Thread: Looking for OUTDOOR speakers

Hey, thanks. Good in-depth report. I may try to go with the smaller pair you recommend plus some sort of a subwoofer - it's a screened porch with roof. I suspect the regular speakers would give me the highs and mids I'm looking for and the subwoofer the bass. Probably a subwoofer in a poly cabinet so it won't fall apart with regular moisture.
Thanks, again.

"Sounds" like an ideal solution for your situation! Let us know how it works out!

Well I finally got to tweaking some system parameters last weekend and set the front speakers to "large", which directs more bass to either the A or B pair, the outdoor speakers being the latter. (I don't know the crossover point or equalization yet - I didn't adjust either.) Immediately that had an impact on the sound from the AP650s and they sounded a good bit better. Surprisingly this did not hurt the max. volume level at all, if anything improving it. I have more playing around to do, but so far so good!. Here's a picture of them hanging on my fence. Other items of interest to SatGuys regulars appear in there as well, tho' harder to spot...! Have a great weekend all!

After a little research and a lot of review reading, I'm going w/the AP640's as well. Thanks for helping me make a decision.

As for the lack of clarity of the sound at high volume levels, a likely culprit is your speaker wire. There are 2 electrical rules at play here.

1) resistance increases over distance. This simply means that the longer your wire is, the more difficult it is for the original signal to be reproduced at your speaker. The answer is to use larger wires for longer distances. Larger in electrical terms means smaller #s. For example 16 gague wire is larger than 18g and 14g is larger than either of those, etc.

2)The skin effect. Electricity likes to travel on the surface of wires, thus the term 'skin effect'. Therefore the more strands of wire you have in a single cable, the less resistance you have. For example a 14g house wire has a single strand or wire to conduct the electricity where as a 14g speaker wire has many strands to conduct the electricity. Both wires are the same size but the speaker wire has less resistance because it has more surface area or 'skin' for the electricity to travel on. Speaker wires contain different #s of strands.

None of this really matters much at short distances, but when you get into long distances, it becomes very important and the longer the distance the more important it becomes.

So your answer in short is to try using a larger wire (smaller #) w/a high strand count.

PS
A simple way to figure out if this is the culprit, is to bring the speakers inside, connect them to your existing hose speaker wires (which will likely be much shorter) and see if they perform any differently.

Tks. I am an EE by training so I know a fair amount about what you're saying. Skin effect will be miniscule at audio frequencies. It's very much a concern at RF, but not so much at 20kHz and below. Anyway even if it were an audible issue, the impact would be most noticeable at the treble frequencies, and those are quite clear with the AP650s (below the overload level), at least to these aging ears. There is truth that stranded wire will have less skin effect vs. solid (also frequency dependent), but the real difference will come only in "Litz" wire (each strand individually insulated). Otherwise stranded performs much like "bulk" (solid) wire. You might find the following interesting and germane:


Skin Effect and cable impedance

The problem I hear is likely to be more related to loss of damping factor by use of the light ga. wire. I used 18 ga. over an approx. 75' run where 12 ga. would have been a minumum for serious audio presence. But it's in conduit and I had a size constraint. The higher resistance adds to "ringing" especially in the lower frequencies that would normally be "damped" in a lower impedance circuit. (The effect is where a bass drum beat sounds more like a "boom" rather than a "thud".) This can certainly add "muddiness" to the sound, but that would be present at all volume levels. The issue I have is with the apparent volume limitation, which is essentially the power handling limitation of the speakers themselves in an open area.

The experiment I will try next is to connect my Paradigms outside. I have every expectation that, even with the light ga. wire, they will sound significantly better at louder volumes. But they also cost ~5 times more. For the price the APs are a good value for the intended purpose, and I have no issues with them. The AP640s should be essentially the same as the 650s. I just need to be more practical about the max. volume level!

Welcome to the forums, BTW...

If you have not looked at them I use the JBL Northridge 26s on my back patio. Great separation and extremely clear at loud volumes. My neighbor recently got himslef a set after hearing mine.

JBL N26AW II Northridge Series Bookshelf Speakers – Pair in Outdoor Speakers at JR.com

They look very similar in spec to the ones here too:


Outdoor Weather Proof Patio Speakers