Sound system for sky+ box.

Doch

Doch

Doch

Associate
Joined
17 May 2017
Posts
5
Hi,

I’m looking for an office sound system solution. We have sky+, drx 890 box. I believe it has the following outputs for sound.

- Digital Optical Audio Output
- Digital Coaxial Audio Output
- L&R Phono Audio Output (white and red)

The speaker cables have been provided to each bank of desks and I would like to provide a speaker to each bank. (5 banks in total)

We already have some speakers we can use and have a budget of around £150.
Only looking for normal sound for the tv channels, not sround sound or any kind of effects.

Could you please recommend an amp or a different solution which could help me achieve this.

Thanks.
 
Lots of questions, starting with...

1) How have the speaker cables been wired?
Is it one wire per bank, or has it been wired as one long snake?

2) £150 budget. How did you come up with this figure and what exactly were you expecting to buy with it?

3) I take it this is a DIY install?
 
Thanks for looking at this.
1 -The wire has just been laid out. Point to point. (one per bank)
2 - £150 is a rough budget we have to spend on this. Was hoping to get some kind of amp which would connect to the sky box and run the speakers.

3 - Yes its DIY but I have most of the tools required.
 
So your looking for a single amp to drive 5 speakers, possibly using a digital coax / toslink cable for under £150? Sounds like a second-hand AVR territory to me. There are probably a couple in the Members Market on here, but being that you wont have access, then the well-known auction site would be your best bet.

You wont be needing anything fancy here, no HDMI inputs or anything. All you seem to be needing to do is drive 5 speakers and have the appropriate input. Sound quality aint gonna be great, but it'll be something. And you'll be best to run whatever you buy in all channel stereo is probably your best bet (unless the amps mono will drive all connected speakers).

I would just search the auction page for something like an older Onkyo AVR. Something like the Onkyo 609 should just about be in budget. That's what I use just now, and it performs pretty well. Some of them do have issues with HDMI boards, but they should have been fixed by now if they were affected, and you don't need the HDMI board anyway, since you will just be using the sound aspect of the receiver.

In fact, I believe Lucid may actually have something that would fit the bill no?

£150 isn't an appropriate budget to go for something new. Certainly you wont find anything decent for that price.
 
xs2man is correct on all three counts...

1) An AV receiver is the most appropriate solution for the sort of money you have

2) A £150 budget isn't really enough to cover this (and any incidental costs) in new gear. Second-hand is a better option

3) Yes, I probably have something very suitable


Before we go any further there's two things to clear up. First; what an AV amp or AV Receiver is and how it would work for your install.

Second, checking if your current speakers are compatible.


Most folk are more familiar with a surround system where the main unit under the TV has a built-in Blu-ray/DVD player. This sort of thing comes in a box that includes speakers and is bought from Comet.

An AV amp or AV Receiver (AVR) is the next step up. No built-in disc playback; that's handled buy a stand-alone Blu-ray player if required. The AVR is simply signal processing and power, but much better quality, superior sound, a greater range and variety of connections. Like anything more specialised though they cost a bit more money too. AVRS and AV Amps range in new price from under £200 to well over £5,000 for the exotic monster powerhouses. Your needs are far simpler.

Although the primary role.of a surround system is (obviously) surround sound, the decent ones will run in lots of other modes, one of which is multi-channel stereo. That is to say it will take a stereo signal and duplicate it across a 5 speaker array. This is partly the solution you need. However, there's still a minor issue.

The signal from the Sky box is stereo, and multichannel stereo doesn't convert it to mono for each speaker. There's still a left-handed and right-handed Ness to the signal. This means that some people will hear more of the left-hand side of Sky's stereo broadcast, others will hear the right-hand side. The signal needs to be converted to mono between the Sky box and the amp.

I can help you with all of this.

Next, the speakers that you have: Not all speakers are universal. There's something called impedance. The speakers you have need to have an impedance of 6-8 Ohms to work with an AV amp or AVR in 5 channel mode.

What is the make and model of the speakers you gave, and is there an impedance figure stated on them?

If they're not all 6-8 Ohm then all is not lost yet. There are a couple of gadgets that might save the day subject to what the speaker spec states.
 
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