Music on the Porch
Posted September 18th, 2013 at 5:48 pm by Matt
We have a screened-in porch off in our home and we love music. Already having some speakers hooked up to an Airport Express in the office (which so nicely fill the downstairs with tunes during work, parties, and in-between), we wanted to add some music to the porch as well. It was so simple and works so well I thought I’d share what we did.
First – get an Airport Express (http://bit.ly/19h8syz).
Second – get some nice speakers. I opted for some in ceiling speakers as they’d be out of the way and I had easy access to run the wires already. I went with some Micca 8″ speakers (http://amzn.to/17Kk2SH) which got great reviews – and turns out – sound super!
Third – get a speaker amp to connect the Airport Express to the speakers themselves. I went with a Lepai 20 watt amp (http://amzn.to/14jYcF3). Note: you’ll also need some speaker cable – but you can get that just about anywhere.
The installation is very simple. Start with the speakers. These install like old construction switch boxes (if you’re electrically inclined you’ll know what I mean). Cut a hole with the template you’ll get with each speaker, attach the speaker wire, then set the speaker in the hole and use 4 screws with tabs on them that will kick in and hold it right in place for you.
Next, take the airport express and an Ethernet cable – connect the AE to your laptop and use the Airport Utility to connect it to your wi-fi and give it a name. Once that’s done – bring it over to where you want it to live in a closet, wall, ceiling, etc and plug it in. I used a 1/8″ to RCA (something like this http://amzn.to/OkXsp1) to connect the mini jack of the AE to the speaker amp. Then plug the speaker cable to the speaker amp and boom. You’re connected.
A final word of advice: 20 watts might not sound like a lot. It is. Keep the volume knob on the speaker amp under 50% – perhaps under 25% to start.
I grabbed my iPhone, opened the Spotify app and in a moment had music wirelessly playing through the new porch speakers.
Total time – under an hour. Total cost – about $200. Very cool.
I like your music choices. 😉
Out of curiosity, any concerns with water/weather proofing?
The top 18″ or so of our screened in porch is solid (not screened) as you can kind of see in the first photo. So rain should not be a problem. I tried to find min/max temperature specs for these speakers – but could not. But at the end of the day this speaker is similar (I think) to what you’d find in a car – which would put the temperature range they’re exposed to in the same ballpark. I *think* they’ll be fine – but they do come with a 2 year warranty :-). Music choice was…uh…my wife’s?