£50 DIY surround sound

People often overlook old speakers, but in the audio world, gear doesn’t go out of date quickly. That means it’s surprisingly easy to find decent speakers being given away for free. Depending on where you live, every few weeks someone will list old bookshelf speakers on sites like Freecycle, Trash Nothing, Facebook Marketplace, or Freegle.

If you’re in a bigger city, you might even be able to get a bit more selective — choosing larger floor standing speakers or picking up nice vintage stereo systems. Sometimes you even see complete home cinema systems for free but that takes the fun out of it 😜

My top tip? Grab what you can — you can always upgrade later. And reply quickly! If someone else gets something you wanted, don’t worry — there’s always something else just around the corner. Setting up alerts for keywords like “stereo” is also a great way to stay ahead.

For a basic 5.1 surround sound system, you’ll want five standard speakers: left, right, centre, surround left, and surround right. You’ll also need a subwoofer, which can be a bit harder to come by for free. Searching Facebook Marketplace for old car subwoofers can be a great option — they often go for around £20.

Good luck, and happy hunting!

Most people buy an expensive AV receiver that output to all the speakers, but to save costs, we can use multiple standard stereo systems and amps instead. Again, these are easy to find on Freecycle and other sites — they’re often given away with speakers, which is great, or listed as broken. Usually, this is because mechanical parts like the CD drive belt fail, meaning people don't want them.

For our purposes, that doesn’t matter — as long as the unit has some kind of analogue input (which it almost definitely will), you’re good to go. For a 5.1 system (6 channels), we’ll need three amps, since each one outputs two stereo channels. Again, don’t worry too much about which models you get — the speakers will make a bigger difference to the sound quality anyway.

This is where the free stuff, sadly, comes to an end. You’ll need a way to take the surround sound signal—usually carried over HDMI from your source (like a laptop, TV streaming stick, PS5, etc.)—and extract the audio from all the channels. The goal is to send analogue signals to your stereos.

Lucky for you, this is where AliExpress comes in. You can find something like a "4K HDMI to HDMI Audio Extractor with LPCM 7.1/5.1 CH DAC Converter, HDMI Digital Audio SPDIF to Analog Converter for DTS, PS3, HDTV" for around £20–£40. Catchy name, I know.

Basically, it has an HDMI input and output, so the video passes through as normal, and it also breaks out the analogue audio channels via RCA connections to send to your different stereos.

I've had mixed luck with these AliExpress boxes. The first one I ordered didn’t work at all, but I got a return and a full refund. The second one mostly works: the audio is perfect, but whenever I launch the web version of Spotify or the Apple Music app, the display blacks out and shows noise. A very weird and very repeatable issue.

You don’t need one that supports 7.1 channels if you’re only using 5.1 speakers—just look around to find one with the best pricing.

Another approach is to buy a USB 5.1 sound card. This isn't what I did as my laptop doesn't have enough USB ports, but it could potentially be a lot cheaper at about £15. Most of these do use 3.5mm jacks instead of RCA but you can get cables to go between these or use the RCA cables with 3 conductors and 3.5mm jack, meant for video signals. I would get something like this: USB 6 Channel 5.1 Audio External Optical Sound Card Adapter SPDIF For PC Laptop | eBay 

The final approach is buying a second-hand AV receiver from eBay or Facebook Marketplace. The advantage is that it takes up less space than using multiple stereos. However, if you go for a cheap older one, it might not have HDMI input/output.

Luckily, you can buy HDMI audio extractors from AliExpress and other sites that output audio via optical Toslink, which most older AV receivers (and newer ones) support. So, you might be able to get a decent receiver for cheap just because it doesn’t have HDMI—no big deal if you're using one of these adapters.

Sadly, there are some unexpected costs in this project—though you might already have some of the stuff lying around.

• First off, you're definitely going to need an extension cord. Between the stereos and the audio extractor, you'll be using up at least four plug sockets.

• You’ll also need some RCA cables with twin male plugs, which most stereos are likely to support. If your stereo has a 3.5mm input, you can use two of the connectors from a 3-RCA-to-3.5mm cable (usually the kind meant for video).

• You'll also need some speaker wire—it’s fairly cheap, and any wire will do as long as it’s not too thin.

• Finally, you’ll need two HDMI cables—or just one if you don’t care about having video output.

What surround sound content you can access really depends on the device you're using, so you'll need to do a bit of your own research. I’m going to focus on Windows, since that’s what I use my system with.

I tried all the major music streaming services that support Dolby Atmos, and the only one that actually output surround sound through the Windows app was Apple Music. It works surprisingly well—any songs in your playlist that have a Dolby Atmos version will usually play in surround sound automatically.

There’s a decent selection available. I’ve found that music from musicals and movies often has surround versions. A super helpful tool for discovering this kind of content is Spatial Audio Finder by Ben Dodson—it helps you find Atmos-supported songs by artist.

Interestingly, I’ve found that some older Atmos mixes sound better than newer ones—probably because they were designed with actual 5.1 speaker setups in mind, rather than for headphones (which is sadly how most people experience Atmos today). Different tracks use surround sound in different ways. Some use it in a very abstractly while other use it subtly to expand the space or it's used for live recordings where you can hear the crowd cheering all around you.

If you don’t want to pay for a subscription, you can actually buy audio DVDs. A good way to find them cheap is to check CEX (go to Film & TV > DVD > DVD Music). Just keep in mind you’re mostly going to find older or major artists there. Sadly, most modern surround sound music releases aren’t available on physical media anymore.