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View Full Version : Hanging 340s--is this a stupid idea?



curtis
02-01-2004, 10:04 AM
Another consideration is the port on the back of the 340's. The 340's need a fair amount of distance behind them or there is a risk of sounding boomy.

-curtis

loraan
02-01-2004, 02:02 PM
How much room are we talking here?

curtis
02-02-2004, 12:14 AM
It is going to vary from room to room. In my room, I found that at least 14 inches, right now I have 20 inches.

-curtis

ClutchBrake
02-02-2004, 12:25 AM
When I asked David about putting the rears on a 12" deep shelf this was his reply:

"Don't stress out about it.. a 12" deep shelf is perfectly fine. You will orient the speaker so that it hangs over the shelf by 1". This will give you 2.5" clearance behind the speaker, which is plenty of space. Also, if you can angle the speaker downwards by 5 degs or so (use rubber feet in the back of the speaker), because of the rear angle, this would virtually eliminate almost all of the possible rear port problems.

Piece of cake....

Hope this helps!"

Perhaps port problems and boominess are two different things. I don't think David would recommend it if it wasn't going to sound good though.

loraan
02-02-2004, 12:58 AM
Just FYI, I did a little test where I put two tie-down straps around my 340-c and tied a short (18-inch or so) run of the "invisible hanging wire" between them. This stuff is amazingly strong. I literally bounced the speaker up and down and could detect no flex or give in the wire (which would indicate that it might be about to break). I feel absolutely confident that if I run four of these to a speaker, they will hold--<u>no problem</u>. I'm more worried about the swag bolts ripping out of the ceiling than I am about the line breaking.

I tried to find a URL for this stuff, but I can't find it anywhere. The manufacturer is "Ook" and it's called "invisible hanging wire" or something like that.

curtis
02-02-2004, 01:31 AM
Maybe the boominess is my room....

loraan...would love to see some pictures if you "hang" them.

-curtis

loraan
02-02-2004, 01:41 AM
I'll see what I can do about pictures. Got to get them hung first! :-)

Gregisme
02-02-2004, 03:26 AM
What about the whole issue of vibration? If you hang them from wire, with the speaker essentially floating around freely, there wouldn't be any place for the speakers internal vibration to dissipate too.

I thought that having speakers on decent stands of some kind is important for this reason, for vibration dissipation? Is it only a minor improvement with regards to an Ascend speaker as compared to the norm? In other words, is it more forgiving than the average speaker?

If that were true, let's say, speaker stands w/ Ascends would improve sound by only 5-10% and you can live with that level of compromise, then the ceiling mounts would be an exciting alternative. If invisible wire is indeed invisible, that is.[8D]

Gregisme
02-02-2004, 03:34 AM
oh, and then there's the whole issue of speaker wire, and how to hide it. Have you given any thought to that, loraan?

*realizing that I'm probably becoming a thorn in your side with these sticky questions* [}:)]

loraan
02-02-2004, 03:50 AM
Speaker wire is actually the easiest part. If I hang near the ceiling, the room is pre-wired for surround, so no problem there. Another solution that I'm considering is leaving the front left/right on the stands and hanging the center so that it hangs about 2 to 6 inches over the top of the TV. Then I get good center placement without putting any weight on the TV. If I do that, then I can just run wire up from the receiver like normal. it will show slightly in the space between the receiver and the TV, but I can live with that.

loraan
02-06-2004, 12:39 AM
Well, I've done it! I hung the center and liked the results so much that I decided to use the same approach for the surrounds. The "invisible hanging wire" is plenty strong enough to hold the CMT-340c and is completely invisible at a distance and visible but non-intrusive closer up.

The install was somewhat tricky because I had to get the speaker to hang level, hang centered properly, parallel to the front wall, and even with the front of the TV. The last one was the easiest, as I had some freedom to move the TV forward and backward.

Getting the speaker to hang centered was probably the most difficult of the requirements. The front wall of my viewing area has three windows and the center of the viewing area is the center of the middle window. So if anything is off-center, it's immediately obvious; the window enhances any off-center effect. My first attempt was ill-conceived and required removing the hooks, spackling the holes, and starting over from scratch. In my second attempt, I realized that if the two hooks were exactly aligned with the border of the window, then the speaker would have to hang centered with the window! I bought a right-angle square and lined the hooks up with the outside border of the window. Suffice it to say that this worked and the speaker hangs level and centered.

Figuring out how far from the wall the speaker needed to hang was pretty easy. I used a four-foot level and measured a level line out from the wall, even with the top of the TV. The front of the TV was sitting 29 inches from the wall. The CMT-340 is 10.5" deep. 10.5" / 2 = 5.25". 29" - 5.25" = 23.75", which would be the middle of the speaker--the appropriate point for two hooks to hold it. I actually had some room behind the TV, and I didn't want to move it any further into the room, so I fudged the distance by an inch or two, knowing that I could then push the TV back to match the speaker.

I chose to use two hooks, with two lines running from the left hook to the left-front and left-rear corners and two lines running from the right hook to the right-front and right-rear corners. I originally planned on a four-hook scenario, but decided that this made the system more mechanically complex (four hooks to align vs. 2, four holes in my ceiling, etc...) without offering any significant advantage.

To hang the speaker, I moved the TV forward and stacked some cardboard boxes to a height a few inches below where I really wanted the speaker to hang. I passed the nylon tie-down straps around the speaker, front and back, and cinched them down. I tied four runs of the hanging wire to the four corners of the speaker (tying it around the tie-down straps, of course) and then placed the speaker on the cardboard boxes.

Here is my method for getting the length of the wire correct. I passed a line of hanging wire over the appropriate hook. I looped it once around the hook for friction, then I took up slack until the wire was loosely taut. I continued to take up slack JUST until the point where the speaker began to lift off of the cardboard box. Then I wrapped the line a few more times around the hook, so that its own friction would keep it from unreeling, and tied a slip-knot in the end of the wire near the hook. The idea is that the friction will keep the wire from unreeling and the slip-knot will keep the end of the wire tight. Because of the hanging wire's properties, this worked and was actually really secure.

Once I had all four lines tied to the hooks, I removed the cardboard boxes. The speaker was now hanging low, which was intentional. I figured that it's easier to start low and work my way up, than start high and work my way down. Just my preference.

I then removed the slip-knot from the end of one line, lifted that corner of the speaker a little bit with my hand (so I wasn't pulling on the hook), took up the slack on the line, and re-tied the slip-knot.

I repeated this process until the speaker was hanging roughly at the right height and roughly level. I made fine adjustments by looping the load-bearing end of the wire around the hook--that way I didn't have to untie the knot and risk the whole thing slipping. I used a small torpedo level to confirm that the speaker was leveled properly. Once everything was correct, I took out the slip-knots (the friction on the line kept it from slipping as long as I kept reasonable tension on the loose end of the line) and tied everything off using a knot described on the back of the invisible hanging wire.

Finally, I made fine adjustments by sliding the knots near the speaker and sliding the speaker around in the tie-down straps. For example, by pushing a knot out towards the edge of the speaker, you can lower that corner slightly. By pulling it in towards the center of the speaker, you can raise that corner slightly. This allows for finer adjustments than you can really do by taking up or letting out slack on the line at the hook-end. The speaker originally didn't hang quite parallel with the front wall, so I shifted the tie-down straps so that they lay diagonally across the top and bottom of the speaker isntead of parallel to the speaker. I shifted them until the speaker hung parallel.

Then I pushed the TV back into place... Voila!

I used a similar process to hang the 170 surrounds, but it was much easier because they're so much smaller and lighter. I only used one hook and two lines (a single line runs from left-front to left-back and passes over the hook in the middle, instead of doing separate runs for each corner and tying them off at the hook).

I will post pictures as soon as I can, but it might be a while because I'm about to take a business trip.

Gregisme
02-06-2004, 02:52 AM
WoW! can't wait to see those pictures! thanks for posting your description.

Have you had a chance to really listen since you made these changes? Please share your observations when you get the chance.

loraan
02-06-2004, 03:01 AM
Honestly, I hadn't had a chance to really listen to them before I hung them. I had just moved into a new home and bought the speakers for the new place. I had been listening to the left and rights for about a week before hanging the center and surrounds. But since the center (with XBAF crossover) and surrounds (170s vs. 340s) are different speakers than the left and right, it's hard to say how the hanging might have changed the speakers' sound. I know that speakers are supposed to be well braced, but my thinking was that the speaker's mass should be very large relative to the mass of air that the driver is having to move, therefore the speaker's inertia alone should be enough to minimalize any negative effects coming from not having a sturdy base. That being said, I'm not really clear on what problems are supposed to be introduced by hanging a speaker vs. putting it on a base.

loraan
03-07-2004, 06:40 AM
Please forgive if linking to another forum is in bad taste, but it'll save me the trouble of double-posting the pictures.

Here's the URL to the companion thread to this one on avsforum, to which I just uploaded pictures.

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?s=&postid=3490476

Lou-the-dog
03-07-2004, 09:30 AM
Nice job! An excellent solution for some of those tough placement situations... and I assume relatively low cost to boot!! Thanks for sharing.

Randy

Gregisme
03-07-2004, 01:31 PM
hmm.. the wiring is more visible than I had hoped, at least in those pictures. Really nice job in getting them balanced though.

I wonder if you can create a dramatic effect in your room by wrapping some kind of material around the supporting strings? Like braiding two colors of rope together that would compliment and dramatize your room decor?

But then again, that would defeat the purpose of the invisible strings, I suppose. [:p]

loraan
03-07-2004, 01:40 PM
Well, bear in mind that I specifically lit the wiring to make it visible for the photographs. Up close, it is visible, but it's unobtrusive enough that it swiftly becomes mentally invisible--that is, you can certainly see it, but you don't notice it. At a distance, you don't even see it.

I agree that decorating the wire wouldn't be a good idea.

loraan
03-07-2004, 01:44 PM
Just for comparison, take a look at the view in this picture:

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/attachment.php?s=&postid=3490440&fullpage=1

That's pretty representative of what it looks like on a daily basis.

Compare that to this shot:

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/attachment.php?s=&postid=3490460&fullpage=1

in which the line is much more visible because of the way the sunlight is hitting it and because of the closeness of the camera. But even here, it's not ugly or distracting--at least not to me.

And, don't discount the cool-factor of having your center "floating" over your TV! [:D]

frank
03-07-2004, 11:22 PM
loraan can you take some pictures of the speakers stands I'm looking to buy the cmt-340 also are they metal? or wood? or does any other member have pictures of these stands?

Quinn
03-07-2004, 11:32 PM
Frank do a search Curtis has posted the pics. before. The stands are wood with the beloved Ascend finish and are fillable.

loraan
03-07-2004, 11:32 PM
You can kind of see them in the front shot. They're wood, of basically the same type as the speakers, painted to match the speakers.

curtis
03-08-2004, 01:16 AM
loraan...the setup looks great!

Frank.....Just in case you want to see them again, and because I am a nice guy and want to save you the trouble of searching.....

http://www.thechangs.us/tp24_grille.jpg

-curtis

Gregisme
03-08-2004, 01:19 AM
loraan - What kind of wire are you using with the center channel? It looks like some of that wide and slender stuff that I've heard about.

loraan
03-08-2004, 01:30 AM
It's "Ook Invisible Hanging Wire", available from Home Depot (at least my Home Depot). See earlier posts in this thread for more details on hanging materials.

Lou-the-dog
03-08-2004, 02:36 AM
I kinda like doing woodworking so I built oak stands for my 340's. I have alot of oak woodwork in my home so they fit in really well. I patterned them after the Ascend stands as pictured previously. I have little tykes running around so I enlarged the base (the part that actually touches the floor) some to make them more non-tipoverable. (I think I just invented a new word! Maybe I shoulda just said stable) I'd like to post pics someday. I'm kinda proud of them.

Randy

Lou-the-dog
03-08-2004, 02:42 AM
...and Curtis, I agree, you are one nice guy!! I could care less what everyone else says!![:D]

Randy

curtis
03-08-2004, 03:14 AM
Thanks Randy! Please share pictures of your stands.

-curtis

Gregisme
03-08-2004, 01:30 PM
cd1<blockquote id="quote"><font size="1" face="Arial, Verdana, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">Originally posted by loraan

It's "Ook Invisible Hanging Wire", available from Home Depot (at least my Home Depot). See earlier posts in this thread for more details on hanging materials.
<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">



Sorry, what I meant is the speaker wire, not the hanging wire. It appears to be very wide and flat.

loraan
03-08-2004, 01:35 PM
Ohh! Sorry. I misunderstood.

The speaker wire is RCA 14 gauge, bought at Home Depot. Nothing fancy... If you need fancy speaker wire, check out smarthome.com. You can get some flat "spackle/paint-over" wire, but it's pricey.

Gregisme
03-09-2004, 06:04 PM
hmm.. I must have been optically deluded, cause I could've sworn that thing was flat & wide.

oh well, thanks for the clarification.