I’m still finishing my basement office little-by-little. I bought some shitty speaker mounts from monoprice.com and they just can’t hold my 7lb speakers (despite the 10-lb rating). Anyone have any suggestions?
I ended up ordering the Omnimount 20.0 mounts. I have them in my living room and they work great. However, they are very expensive. I got the speakers for a great price, but the mounts are nearly as much as the speakers!
7lb speakers sound small to me so what about simply putting up high shelves for them to sit on?
I have my house wired for speakers but used a combination of either shelves or creating hanging points on wooden speakers for nails in studs. My only mounting brackets are for the outdoor speakers and the brackets were included with the speakers.
Aesthetics, mostly.
I’ve mounted 3 24" widescreen monitors on the wall and built a floating “L” desk along the wall. I want to put a speaker over each monitor, and then 3 more in surround-sound positions. I think shelves would wind up costing me more than the $33 mounts I ordered @ Amazon; and they would look a bit out-of-place. I’ll post some pics when I finish (don’t hold your breath… it’s been on-and-off for a year already!)
Are the speakers plastic or wooden framed? If plastic you might be able to find four inexpensive plastic brackets that you can super glue or epoxy onto the speaker for simple screw or nail mounting. If wooded framed it should be easy to picking up inexpensive brackets like those used to hang a large picture.
Sorry about the shelf suggestion, I forget sometimes that not everybody just makes their own shelves and thus they can be very cheap and custom.
Actually, I do make my own shelves :).
I really want to point the speakers at a specific location. So I’d have to start building angled shelves and anchor the speakers to them, etc.
The speakers have wood boxes. They’ve already got keyhole slots on them for mounting but I can’t turn/angle/point them when using those. I guess the choices are really build-my-own or just pay for the Omnimounts. I chose the Omnimounts because they’re the least obtrusive, and more importantly, not time consuming.
Last possibility then (from me) for a cheap substitute.
Use a really long heavy nail into a stud. Have it stick out 3".
Determine the angles you want the speakers to be facing and build two wedges per speaker to set this angle.
Use something like hot glue on the wedges so if you decide to change the angle it is simple to remove the wedges.
Thanks for all the suggestions, but it looks like I’m “stuck” with the Omnimounts. I wouldn’t trust hot glue to hold anything heavy near/over my head.
I am/was hoping someone would chime in with, “Wow! $30 a mount is pricey. Have you seen these…?”
Acoustically speaking, speaker wall mounts are a pretty bad idea. They couple the speaker directly to the wall and the wall acts as a resonating soundboard.
A shelf system would be better. Use a wedge of open cell foam to angle your speakers. The foam will also isolate the speaker from the shelf.
Just to clarify, the large heavy nail would be handling all the weight. The wedges would only be for positioning the speaker off the wall at an angle and thus why hot glue would do the job. The hot glue would not be supporting any weight worth mentioning.
But yes the mounts would be the simplest way and maybe someone will still come up with a cheaper mount.
ETA: Seeing Seven’s post, you could make the wedges from foam just as easily.
I can see the wall resonating if the speaker were right up against the wall, but these mounts offset the speaker from the wall. Doesn’t that fix/help the problem?
Doesn’t the shelf couple it to the wall too? I guess foam would take care of that though. But the wedge of foam… wouldn’t that cause the speaker to tip over? I’m imagining this speaker pointed down towards me just sliding off and eventually falling from the vibrations.
Check out security camera mounts instead. They use the same screw thread mounting as speakers, but can be much cheaper. I’m using a pair of security camera mounts for my rear speakers right now. As for shelves, no. The higher the frequency, the more directional the sound. I have my rear speakers aimed right at my head, and there is no way I could accomplish that by having them sitting on a shelf.
That’s exactly what I was thinking. I really gotta point them to the right spot. I’m going to tape a laser pointer to 'em and make them focus on (approximately) the same spot.
I’ve ordered from them and was pleased with the service. I don’t know if the $20 mounts would meet your needs or if that price is enough lower to even be helpful.
Here are the brackets I’m using. They are Speco CST-125A, and I can find them on-line for $4.72 each.
The wall mount would transfer the energy from the speaker to the wall. Same with a shelf.
You need to decouple the speaker from the mount or shelf in some way.
You can test this at home with a rubberband, a metal fork and a Styrofoam cooler. Stick the fork in the cooler. Put one end of the rubberband around the end of the fork and pluck the rubberband. The fork transfers the energy directly to the cooler and the sound of the rubberband vibrating is clearly heard - often louder than without the fork/cooler.
They sell acoustic rubber mounts for this sort of thing if you need to secure a speaker to an object.
The other method is to place your speakers on something with so much mass the energy from the speaker can’t move it. Commonly, we in the industry know this as a big-chunk-o-cement ™.
Of course, I’m not saying DON’T use speaker mounts. Most people won’t even notice. But for better sound, decoupling is better.
Howzabout a different flavor of question: Why do you want to use speakers rather than headphones? Seems like the latter would be easier, and the price:sound-quality ratio tends to be better.
In my case, it’s because headphones are only stereo, while my sound system is a 5.1 surround sound one, and I love surround music.
