Sony speakers for sauna

[robykdesign]

Hi there, I'm Roman and I'm new here,

I love tinkering and reusing old things that still have life in them. I want to add speakers to a small sauna. I liberated two speakers (with separate tweeters) from an old Sony projection TV. They are 20W, 8 ohm speakers and while I haven't heared how they sounded in the TV enclosure, I expected them to provide sufficient oomph, being from an originally high-end home entertainment system.

I tried connecting them to this Bluetooth audio amplifier which should provide 25W per channel, and I powered it first with a 12V, 60W brick, then with a 20V, 96W brick. In both cases, I was seriously underwhelmed by the sound, especially in the lower ranges.

I'm not sure if the TV used some specific equalization before sending sound into the speakers, or if the speaker enclosure enhanced the bass considerably. I know my understanding of audio is pretty limited but normally the board in the photo is hidden away in my kitchen, also without any enclosure, powered by the 12V supply and driving a speaker from a retired car - but this speaker really makes itself known with its base and overall presence. True, it does have a bit bigger cone diameter, but I think it's also 20 or 25W and the driver itself is no bigger than the Sony speaker. I really don't understand why there's such a big difference in sound quality. I think I heared portable JBL speakers that provided more bass. What am I missing?

Thanks for any response.

 

[Don Dadda]

Since this is not designed to be placed/fitted into any place saturated with water/steam, how are you going to protect it from the condtions of a sauna (providing you get it working to how you want)?

 

[robykdesign]

Hi. Thanks for the reply. It's going to be a "dry" finnish sauna, so no steam, and the speakers would be placed as low to the floor as possible and away from the furnace - there shouldn't be more than 40-50 degrees there and the worst case scenario is that the speakers die quicker than they normally would - using sensible cabling I don't see any posibility of a fire. Afterall, speakers are being installed in saunas and while they may have waterproofing, there certainly is no way to keep them from getting hot.

Anyways, I'm still going to be looking around for some tips on the speaker-in-a-sauna aspect of things, but first I'd like to figure out whethere these specific speakers are usable and why they don't seem to give the output I would expect them to. No use in them if I can't make them play a "relaxing" dnb remix of Lindsay Stirling with at least decent base.