Pete Zahut wrote:

After reading the replies so far, I have to ask - how big is the garden and
how considerate of your neighbours are you? - because the answer to those
two questions could save you much cash. This group is tremendous and I have
a lot of respect for the very knowledgeable people who frequent it and offer
very good advice - but I can't help thinking that, on ocassions (this being
one of them) things are taken a bit too seriously.

I agree - but then again it would be a more tedious thread if one had to
wade through too much cruft regarding neighbourhood relations etc. One
hopes the OP can work out those aspects well enough for himself!

First of all, you're going to be playing music into the open air, which I
would imagine is never going to be "acoustically brilliant", so I would
question the need to bother (specifically) about woofers, tweeters, baffle
boxes and so forth.

It depends a bit on what you are after. There is a certain amount of
challenge in designing speaker systems that can produce a credible and
pleasing sound stage at low volume levels.

Most people will have experienced the unwelcome effects of a loud but
small radio etc playing in a garden, where the band pass filtered sound
from a small overdriven speaker seems to travel and penetrate. They may
find a quieter but slightly more weighty response from a well made pair
of speakers less irritating. (having to listen to music you don't want
to is irritating - having to listen to it being reproduced badly is even
more so IME)

Secondly, unless you have no neighbours nearby (or just don't care about
your neighbours), you'll never be able to play your music very loud so you
don't need to worry about power levels or cable sizes.

Cable sizes become slightly more important as distance increases. The
cable resistance becoming a significant proportion of the speakers
impedance is undesirable usually. I would also expect the TMH would have
ready access to a reel of T&E from stock, whereas he may not have more
traditional speaker cables in the van.

I can listen to Led Zeppelin, Free, The Who etc., etc., at levels loud
enough to annoy my neighbours without distortion if I so wished, but of
course, I don't as I'm not like that. The point is, we have perfectly good
music out in the garden for when we're working out there or when we're
BBQing, all for just a few quid, and all without going into degree-level
sound engineering - and it's been working perfectly well for the last 4
years.

Indeed. Also neighbours are likely to be more tolerant of music
accompanying the occasional BBQ or other special event than they will
for every day noise/music pollution. Especially if you invite them to
the BBQ!

--
Cheers,

John.

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