Radio in open plan lounge, kitchen diner.

[Gregory01]

Hi, I hope someone can help.

I am just renovating a property and it has a fairly large open plan lounge / kitchen area. I enjoy having the radio on and thought it might be nice before the ceiling goes up to put some speakers in.

It doesn't need to be loud (or crystal clear top of the range stuff), just enough so we can have some music whilst cooking or on a summers day. Speakers can be purchased cheaply on eBay but I'm not sure what the quality will be like. You can get them for circa £80 for 4. Will these be completely useless? Richer sounds tried to sell me some ceiling speakers for £400 each - ouch.

Once the speakers are sorted it is then just some sort of control panel.i was thinking something similar to a double din car unit would be nice built into the wall. I can't seem to find much choice out there. The closest I came was a system line e200 but at £400 seems quite a lot for what is ultimately a radio.

Has anyone else done this and is so can you provide any pointers on what may work. Was hoping to spend circa £250.

Thanks
Greg

 

[Lucid]

TBH, £250 won't really be enough. You'll spend the money, then realise it sounds naff; but by that point it's too late.

I have a business supplying and installing all sorts of domestic and commercial sound & vision gear, so I'm coming at this from the point of view of safety, value, and how happy you'll be after the investment.

Safety: When you start cutting holes in a plasterboard ceiling then you change (and significantly reduce) its fire rating. This then means you need to do something to restore it to at least the previous level. If there's a fire in the room below where your family is sleeping then the plasterboard should stand up to the heat (up to 400 deg C) and flames of a moderate fire (400-600 deg C) for around 30 minutes. It will be less of the fire really takes hold. At 800 deg C you'll have 15 minutes before the joists of the floor beneath your feet are exposed to the full fury of the inferno below.

To restore the integrity of the ceiling then you need fire-hoods. They look like soft fabric top hats. They're pinned and then sealed in place with fire-retardant sealant. Decent fire-hoods are £50-£60 each before you've even bought speakers.

Good fire-hoods also provide some small amount of acoustic insulation too.


Speakers: I've bought and tested speakers under £20 ea. They sound about on par with spending £25 to £40 on a basic shelf-system stereo. A Roberts radio on a counter top sounds infinitely better.

£60-£100 each gets you in to the bottom end of music performance speakers. £100-£180 per speaker gets you the sort of bass and treble performance you'd expect from a £300+ stereo system. This will be something that still has decent bass and a rich tone even at low volumes. The speakers that I sell in this price range also have a daisy-chaining facility. This saves a heck of a lot of hassle and cost in amplification. The impedance (load on the amp) can be adjusted with the daisy-chaining facility so that two pairs of stereo speakers can be connected together. This means that four speakers can be driven from an amp that would otherwise be limited to two speakers.

£300+ per speaker gets you more bass and the sort of volume capacity that can create club-like volume levels. But that's more than your entire budget gone in a single speaker.


Amplifier/radio source: The car head unit isn't the answer for a domestic music system. Apart from the hassle of rigging up a 12V power supply with sufficient current, a car head unit will be geared towards running lower Ohm speakers and at much higher distortion levels than would be ideal with a domestic stereo system.

Depending on whether the speakers can be safely daisy-chained or not, you might be able to drive the system with a compact FM/DAB/CD mini-HiFi such as a an Onkyo 225, Yamaha CRX550 or Denon DM39.

 

[winston1]

Speakers can be purchased cheaply on eBay but I'm not sure what the quality will be like. You can get them for circa £80 for 4. Will these be completely useless?

No. Most likely this will apply:

It doesn't need to be loud (or crystal clear top of the range stuff), just enough so we can have some music whilst cooking or on a summers day.

 

[alan333]

Buy a Bose Wave or similar.

 

[dpm_dpmartin]

A Sonos Play:1 will cost you around £160.

It has the benefits of being moveable, being compact, having quite a good sound... controlled via a quite snazzy (and still simple to use) phone / tablet app.. You can easily wall mount it if that's your preference.

Of course, it is not real radio, and you need an Internet connection for it to stream radio stations, but then your choice is pretty much unlimited and, of course, it can then do so much more after that.

Better than fixing in speakers to your ceiling. Pop down to John Lewis (or Richer Sounds) and take a look. I'm surprised Richer Sounds had not already suggested this, but maybe they had and you didn't like the idea?

If you want MORE from a Sonos Play:1 you can create a stereo pair with, er, well, 2 Sonos Play:1s.

 

[Rad1o]

We put a TV, Radio, DVD unit into the kitchen. It is mounted under a kitchen cupboard where I raised the floor that the unit is pretty much invisible except for when the TV is flipped down. Sound wise it is fine.

Is your kitchen / Lounge a single story building or do you have any rooms above?
If so remember that the ceiling will act as a resonance body for the speakers inside the ceiling and you will get everything conducted in real time but potentially amplified up through someone's floor. It might be better to have the speakers just set back on top of your kitchen cupboards. sounds the same and nothing is visible.