How do you have music playing in your yard haunt?

We've been struggling for years to get the right audio set up for our outdoor yard haunt.

Speakers, receiver, tape deck...

We don't have a set of speakers designated for outdoor use, so we've designed a few different types of our own, but not sure if they're good enough either...

What we have now is a tape deck that will automatically loop our haunted cassette tape whenever it reaches the end and is powered by our outdoor motion sensor...so it is always on PLAY, but only plays when motion is detected. The stereo receiver is always on, but the music only plays when the tape deck is activated. We keep the receiver and tape deck indoors and have the speakers outside near the street.

We're not sure if we should get different speakers...designated for outdoors, use a different type of wire or use a different type of receiver-tape deck-speaker setup altogether or go digital?????

Thanks,
Kevin
http://www.HauntedSummitviewDrive.com



HauntedSummitviewDrive.com
New Castle, PA USA

I have rigged up a couple of Grecian or Roman style flower pots with 6" speakers (Radio Shack, my good man) mounted in the bottoms.

I have a quarter inch lift or so to each one, to allow the sound to come out without muffling, and keep them placed near the path where the TOT's come in - they're capable of some pretty intense sound when needed, and with the speakers pointing towards the ground, the sound is dispersed more uniformly, making the source of the sounds and music harder to pinpoint.

I don't have a decent digital camera for pictures to show, but you can find the planters at any OSH or Walmart for about $5-$10 dollars, they're about 7 or 8 inches across at the base, which tapers in and then out for the planter, which is about 12-15 inches across - each of the speakers from Radio Shack was $10 bucks, but they're great - I keep them in my garage all year long for my listening enjoyment.

Lots and lots of brown speaker wire - brown hides well.

EYYYyyye..ain't go noooboodeee...and no one cares..for..me. a-ya-ta-ta-taa, ta-tatatata... - I-gor / Marty Feldman

How about using a digital sound board or digital audio repeater instead of the tape deck? Has anybody ever had success with those...if so, which one?

Just need an idea on what kind of speakers (for outdoors), speaker wire, receiver and tape deck/digital device others are using for their outdoor haunts...

Thanks.


HauntedSummitviewDrive.com
New Castle, PA USA

We have 4 tracks of sound including the voices for 2 talking skulls. I use a computer and could never go back to tapes ! If you have a PC you can use it to play back 2 tracks and have it loop endlessly, or get a multi output soundcard and software like cool edit or some other multi track software and you can have as many seperate tracks as the card allows. of course you do need an amplifier for each channel. Nothing beats the endless possibilities using a PC tho.

Our haunt.... http://home.earthlink.net/~dhinds7/

We use our house speakers. 2 in the front windows (we keep the windows open), 2 upstairs, and we'll throw one in the front bushes this time. We have all wiring from our CD player downstairs....wires run all over the house, but heck, it's only one night. We also have a CD set on repeat for one track that we found to be most effective...you can hear it from the end of the block.

Stacy

See my Halloween 2003 pics at:
http://pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/wookie...ouse/my_photos

i blast music from my moms car

Good bad im the guy with the gun-Army of darkness

On Halloween, we place two speakers in the front kitchen windows. They are normally our surround speakers in our home theater set up, but we left enough extra speaker wire to be able to move the speakers around, if necessary. Then, all we have to do is move the speaker connectors on the back of the A/V receiver from the "A" to "B" positions and press the "B" button on the front of the receiver.

Cole

I move my stereo system near the roof windows. I put the speakers outside on the roof (single level home) and play my soundtrack from that - the soundtrack leaves the right speaker to the music, and both Left and right speakers for thunder.

I have a lightning machine hooked up to the left speaker to catch the thunder noise (to give me lightning from strobe and high intensity light).

In my graveyard, I have a cd player on repeat. That CD player has ambiet sounds (whispers, etc...).

In our hidden garden (off the main pathway to the front door) is ANOTHER cd player that has a woman crying every so often.

Under our deck (because it looks like a "caged" area) is another CD player hooked up to LED eyes that come on while the dialog says "Help Me.... get me out of here... I'll give you things you've never DREAMED of having....".

There are other CD players hidden around the yard. They go off with different things every so often. If you stand in on place, you'd swear there were things in our bushes, but because the sounds are faint, you're not too sure you're actually hearing them.

It all works pretty well... until it rains. Thankfully, I live in California!

CD's are great- burn your own custom CDR and you can use shuffle and repeat to solve the loop problem.