Any indoor audiophiles?

[redneck joe]

doing some remodeling and want to replace our surround sound that all sat on the floor with good in wall / ceiling units since I'm already tearing everything up. Our until has rear, front, center and bass now. If I have to I could keep the base and hide it in my new secret place but would like everything else off the floor. I am not an audio snob like not gonna spend $4k on speakers, just want pretty good sound and bass for up to a few hundred bucks.


Any suggestions?

 

[dingbat]

Wire or Wireless?
If wire, what do you have to drive them with?

 

[ezmobee]

I put in-wall left, right, center, and rears in my last house when I finished the basement. The ones I got were Micca brand from Amazon. They sounded excellent and were very reasonable. Bought a big Dayton sub as well which pounded and was also real inexpensive.

 

[redneck joe]

I plan on hard wiring, pretty easy to do and we push with HTR 6040 by yamaha with 100 watts per channel. Google for more specs

 

[sangerwaker]

No Audiophile would ever put speakers in the wall. You will never get the sound quality from a wall speaker that does not have an engineered enclosure designed specifically for the drivers.

I would recommend listening to several brands and buy what you think sounds the best. Everyone has a different ear on what they like.

I have heard good things about the Monoprice in wall and in ceiling speakers. I've only listened to one model of their 6.5" ceiling speaker, but sounded pretty good for the price. Some of the name brands get ridiculously expensive.

 

[Darrenmb]

I am running niles 8 inch hd on front left and right in walls, klipsch 6 inch rears in ceiling, a klipsch center channel with a polk audio 10 inch sub, powered by a yamaha tsr 6750 and it sounds amazing, i also turned on the zone 2 amp and ran it to a niles speaker selector with 5 outputs, now i have.music in garage, in kitchen, in sun room, by pool and bathroom.. i.love my.setup but......
Yes theres always a but! When playing music over entire system(both zones.1.and 2) i hear a bit of a delay in zone 2, not much, just a bit of an echo.
Also, zone 2 will not put out hdmi signal, so i cannot listen to a movie out by the pool.

As a plus, the Yamaha amp can be controlled.by pc.or.smartphone (on same network) and.does airplay, pandora and digital web based radio.

 

[thumpar]

Since you have it open you may consider at least wiring for 7.1 or 7.2 for upgrading later. I like Polk speakers but all mine are floor or out of wall mounted.

 

[dingbat]

I headed down your path 2 years ago.

I have a McIntosh MC2300 with a pair of Bose 901's in the basement but needed something for every day music around the house.

Ended up going with a Sonos wireless system. No wires so it's completely portable. Started out with a pair of Play 5's for the family run and went from there.
Now have speakers spread throughout the house and at the pool. App controlled, they can be played together in unison or separately from different sources Direct access to thousands and thousands of steaming recordings via Pandora, Spotify, Sound Cloud, etc. I have little need to go down stairs and dig thru my extensive record collection anymore.

Expensive, but one of the best things I've purchased in a while.

 

[jkust]

So my main house is wired on all three floors for sound in most rooms (not the kids bedrooms) plus a 5.1 set up in the main floor living room and a dedicated 9.2 set up in the basement with the whole basement wired for sound in every room and bathroom plus a tv in the bar that mirrors whatever is playing in the dedicated home theater though it is set up to be its own source as well.

I don't even know how many miles of wires and cables are in the walls and ceilings. The upstairs (main floor and third floor) has three zones and the basement has three of its own zones with each floor (main floor and basement not the third floor) having its own AVR but that each AVR and Each TV is connected to each other AVR as well.

I actually have a lot of Monoprice speaker in the ceilings and although it is taboo, I used them in wall as well for the dedicated home theater because my wife insisted that she not see any of the technology. She had the divorce papers ready to go. I have Iphones/pods mounted in the walls to control everything and also each AVR has it's own app so you can just control it all from your phone as well plus of course everything has its own old fashioned remote controls too. Pretty much all avr's are controlled by a phone app now as it has been standard for several years.

I'm not an audio snob just when I do something I go big or I don't do it at all. Using Inwall speakers was the big compromise though the dedicated Home theater room sounds decent. The Monoprice round two way ceiling speakers are ok for different zones but the three way rectangle monoprice in wall speakers are actually very good for the HT room.

If you are just looking to spend a few dollars, The Energy Take 5.1 set up is pretty good and Monoprice knocked it off and makes a version that amazingly gets better reviews than the Energy Take set up. Monoprice completely cloned the energy take at one time, got sued and had to revamp the system and what they came up with was better. Energy Take is a Klipsh brand. Energy Take is like the champion of inexpensive 5.1 set ups...take a look at CNET.

Ignoring the speakers for a minute, the monoprice.com site is an excellent place to buy everything you need to set up a home theater aside from maybe the actual AVR itself. Shipping can be a bit of a pain but their prices are a fraction of say a Best Buy and they sell things such as 100 foot HDMI cables that you can't really get locally and is where pros shop to buy their stuff.

If you you came to my house, you would be wowed at the whole situation but the reality is that I sourced everything for months off of the internet whenever there was a sale or discount code. I did the upstairs maybe 4 years ago which was a monumental task because it was an existing construction but I had the basement finished earlier this year but to save a ton, I opted to do all of the low voltage wiring and home theater/in ceiling myself which took maybe two months of evenings after work and weekends and I just had to have them stop construction until I was done. I also added a lot of future wiring as well as conduit hidden in the walls all over the place as future proofing to run future wires if my future proof wiring wasn't actually future proof.
Wireless stuff like sonos is very expensive but obviously very convenient.