Outdoor speaker, perm install

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rickryan.com

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I'm looking at a single speaker for my back patio area. If you look at the pic below, I'm thinking to mount the speaker just above the door, to the right. I'm looking at cheaper speakers, just wanting something decent and full-range (10s/12s). This little patio is becoming my personal oasis in the evenings. It's a lovely view of the back 40. Any suggestions on speakers?

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EV ZX1i would be my choice. They just installed two of these at the entrance to our local Walmart so there's something to listen to while you're standing in the socially-distanced line to enter the store. Great sound, plenty of throw, and very good specs.

https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/412768-REG/Electro_Voice_301851001_ZX1i_90_2_way_8.html

If you want something cheaper and closer to the Polk speakers that Steve recommended, the Parts Express house brand, Dayton Audio, has a pair of indoor/outdoor speakers that sell for about $95. They sound decent enough with their 6" woofers, but the EV's are way better and their higher price reflects that. I've installed the Dayton Audio speakers at my parents' house by their pool, connected to a Sonos amplifier. They're great for ambient background music, but certainly not for a professional application (eventually, somebody's going to blow the snot out of them by turning the volume up too high).
 
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I had a pair of those ZX1 powereds. Good-sounding speaker. As a temp solution, I found an old Radio Shack (cough cough) amp and passive at my brother's house and installed it. Sounds like crap but at least now there's sound out on the patio area. That's give me some time to do some shopping.
 
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Instead of one speaker, go with many cheaper ones. I have done many outdoor installations with relatively inexpensive 70V tapped transformer speakers like these https://www.parts-express.com/dayto...0v-indoor-outdoor-speaker-pair-white--310-014. They held up extremely well in SoCal heat and winds. By switching to 70V, you can adjust the relative volume of each individual speaker. Also, I put switches in the system so I can turn off speakers I didn't want. In your case, you may want two speakers covering the porch on one switch and a few more covering beyond the porch on a different swithch.
 
Instead of one speaker, go with many cheaper ones. I have done many outdoor installations with relatively inexpensive 70V tapped transformer speakers like these https://www.parts-express.com/dayto...0v-indoor-outdoor-speaker-pair-white--310-014. They held up extremely well in SoCal heat and winds. By switching to 70V, you can adjust the relative volume of each individual speaker. Also, I put switches in the system so I can turn off speakers I didn't want. In your case, you may want two speakers covering the porch on one switch and a few more covering beyond the porch on a different swithch.

Thanks for the idea. That's a good option.
 
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I think you will like the results. You get much more even coverage with multiple small speakers. You don't get any bass but outdoors, bass just leads to complaints from neighbors. These garden speakers come in so many varieties (e.g. rock speakers, buried and spiked speakers, etc). One of the venues I designed for had about about 15 of the 6.5" white speakers and about 30 4.5" rock speakers. This was divided into 4 main zones (each with its own amp channel) and several of the zones had speakers that could be switched on/off as needed. During some devastating fires, we lost two rock speakers on the property perimeter (melted). The winds absolutely destroyed the vinyl cover over the porch. Many speakers were attached to the frame of that cover. The speakers were covered in soot but there was not a single failure among them. The other nice thing about 70v speakers, is you can do speaker runs of several hundred feet with inexpensive 16 AWG wire.
 
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