Terra Cotta 8.20 Build Quality and Setup

Outdoor speakers usually take the shape of rocks… and often sound about as good. Well, not all of us HAVE a lot of rocks in their backyards, so sticking a rock-shaped speaker out there would be as bad as installing an all-weather speaker. If you are going for innocuous… well, that’s just not going to fit the bill. Better that a speaker were shaped like something that would look natural in nearly every backyard. The PlanterSpeakers Terra Cotta 8.20 by Madison Fielding looks like a large planter (because it is). Your wife can stick a plant in it, water that plant, and you never have to worry about your speaker. It can rain, snow, salty waves can spritz it… still, no worries. All weather? You bet. Multipurpose? Absolutely. Inexpensive? Well…

Build Quality

The Terra Cotta 8.20 arrived in a HUGE box that was deceptively light. I just hope they were paying shipping by the pound and not the square inch. There are two pieces, the large plastic “planter” portion and a cast iron stand. At some point you’ll be tempted to remove the planter from the stand, and that is fine. But DO NOT set the planter down on the “bottom”. That is where the speaker lives and it is actually convex. If you have soil and a plant (especially if it has been watered lately) you could very likely damage the tweeter or worse. The speaker resides at the bottom of the planter and it is nigh invisible unless you are lying down on the ground near it. There is a small metal “reflecting” plate under the speaker that is used to help disperse the sound from the tweeter in all directions. The metal grill on the bottom is painted a similar color as the planter, but as I said, you’d have to be lying down to see it.

The planter is a good size and looks like it could hold a small tree if you really wanted it to (it is large enough, though I don’t think that is a good idea). Most of the pictures show a drooping fern or ivy of some sort and I imagine it would look fine with some perennials or decorative grasses.

Out of the side of the planter is a long rubber hose for drainage. If you look inside the planter, you’ll see a number of drainage holes that feed a reservoir which feeds that tube. Near the drainage tube are two five-way binding posts that you’ll likely only use one way – bare wire. Each binding post has a rubber cap to keep your connection safe from the elements and three small tie downs for neatly securing your wire and the drainage tube to one of the cast iron legs of the stand.

The driver is a coaxial type with the tweeter assembly sitting quite close to the grill (another reason not to set these speakers down on their grill). The driver is completely sealed within the enclosure so I really couldn’t get a look at the back. There is a rubber surround around the base of the center mounted tweeter. The metal plate dispersion system we mentioned earlier is very good for a more open sound, but you may want to either invest in more directional speaker or place this up against a wall if you are looking for more “traditional” imaging. If you look inside the planter, you’ll see a small screw. Removing this screw does NOT give you access to the speaker; it will just open up the drainage reservoir. Mostly, it is used to keep the drainage tray from vibrating. Good thinking.

Setup

In most backyards, you are going to have two basic setup options: near a wall or out in the open. Near a wall gives you the advantage of a little boundary reinforcement that should extend the bass response and provide more directionality to the sound while the open placement diffuses the sound more and helps fill a larger area. If you are specifically looking for a more directed sound (like a conventional loudspeaker), PlanterSpeakers makes planters to fit the bill, though they look a bit different. You’ll, of course, need to run wires to your speakers from an amplifier or receiver (typically located inside). If you are near an exterior wall, you’re in luck. Just drill a hole, push the wires through, and apply a little caulk to keep out the elements and bugs. If you aren’t, well, you’re going to have to make some decisions. If you have a deck, it seems like a no-brainer to run wires underneath. For those with exterior speakers already installed under eaves and such, you’ll have to either extend those wires down to the deck, attach them to the wall, and paint them to match or just re-run altogether. Those who are planning to install speakers outside for the first time will probably be looking at a trip to the attic, under the house, or both.

You’re going to need to secure the wires to the cast iron frame (in order to hide them) so consider a few things. First, you may want to invest in some “darker” jacketed wire (if you can find it). Another option is to wrap or encase the speaker wire in a tube or perhaps wrapped with electrical tape. PlanterSpeakers provides some small tie-downs with instructions to strap the speaker wire and the drain tube to the same leg. Given their proximity, this is really the only option you have.

PlanterSpeakers recommends investing in some external amplification for their speakers. Most are either 8- or 6-ohms though, so most mid-priced receivers should be able to handle the load. Of course, if all you’re ever going to so is provide some soft background music (nothing for parties) than any receiver with an available powered Zone 2 should work. Just make sure to do a little testing at first to ensure that your receiver isn’t getting too hot. In what can only be called the most egregious overuse of power in a review, I hooked up Emotiva Audio’s RPA-1 (their reference two-channel amp) to the Terra Cotta 8.20’s. Understand, PlanterSpeakers warns that any amp pushing over 150 watts (8-ohms) or 300 watts (4-ohms) is hazardous and may violate electrical codes (the RPA-1 pushes 200 into 8 and 350 into 4 so I was a bit over the line) so this is NOT recommended. But it was on hand, so that is what I used.

One conducts listening tests of speakers in the environment in which they were intended whenever possible. So I set up the Terra Cotta 8.20’s on my back deck. Both were near a wall with one in a corner. I have other area’s that could use speakers but these planters were so large, they really wouldn’t have fit. I don’t have speaker wire runs out to my deck so I just ran a few wires from inside the back door. I powered the speakers with an Emotiva RPA-1 using my Denon AVR-3805 as a preamp (I have the Emotiva RSP-1 preamplifier but it wasn’t as easily accessible as my Denon at that moment).