Stuart’s A/V install project–Part 3

Hello welcome to part 3 of my AV install project. I’ve got some more photos of upstairs to show today. In my bedroom I am wall mounting my old 37” Samsung LCD TV. This was an early model that cost me 800 quid at the time and its only 720P not 1080P. I managed to convince the wife we should have a new TV for the living room, she agreed but only if we could have one of the new ultra slim LED models, more about that later. I plan to put my XBOX 360 in the bedroom also as I like playing video games in there and the rest of the family can still watch TV in the living room. We will have the Nintendo WII in the living room as its more family orientated anyways.

I wanted ceiling speakers in the bedroom, I would have gone for Nile Audio or Quest ceiling speakers as I have used both previously on installs and can recommend them, but too much for my small budget. So I had to find something cheaper but still with “decent” specs. Another good choice would have been Polk or Kef speakers but again out of my budget. After some research online and on eBay I found some speakers by Adastra. I’d never heard of them before but they had quite low frequency response which cheap speakers don’t normally have. The ones I bought at trade price were model 952.534UK 6.25 inch diameter. The frequency response was lowish at 45Hz. Lower frequency response gives you a more bassy sound.

I’ve got the speakers installed and had a quick test, they sound reasonable for the money but not fantastic but I guess you get what you pay for, but for the price, which was cheap I am happy. I also plan to later add a single stereo ceiling speaker in the bathroom I’ve already cabled for it, the model is a 952.537UK and drive this speaker from the Speaker B option on the amp in the bedroom.

Master Bedroom Ceiling Speakers

I had a problem with the speaker cables I used a 5.1 speaker wall plate and just took out the center speaker binding posts, leaving me with two pairs of binding posts, this wall plate is at the bottom of the wall in the corner near the window. I had to get speaker cable from there up in to the loft some how. The wall the speaker plate is on is solid brick, instead I planned to go under the floor and to an adjacent stud partition wall and up inside this stud partition wall. I measured and drilled a hole in the loft down in to the stud wall and at the bottom I cut out a single gang socket hole, using the fishing reel I was unable to get the metal rod up or down the full length of the wall as there were wooden studs going horizontally as well as vertically. My plaster was in the room plastering the block wall as I was trying to route these cables, I said can you patch a small channel in this plasterboard? He said sure, I then got the axle grinder and put a small channel right the way up and chiselled out the horizontal wooden studs to get the cable past them. A bit drastic but it was the only easy way I could see of getting the cable up in loft and I wasn’t going to use surface trunking in the room!

Small channel in the stud partition wall for speaker cables going up in to the loft.

TV wall mount in the master bedroom

This is very similar to what I did downstairs, just no TOSLINK optical but an RCA audio wall plate instead for TV audio out. I also added an RCA wall plate (Red / White audio) at the other side of the room where my bedside cabinet will be, so the iPod dock there can connect to the amp at the other side of the room which will be under the wall mounted TV on a chest of drawers. I ran two Kelsey UNI-1 cables under the floorboards between to the two RCA wall plates at opposite sides of the room.

The photo below is back in the living room, the day I got our new LG 42inch LED TV. The model is 42LE4500 and its pretty much the cheapest 42 inch LED TV you can buy right now. Personally I would have gone for a fatter LCD with more features like Internet TV but my wife insisted we should have a ultra slim LED one and this was the only more in my budget range.

Ignore the amp you can see, that is a Cambridge Audio A1 MK3 amp that is going in the cupboard under the stairs to drive the kitchen speakers from the WHS audio out which will also live in the cupboard. The TV bench is a rather nice Alphason APP1000 unit I bought off eBay for about 75 pounds, my HTPC, AVR and Nintendo WII will live in there.

Well I think that’s it for part 3, more soon in part 4, please leave your comments if you have any questions.