Making Surround Sound Speakers Portable...

... using an Ikea clothes rack

When most people look at this Ikea Rigga clothes rack, they see a clothes rack. I see a chassis for a rolling, portable surround sound speaker setup.

When I built my new house, I specified a floor box in the middle of the living area with an empty conduit leading to the front entryway closet. One of the closet walls houses a TV niche:

I knew I would use the conduit to connect a portable surround sound speaker setup to my home theater components, which would be placed out-of-sight in the closet behind the TV niche. I had a general sense of how I would accomplish this, although I didn't know exactly how. An Ikea clothes rack turned out to be the linchpin.

Backing up a bit: Why a portable surround sound setup in the first place? The architecturally preferred solution would be to integrate surround sound speakers in the ceiling -- and also to use in-ceiling or in-wall solutions for the main stereo speakers.

But I'm of the belief that speakers sound the best if they're placed at ear level. I also didn't want to spend the extra money on custom in-ceiling/in-wall speakers and wanted to keep the ceiling looking clean. Moreover, for everyday stereo listening, I wanted the big sound that can be delivered only by traditional main front floor-standing speakers. For those, I chose a pair of Definitive Technology's BP-9060.

So when it came time to set up the rear surround speakers, I took three of the Bose cube speakers that I had in my existing stash and mounted them to a rolling Ikea clothes rack, beginning with electrical conduit hangers:

The problem I immediately faced was that the conduit hangers wouldn't clamp the speakers tight enough around the round horizontal rail on the clothes rack, and so the speakers quickly started drooping/rotating from their weight until they were pointing straight down. That wouldn't do.

To address this, I took some adhesive strips with a rubberized finish that I found in my parts bin and stuck them on the clothes rail where the conduit hangers would go:

I then added some thick spacers between the screws holding the speakers to the conduit hangers so that the screws not only would hold the speakers securely to the conduit hangers, but also would protrude and wedge themselves against the rubberized adhesive strips on the clothes rail:

That did the trick, and the speakers stopped sliding down.

Next, I took the ends of the speaker wires running from the speakers and from the floor box (which I had already snaked through the under-floor conduit and connected to the home theater receiver in the closet) and connected them to RCA connectors/adapters that I had purchased on Fleabay. I taped each set of connectors together and then tightened medium-sized hose clamps around them to secure them further. I used an asymmetrical configuration for the connectors to prevent mixing up connections for the left/center/right speakers when I plug them together:

The result is a set of "quick-disconnects" for the speakers:

And here's how my setup looks in action:

It's not especially attractive, but when I'm using it, I'm focused on the TV monitor, and when I'm not using it, it's hidden away in the closet. Moreover, when the setup is not in use, I get a cleaner-looking living area than I would have with additional permanent floor-standing surround speakers placed behind the sectional.

As an added bonus, the clothes rack still functions as a clothes rack, so I can hang a few jackets on it in between the speakers when the setup is stowed away in the closet.

And best of all, as compared to the expense of integrating speakers into the ceiling, the total cost of this project was less than $20.

A coda: Obviously, my rear surround speakers do not match the front speakers, and this is not an audiophile's ideal solution. But the rule of thumb seems to be that it is OK to have a mismatch between the front and surround speakers, as long as the front speakers match each other and the surround speakers match each other. I've made a number of such concessions to style with this project. And having watched a number of movies with this setup, the surround sound experience is not too bad -- it's better than the virtual surround sound systems that rely only on front speakers that I've tried.