Gazebo got an upgrade

[Orion7319]

I decided to upgrade the Dual speakers at my gazebo. Decided to up some of these guys over a pair of Atriums. KHO-7. They don’t sound the best out of the box, but burn them in for 8-10 hours and they start to sound nice. Very power hungry. They want an amp that is at least 75watts at 8ohms. Most small class D amps don’t actually do that as their stated wattage is usually for 4ohms and probably peak power. Basically anything with a 12 volt power supply is going to be kinda week. I tried 3 amps and settled on this one. Fosi amp. It might be just a tad underpowered, but it can get more then loud enough to irritate neighbors at max volume, so it’s perfect for my application. It doesn’t seem to distort even maxed completely out. It’s a very clean amp, I can see why it gets such great reviews. It has Bluetooth, which I haven’t tried. Right now I’m feeding it with an old gen3 Apple TV with airplay1. Will pick up a second gen airport express at some point as they support airplay2, and are cheap on eBay. This setup gives me decent enough sound. It would probably blow my indoor stereo away if I incorporated a powered sub.

 

[Jimrahbe]

Orion,

Funny... I just installed the same exact amp in my wood shop yesterday. I'm using an old tablet to play Amazon Prime music and the bluetooth amp to drive the speakers. Like you said, it works great for something so small and cheap. It replaced an old RCA amp/receiver with a million inputs for all your stereo and TV inputs. About the size of a house and not as good.

Thanks for the pics,

Jim R.

 

[Orion7319]

Orion,

Funny... I just installed the same exact amp in my wood shop yesterday. I'm using an old tablet to play Amazon Prime music and the bluetooth amp to drive the speakers. Like you said, it works great for something so small and cheap. It replaced an old RCA amp/receiver with a million inputs for all your stereo and TV inputs. About the size of a house and not as good.

Thanks for the pics,

Jim R.

I tried a class D Pyle amp and an old Lepi class D amp. They couldn’t really drive these speakers. The Fosi is more up to the task. Usually class A or A/B is the way to go, but you won’t find those in this small a form factor. I deal with big expensive 2,000-5,000watt amps at work, so I have experience with about everything across the board. This small cheap amp is very impressive for what it is.

 

[Tcadwall0]

Nice!

I used 4 AW-650s + a Dayton Audio 10" outdoor sub for my pool area last year. I stole a full shelf (tall one) from my wife's corner kitchen cabinet (and opened the back for cooling) for the 2 amps, power conditioner, and Echo-Flex that provides the signal. I am covering a pretty large area with it.

Good to see a viable setup that doesn't consume so much real-estate for small outdoor areas! I have kids and other friends that would likely be happy with your setup - I will keep it in mind.

 

[Orion7319]

What music service are you using with the echo flex? I haven’t gotten Apple Music to work so great with echo devices, and I don’t really want to use another streaming music service. The Fosi amp should power the 650s just fine, unless you need them to be really loud. I have been looking at the Dayton Audio 10" outdoor sub myself. I’m thinking about picking up this Fosi sub amp to power it. If I use an 1/8 inch splitter I could feed a signal to both amps and dial in the bass response to my liking between the two. That will be a project for down the road.. down the road being however long I need to wait between this last purchase and the time my wife won’t be mad at me for buying more audio stuff…lol

 

[Tcadwall0]

I had to laugh reading the last part of your post. When we were planning the pool, I told my wife there was going to be a minimum $1k put into audio. She didn't like it, but she wanted furniture, lots of plants etc. I got the Klipsch speakers "Used like New" on Amazon (less than half price per pair) - and I swear the boxes were opened - someone saw the size of them and returned them. They were perfect. I saved on the amplifier cost by using Rockville Sound amps which you might be familiar with... so far they are working very well. In any case, I was on-budget until I had to buy the power conditioner - so I didn't go far over.

To your question - I have always been more of an Android guy, so I am not vested in Apple. I have my Alexa account linked to several services, but my most used is Amazon Music. I used to use the free Pandora but got tired of ads. I had the full on SiriusXM subscription, but you really can't pick and choose songs and genre's as easily.

I do like really loud occasionally, you know, when Bohemian Rhapsody comes on - or some other 'crank it up' tune. I would rather have the amp headroom, than damage some speakers because a little alcohol had me pushing the amp to clipping levels.

The system has been in full weather for over a year now, and no issues at all. Happy with all the speakers. The 650's actually had much more bass than I expected, so the sub does seem to be enough extra for my area.

One cool device that I found recently (after running an optical cable from a new outdoor tv to the amp) allows me to control the IR - only receiver amp.... This thing connected to wifi quickly, and I was able to add custom buttons for my unknown amp, within minutes. https://a.co/d/7TC0Ho9

 

[Orion7319]

Yep! It’s sooooooo easy to blow money on audio gear!
Once Apple gets you, they got you.. you can never escape their ecosystem… if your happy with android, don’t ever switch..
I have used Rockville amps before, they sound great. I usually speck out crown amps for projects at work though as they are pretty bullet prof, but I do like Rockville.
Furman power conditioners are pretty ubiquitous in control room and commercial AV installations. They are generally all you need if you have a relatively stable voltage coming in. Your more likely to have decent power in commercial spaces then in an old house. For my home though that’s not the case as I get brown outs. In those situations you really need a voltage regulator. I use one that’s pretty cheap, it does a great job. It completely eliminates random reboots due to voltage drops. APC voltage regulator.
Surprisingly the Fosi amp doesn’t seem to break up or clip at all at max power (at least when paired with these particular speakers). That’s kind of what’s got me geeking out about it. I tried it at max volume and then I turned my iPhone all the way up, no distortion at all. These class D amps are getting better.
I don’t think I’ve ever seen an IR blaster that cheap! That’s a great deal!

 

[Katodude]

+1 on Apple getting you locked in. We buy the $29/month subscription that gives us music, TV, Fitness, 2TB storage. I also have a $60/year Pandora subscription because I really like listening to Pandora and dont want the adds.

Now my question. I have an at least 10 year old set of Yamaha outdoor speakers being driven by a Sonos amp (I think 55 watts). It might be time to replace them. I will probably also end up replacing the Sonos Amps with one of the new ones that puts out 110 watts. Do you recommend these speakers or do you recommend something else? I am old and listened to too much loud music when I was young so I wont notice subtle differences in sound.

 

[Orion7319]

+1 on Apple getting you locked in. We buy the $29/month subscription that gives us music, TV, Fitness, 2TB storage. I also have a $60/year Pandora subscription because I really like listening to Pandora and dont want the adds.

Now my question. I have an at least 10 year old set of Yamaha outdoor speakers being driven by a Sonos amp (I think 55 watts). It might be time to replace them. I will probably also end up replacing the Sonos Amps with one of the new ones that puts out 110 watts. Do you recommend these speakers or do you recommend something else? I am old and listened to too much loud music when I was young so I wont notice subtle differences in sound.

These speakers are great unless you want a lot of base. I would think something with a 6inch speaker would give a bit more punch, but these are great I think. They sound a bit puny when you first get them but start to open up after a few hours on them. They do seem a bit more particular about what amp is driving them then most other speakers, but I also hear the Atriums are like this as well. I like them, they sound fine on their own, but just like any book shelf sized speakers they would benefit greatly with a separate subwoofer. I have a system with a Yamaha amp, very old KLH AV-1001B speakers I’ve had since the 90’s and a monoprice 10 inch sub. The KHO-7s are a perhaps a tad bit better then then my KLH speakers and those are my favorite bookshelf speakers I have ever owned (I mean I haven’t gotten rid of them in 30 years) so I personally like the KHO-7’s very much but speaker selection is a very subjective thing.

 

[DMS2014]

My gazebo has smart lights - I can change the colors but recently noticed certain colors split. It’s weird

 

[Orion7319]

My gazebo has smart lights - I can change the colors but recently noticed certain colors split. It’s weird

I tried to find some of those locally. Just wound up with regular string lights. Those are cool! Where did you find them?

 

[DMS2014]

I tried to find some of those locally. Just wound up with regular string lights. Those are cool! Where did you find them?

Amazon. Smart lights section. They work with Alexa too which is great but the light thing is new bc I like blue and use it a lot and now half the blue string is dead but other colors work

 

[Orion7319]

Amazon. Smart lights section. They work with Alexa too which is great but the light thing is new bc I like blue and use it a lot and now half the blue string is dead but other colors work

That’s too bad. Do you think you can return them?

 

[salty87]

+1 on Apple getting you locked in. We buy the $29/month subscription that gives us music, TV, Fitness, 2TB storage. I also have a $60/year Pandora subscription because I really like listening to Pandora and dont want the adds.

Now my question. I have an at least 10 year old set of Yamaha outdoor speakers being driven by a Sonos amp (I think 55 watts). It might be time to replace them. I will probably also end up replacing the Sonos Amps with one of the new ones that puts out 110 watts. Do you recommend these speakers or do you recommend something else? I am old and listened to too much loud music when I was young so I wont notice subtle differences in sound.

A little bigger, heavier and $$ but these sound fantastic. I've got em on an older Sonos amp with loudness turned on. Makes all the difference. Plenty of bottom end even on far side of the pool.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00170O1HK/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&th=1

 

[DMS2014]

That’s too bad. Do you think you can return them?

Nope. Been over a year. But they mostly work and I can change the colors either by voice or app so …

 

[Orion7319]

Picked up a gen 2 Apple airport express for $38.00. Once configured and updated to the latest firmware, it provides airplay 2. Got that plugged into the Fosi amp. Swapped the 40inch smart TV for an older 40inch TV that I had hooked up to a 1080p Apple TV that has TVos. Sounds great! Much better then Bluetooth. Speakers have no discernible delay from video on the TV.