable integrated solution. Even cheap units have an internal amplifier stable to 4-ohms at 20-30 watts per channel, most will drive four speaker channels and provide preamp outputs for adding power amps when needed, and the things are built to survive a tough environment.

[Northern Touch]

hey I built somthing like this but with only 4 car decks but I also have a 1000 watt amp mixer and 3 mp3 hooked up to it here is a pic...
http://i116.photobucket.com/albums/o24/ace22photo/haunt%20sound%20system/ducks043.jpg
if you have any questions I would be more then happy to help! the possibilities with this set-up are endless for me!

[tonguesandwich]

Does this 1000 watt amp mixer power the car radios? How many outputs can you have going at once? Can you give me a link to the 1000 watt amp mixer.

[CraigInPA]

I use home audio system amplifiers (mono-blocs) bought on ebay. Last year I had a 265 watt per channel Kenwood amp driving 4 outdoor PA speakers on 2 channels for my background sound. At full volume, you could hear it clearly, and with good fidelity, over a block away. I believe I paid all of $60 for the amp, including shipping. In previous years I used a home theatre amp, 2 channels at 100 watts each, with the same speakers, which was more than adequite to cover a 300' wide by 100' deep haunt. I upgraded in order to have more flexibility in where I placed the speakers. With the smaller amp, I needed the speakers to be in the trees so as to not be distorted by the other props, which was problematic as I added more props with their own sounds. The background sound competed with the "local sound props", resulting in me having to turn the volume on the local props way up. With cheap computer speakers, that resulted in distortion, making the voice tracks, in particular, difficult to understand. By moving the background sound speakers to the middle of the haunt, pulling them out of the trees and onto ground level (literally), I lowered the "projection", but not the volume. By re-positioning the local sound props speakers to ear level (just under 5 feet), I could lower their volume without sacrificing the ability to be heard.

[keepsmiling]

Time2Dive
Where did you get your surround system?
Thanks

[dscrimager]

If you got a 5.1 this would give you 5 independent channels of full range using the pre-amp inputs fed from other devices and NOT using whatever built in decoder to produce the output channels. Those pre-amp input don't care where the signal comes from (other than maybe having a group loop between components that can cause some hum). Since most of these devices let you adjust the channel level independently as well you can crank them up or down as needed. Again, the trick is to use pre-amp inputs from whatever your various sources and viola you have 5 different channels . Look for one with the same power rating in all channels. Some of these will even have multi-zone output which would result in 2 + 2 channels, each pair having completely separate volume (at the loss of a channel). Basically either way you are just using it as a set of amplifiers with ganged volume...I think you can get something like this for probably under $100 for a 5.1 and probably under $150 for a 7.1 (if it has pre-amp inputs means 7 output channels). All this implies AC power and 8 ohm speakers in general like an indoor home setup.