Hi! It’s Keith Harmon with Smart Wire at Home, and we’re back with how to select and install a high definition home theater. Next we’re going to be talking about in wall speakers, so when we first look at anything we’re talking in the wall or on the wall; we’re worried about construction of what’s inside that wall, just like we’re worried when we’re talking about the mounting the plasma screen on the wall. We’re going to make sure we know where the studs are. Same thing with the in wall speakers, we would really know where the studs are. So when we look at this picture here, this is an actual picture of this wall before the dry wall was placed on. So if we look here each one of these two by four studs they’re sixteen inches on center apart, so that means the center of this stud to the center of this stud is sixteen inches. That is the US Building Code Standard which means they sometimes maybe closer than that, but most of the time that’s what you will find. So when we look at that, we want to put a speaker here, or here, not here because it won’t work or we’ll have to actually take out that stud and if it’s a load bearing wall like this one is, this entire ceiling is held up by this wall, you really want to be careful about that, taking out those studs because you know, you don’t want your house to fall down.

So, we stay within the, within those studs, so that also brings to light some pre planning on where you’re going to be placing these things, pre construction. For instance, if you’re going to do an on wall large screen like this with the in wall speakers, in the middle here, you want to make sure that you’re not, the middle is not right here. If it is, then you’ll have to do something by taking out the stud putting in support just like you would put above, make it just like a doorway or window, to put support above it, so you put the stud there or reposition it, so that you’re on one side on the other on that stud.

So what is that look like? Here is an example of an in wall speaker. In wall speakers are typically rectangular, as you see here and here, this is a larger, you know, it’s a bit wider. This has 18 inches or a little more based, when you look at it from the other side, again this is 16 inches on the center which you would typically see what would be inside the wall. Of course while the speakers are in the wall, still has to get a signal from the receiver, so running a wire from wherever your surround sound receiver is to the destination on the wall, where the speakers going to be is a key pre requisite that you have to planned out in advance before you could do this. Once that speaker wire is in the wall it’s actually, there’s a different styles of mounting. This is one that a lot of speakers use with the push pin, putting in the positive in one side, and the negative on the other side, make sure you use a speaker wire that tells you, keeps track of which one is which, that is not identical, so you could tell which one is positive negative on those sides.

We see little feet that come out, so that when screwed in, the speaker can mount itself to the dry wall, so that when you’re done you just get a nice speaker on the wall like this. The speaker is only a few inches deep, can’t be more than three and a half inches, that’s again the dept of a two by four stud, so when we look at that, that’s a typical construction although if you have two by three construction as some town houses and condos have to just save that extra inter space inside the wall, then you have to get some special in wall speakers that are not quite as deep. So here we have the front of an eight inch ceiling speaker. When we look at the back we see some of the details here, within the close up here we can kind of see that this side is higher and this side is lower. That’s the directionality of this particular speaker, to point in a particular direction of the ceiling, zooming towards the viewing area. We see a different style of connector here for the speaker wire. This one you push in and slice in form the side, slice in the hole, and up down in the hole, and spring it a little brings it back up, so that gives us a way to hook up a ceiling speaker.

Another big consideration when you’re looking at in wall speakers is what is on the other side of the wall. This is a lesson that few people learn the hard way when they put a movie theater next to their master bedroom, and they put the speakers on the wall which means that the master bedroom can hear everything that’s going on the home theater that’s on the other side of the wall because you’re already half way through the wall where the sound is. Sound comes out of the back of the speaker as well as the back of the speaker. So when you’re looking at, putting that you really need to pay attention to what’s on the other side of that wall and there are things you can do to reduce that. Now, Poke Make Something as well as other speaker manufacturers they call this a performance enclosure. It also is a sound reducer because you don’t hear this much because now the sound is on the backside of the speaker is kept within this box. It’s just like having a speaker box that you’re use to seeing, but that box happens to be inside the wall, so we see this box would fit, it’s just wide enough to fit in between the 16 inches on the center stud, so this box would just go right in between there. The reason it’s so tall like this is because it’s so thin. It has to be able to fit in between that three and a half inch wall that is a two by four stud, so we put this inside the wall, we then put in dry wall. Dry wall will then go in the front of that, and then the speaker would mount in there, and all the sound from the back of the speaker stays in the enclosure, now at least most of it, and then the rest of the sound comes out the front, so this starts two things, one it provides the speaker a better performance and also provides you with better sound deadening on the other side of the wall.

Well that about wraps it up for how to select and install a high definition home theater. I’m Keith Harmon with Smart Wire at Home, Adapting technology to fit you life.