So my Creative Inspire 7800 7.1 speakers have a pretty terrible range, so when I saw this post on the make zine blog I knew I had to do thing and make my own speaker stands. The idea is from this post at chrismetcalf.net.
The first step was to get some cheap lamps from wallmart. Yes I hate wallmart but they were $8.50 each.
With the obligatory lolcats reference.
I decided that I was lazy enough that two segments were tall enough that I just assembled them without having to cut them down. I could have used three (the lamp comes with four) but I have a projector and they would have gotten in the way of the screen.
I bought some simple screws and nuts and drilled bigger and bigger holes until I found the bit that worked with the screws. Each pole uses two screws, one to hang the speaker and the other to stabilize it.
My 8 speaker surround field is way better now, though it’s easy to mix up the left and right channels when you move the stands around. My speakers use RCA cables, not speaker wire, so I couldn’t fit the tips through the pole and the hole in the base. Instead I just velcro-tied them to the outside of the pole at the base.
I mounted the center speaker sideways because it was designed to be placed that way. I’ve seen speaker mounts at $100+, these cost $8.56 each. Voila! Thanks Chris so much for the idea!
[…] I bought an Infocus SP5000 HD projector off of woot.com for a decent price. I’m quite happy with it, though I found out after purchase that the bulbs have a 1000 hour lifetime and cost $400 to replace. Ouch. I should have bought a LED projector. Oh well. It’s still really nice and goes well with my surround sound DIY speaker stands. […]
[…] My do it yourself speaker stand post is the most popular one on the site so I thought I’d follow up with other cheap alternatives I’ve been using to create my home theatre. I have a great HD projector and a nice AV setup with DIY stands and my 7.1 surround sound computer speakers. I built it cheaply, using products from woot and substitutes such as two stackable shelves to house the projector instead of buying a $150+ projector mount. The problem is that although the projector has lots of types of inputs, most of the ones I use are component so I find myself switching cables all the time to hook up my DVD player, cable, and wii to the projector and speakers. What do I do if I don’t want to spend $600+ on an HD receiver? I found the solution at micro center: 3 to 1 A/V switches for about $20 each. Beforehand I discovered that you can use regular RCA cables for component video (I match Video / Left Channel / Right Channel (Y W R) with Y, Pb, Br, (G B R) respectively, but you can do it any order as long as they match – this is what just makes sense to me). Then, I realized I could use two RCA switches, one for HD video and one for audio. I use all nine inputs on the video switch and 6 inputs for the audio (I just leave the video ports unplugged). It works great. The downside is I have no remote to control the receiver, but it’s a lot better than plugging and sorting cables out. I may get some flack for saying this, but it really doesn’t matter what kind of cables you buy. There’s no consensus that analog component is better than HDMI, and monster cables are a rip off, especially over short distances. Places like Best Buy will sell you $100 monster cables because you’ll buy them, just like you buy their $25 USB cables when they really cost $2 online. The colors don’t even have to match (there’s nothing special about the differently colored HD cables), and actually my 50 foot DVI cable (which is digital) has more noise and artifacts than my cheap $2 radio shack A/V cables. This may not please the audiophiles, but it’s a great way to set up your home theatre on the cheap. […]
hey… for a cheap surround sound receiver your setup sounds good and all, but why not get a decent home theatre reciever to compliment your projector and 8 point surropund. I’m a cheapo as well hence the reason Im lookin for do-it-urself heehaw on the net, but… I totally found a website about a place in denton texas that sales all kinds of electronics retarded cheap. I bought a 60″ sony bravia DLP HDTV 1080p 10,000:1 ratio yadda yadda for $774.00 after taxes. and a sony bravia 5.1 HDMI surround sound for 200…. its http://www.purplewave.com, now Its an auction site like ebay, but after the auction they do live bidding and bid for the internet winner up to there max price… yada yadda, if you go to it then you can read about it. anyways, either check it out or don’t.. just wanted to pass along the info… again its an auction site so some stuff goes for uber expensive, but some stuff is also retarded cheap. go to that website and check out the SOLD feb 16th auction… go to projection tvs and scroll down,… there you will see what I paid for my 60″ sony for all the haterz readin this and doubting it… again I aint meanin to preach about this place man, but I hate to see someone with a nice system set it up all heehaw to save money when theres correct ways of doin it for cheap as well. but yeah… props for the speaker stands and the link cause im about to go make some myself… holla back
Thanks for the info. I did actually end up buying a receiver, I got the RCA 2770 of woot.com. http://www.woot.com/Blog/BlogEntry.aspx?BlogEntryId=3083 It does a decent job, though it only has a couple inputs and doesn’t switch video, so I still have my poor man’s HD switches running into them. Combined though it’s a pretty good setup.
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