Flush mounted ceiling speakers for home theater
 

We've bought a house whose previous owners had flush mounted ceiling speakers in their living room. When they left they took the speakers, but the holes remain.

So my wife and I were thinking of taking advantage of these spaces to install speakers of our own. They'll fit 10 inch round speakers.

My question is: are speakers of this type decent for use in a home theater?

IMHO, ceiling mounted speakers will not give you the correct soundstage for viewing movies. Listening to music, yes.

they will do a good enough job when configured properly. do you have 8' ceilings or 16' ceilings?

just make sure you get good speakers.

As with any speaker is also depends on the quality. You get what you pay for.

My personal favorite in wall/ceiling speakers are KEF. But there are other high quality in wall/ceiling speakers. Boston Accoustic make some nice ones. B&W are also very nice. Paradigm should be good. Basically if you look at the usual suspects in regular speakers, you will likely find they make good in wall speakers as well.

Sonance makes kick ass in-ceiling speakers as well.

Unfortunately, I'm going to have a hard time convincing the wife to spend a whole bunch of money on these things. Especially since I'm trying to convince her that I need a new receiver as well.

Thanks for the tips guys!

Why do you need a new receiver? Nothing will affect the sound more then speakers. And if your going with cheap speakers, might as well keep you old or cheap receiver.

I got LCRs from Boston Acoustics, DSI495, for a fraction of their MSRP off ebay. Great speakers with an angled design that brings the sound down. It's not just a swiveling design, the speakers are actually tilted in and pointing downward (not unlike the Sonance designs). It completely fools me, you don't know the speakers are in the ceiling. There's no imaging problem. Sounds like it's coming right from my wall-mounted Plasma. The rear surrounds from the ceiling, I think, are the most convincing placements I've had in four different set-ups.

These are the right size for you. Mounting holes are 10 7/8". DSI485s can work for the rears. I went with the smaller and cheaper DSI455s. Whole set-up cost me $450, total. But I did get some really good deals on two of the 495s. You could get the whole get-up for $750 new from resellers if you look.

Mounting is super easy. Drywall saw, screwdriver. They are relatively low profile into the ceiling and sound fine without any backing box.

I used my existing 3-4 year old Yamaha receiver with them, and they sound great. You do need a Subwoofer with them. They sounded better and better over the course of the first month or so, so I think they benefit from break-in.

-beebs

Sonance has a cheaper sister brand, Hometech, btw. Not sure either Sonance or Hometech have something that works in a 10" round hole, though.

-beebs

Speakercraft makes kickass in ceiling speakers. The AIM series has directional tweeters that you can aim towards the listening area. I love them.

Speakercraft has excellent ceiling stuff. Their 8" speakers are all 9 7/8" openings which sounds close enough to 10" to be a straight up insert, tighten, and go. I heard some of the Speakercraft when I was shopping for my pre-wire speaker set-up and they sound great. Unfortunately, they can be pricey.

Triad also makes incredible in ceiling stuff, if you got lots of dough. They were the best sounding stuff I heard.

Not sure what the OP's budget is. But my own was $500-700 and I wanted angeled or aimable LCR designs (not just a swiveling tweeter, they do have imaging problems). I found Boston Acoustic (Dsi series) and Infinity (ERS 610) were the best sounding for the bucks, but could only get into my budget if I bought the speakers off ebay or some internet resellers with likely B-stock. Sonance was next in pricing, but well out of my budget. Speakercraft well up from there. Then it got crazy expensive.

There's lots of less expensive swiveling designs out there, and there's more and more of these on eBay all the time.

-beebs

Check your contract. Generally anything "installed" is considered part of the house. They should have left it unless stated up front they were taking it. A seller has to tell the buyer if they are taking the appliances. They can't just start taking things like light fixtures just because they put them in. Especially if it leaves a hole.

I'm probably looking to spend ~$700-800, although I haven't done enough serious looking to determine if that's reasonable or not.

And we're buying a foreclosed house, which means we're buying it "as is" -- holes in ceiling/walls, missing appliances, missing doors, and all. Considering the price we got the house for, we're okay with all of that.

It's probably out of your budget, but I'll echo the recommendations for speakercraft. My brother, who is an audiophile with 30k in equipment came over and I demo'd Spiderman 3 on blueray. He was shocked at how great it sounded.