DIY Surround Sound

[Edit from 3 years later]:  Nowadays I wouldn't really recommend doing this.  Not that I ever had a problem with it and the sound was still pretty good (lucky me I guess) , but simply put it's not surround sound except by the technical fact that all it is is a bunch of speakers SURROUNDING you.  Which for me all I had was the left and right rigged where correct sound would be output on the correct sides.  There was no sub or back speakers.

^ Read ABOVE first.  ^

It is always best to watch movies or play the very popular game Guitar Hero with a sweet Surround Sound setup. This instructable will show you how to set up and add multiple speakers to your surround sound. You can probably add as many speakers as you like... you should know when your going overboard with all the speakers. Please keep in mind that this is my first instructable.

Step 1: Supplies

Normally you can find all you need for this instructable at garage sales or for pretty cheap used.

*Home Theater Receiver( I got mine free from my uncle; I'm sure if you buy brand new it would be quite expensive.)
*Speakers of any kind(I use just a bunch of speakers I collected for this...all different kinds...most are old)
*Wires

Comments

[cadleqe]

taking random speakers and wiring them all together. it works but must sound bad.

[hcaz-301]

It would sound very bad if the amp was not powerful enough, but if it is it should sound quite good

[Virtuous]

Haha yeah, I pretty much only used it to play guitar hero back in the day. Man it's hard to believe how I "rigged" this 3 years ago. Pfft now I know so much more and am glad to have my 7.1 HD audio out from my computer.... now I just need a good set of speakers....-_-

[thyan]

hey, i found your instructable useful, and now I used the setup in my room. My question is : since the input is Stereo(red white), I only get Stereo output. just like monkeybounce said.

Are there any solutions to make this setup into real 5.1 ?
cause i already got the speakers and the receiver...

[Virtuous]

I would assume it has something to do with the white speaker output on mine...but since the wire group that is supposed to be the center and part of the surround do not work on mine...I'm not too sure. Depending on what receiver you have I'm sure it would work in some way, I'm fairly sure mine could had the center speakers output worked because it sounds exactly like what monkeybounce explained about the center being vocal and all that.

[bwpatton1]

Man thats some seriouse green you have there, kudos!

[bwpatton1]

Wow, I fail at spelling dont I, I just noticed that.......

[tabler1010]

Is the purple line ant thing special or just one wire.

[Virtuous]

its just the red and blue wires together

[MrRodrigez]

rofl 360 cables nice

[sbilko]

You also need to watch the impedance of all those speakers connected in parallel. 2x8 ohm speakers in parallel will present 4 ohms to the power amp and when you connect in more it gets even less. This is a good way to blow a power amp! An interesting arrangement for extra speakers is to use the "Hafler Arrangement" invented by David Hafler (no relation to the chap in Baywatch!). Basically you leave your front speakers connected to the amp as normal, then take a wire from the Left+ terminal of the power amp to your L rear speaker + terminal. Next connect the L rear - terminal to the + terminal of the R rear speaker and finally connect the R Rear -ve terminal to the power amp R- terminal. The rear speakers will then reproduce some of the "out of phase" signals that are present in the audio but are normally cancelled out when they are reproduced by the speakers. N.B. this will also present a "Funny " load to the power amp so I accept no responsibility for the results!

[Virtuous]

Yea I would probably do or would have done what you just said except on mine the two sets of wires in the middle on the speaker plug that goes to the receiver dont work. I'm guessing those two sets are the front and back speakers...

[cadleqe]

you did bad for your first time

[Monkeybounce]

This isn't a home theater system. This is spliced speakers. While I'm sure it works, there are a number of issues with a system like this. 1) It's not Surround Sound. Surround sound plays different frequencies and channels on different speakers. Vocal comes directly at you from the center, background noises from the satellites, etc. Your setup has no way to distinguish which channel is which, so you're really only getting stereo X2. Also, using speakers of different makes and models in a true surround environment is never suggested as the phase of these speakers aren't going to be in tune with others. This would be a great idea for running additional speakers to the garage or something like that, but it's not going to be very effective in a single room. Also, you'll want to make sure that the amp in that HTIB unit is powerful enough to drive all those speakers or you risk burning it out.

[Virtuous]

Ok I know this is not "A home theater system" never said it was... I just didn't know what to call the Box It all connects to... sure its spliced speakers couldn't think to call it that either. But for me my setup worked out perfectly where all the different sound come from the right angle. Say I'm playing some war game...on my setup you can tell where you enemies are if they make a noise. Also I am not claiming to know much about this. When I did this years ago I didn't know any thing what so ever dealing with this setup. I just threw it all together and somehow it came out to work really nicely and it was for free. Its why I added the trial and error page to make it sound right.