Outdoor Speakers, help appreciated.

[LaurasOtherHalf]

In the planning stages of our walled garden build and as one of the things I’d like is some outdoor music.

I have absolutely no idea where technology is at with these at present however.

I’d like a couple of zones ideally, we will have two balconies that could have some flush fitted in soffets that could be hard wired to my current AV system and that would work great as they could then broadcast sport that is being shown indoors or whatever.

In the lower garden area however, what would be the options? Presumably BluTooth for source? Hard wired?

There will be lighting and extra CCTV going in so cable runs will be there although from anything AV wise you’d be talking massively long runs.

Any pointers or anyone who has installed anything themselves?

[NorthDave]

What do you mean by massive cable runs? We design outdoor garden system all the time and unless you have a particularly huge garden then you wont have any problems. You have a 100m theoretical limitation on Cat5e anyway if running it as ethernet.

Loads of outdoor cabinet speakers available. Maybe post a plan of the garden if you want more detailed help?

[LaurasOtherHalf]

Thanks for the reply Dave, with regards to AV my outputs on my sky+ box and amp are maxed out so would need to split the signal and get it around 50m away to some sort of IP rated terminal via cat5/6.

From there a cheap portable projector would surface but we’d obviously need some speakers.

If that was running AV the other speakers I’d utilise would probably be Bluetooth so’s to allow people in one area to listen to music while others watched sport/movies etc.

I guess I’d be looking at 3 individual zones in addition to what we already have;

Existing;
Skybox to living room tv, living room projector and kitchen tv with magic eye.

Future garden
Projector to outdoor area for sports and movies.
Balcony 1
Balcony 2 and patio area to play music

[wjwren]

i've got this which i'm really pleased with:

yamaha n602 amp with Bose 251 outdoors on the patio and JBL outdoor extreme in the gazebo. You can control it all off the ipad. Speakers are cabled not wireless and are great.