Loooong-Range Planning

Whether you want to call it extreme long-range planning or extreme procrastination, at long last, the in-ceiling surround speakers are in! 7 years ago this spring, our house went under construction. It became apparent to me, that my cabinet of audio/home theater equipment could really only be placed on one wall, so obviously the surround speakers would pretty much have to go somewhere in the opposite end of the room. After looking at the builder’s model of our house, it was also apparent, that any hidden (read in-wall) wiring HAD to be done before the sheet rock people enclosed the studs. The issue was, that like most recently built homes in this part of the country, the majority of the houses have tall ceilings (something in the 9-10’ range), so if you have an external wall, they tend to “cheat” a little and part of that ceiling line is angled off where the roof comes down since they don’t want to have really deep eves on the house. Soooo, you can imagine that there’s no good way to get to the “top-plate” above the wall where the roof angles since that’s all enclosed by sheet rock!

Well; the upshot is that we saw this and ran several runs of wire down to a triple-ganged box on that wall behind the massive A/V cabinet. Those wire runs include a builder-prepackaged coaxial, networking, and phone, plus speaker wiring that we ran to accommodate anticipated needs as well as possible future expansion. This list includes “runs” as follows:

• Right and left rear for surround sound speakers.

• Rear “back” (some call it rear center), to accommodate 1 or 2 speakers for that if necessary. Channels 6/7 on most modern A/V systems.

• One run to the back patio, through a box to add a volume control if necessary.

• One run to the dining room, through a box.

• One more run to the garage, through a box as well.

Don’t ask me what I was thinking putting that many runs of speaker wire in an “open-plan” house that’s less than 2000 square feet. But hey; they’re there in case I ever need them! And the point of this post is that, when you have a chance, plan ahead with something that’s not particularly expensive (like speaker wire) instead of regretting it later and have to tear up sheet rock.

I think that most people envision that having speakers built into walls and/or ceilings is something that rich people have. I’m here to tell you that: it is SO NOT! The fallacy stems from the fact that it’s thought to be expensive for one thing, and then what are you going to do if you move?

My answer is that if you dispel the first myth (and it's not expensive), then the second thing is a non-issue. Just leave it in the old house and market it as a "feature", then do it again in the second house! The numbers on in-ceiling/in-wall speakers are that decent ones can be bought in the $50-100 per pair range. The trick is to know which are "decent" and which are junk. I bought my surround pair at a Lowe's clearance one year at the low end of the spectrum....around $60. It was branded as HiFi Works; not exactly B&W or even a Niles which are well known, but upon further inspection, the literature showed that HiFi Works is/was a division of Sonance which is a very well-known and respected company in the custom install market! It was apparent that some of the areas were not as nice such as the use of spring-loaded speaker wire connectors vs. binding posts, which leads me to my next observation.

This at least partially comes from my mom; who always said that, for things that get used a lot, or that you have to depend on, spend the money to buy top-notch products. The corollary of which is, if it's secondary, or not as important: save your money! I wouldn't skimp on my mains or center channel speaker, but rears are "effects" speakers and not meant to be heard directly. In fact, it's my personal philosophy that if you can directly pin-point them; its a bad thing!

When we originally pulled the wire, both 6.1 and 7.1 had been out for some time and were pretty mainstream on the better A/V receivers as well as Pre-Pros, so I decided that that it was worth-while to pull a run for that as well. In this case, we actually pulled a 4 conductor wire that I could use for 2 "back" speakers or a single/dual where you get both channels in one speaker chassis. Although, I had never had a system with even one back/rear-center speaker, I thought it'd be nice to be ready.

You can see in this image that there are two tweeter/mids on this speaker, which are really two completely seperate speakers in one frame so you get a stereo pair in a single assembly. In the end, I bought a receiver that was 6.1 so could only do 1 rear center, so I didn't need the 4 conductors, but it's there! Which leads me to the next issue: now I needed a single back there to match my pair. The probability of finding a single matching HiFi Works speaker was/is slim and none. So, let me refer back to my earlier assertion that we don't need and don't even want to listen directly to rear effects speakers anyway. This means that, it'd be great if all three rears were identical, but not a necessity. My theory was that if you had a speaker that was similar in it's major specifications, it'll be fine. To me, these items are it's general size and type (read same size and type of speaker materials). I my case, 6.5" 2-way speaker with a soft-dome tweeter. After a fair amount of searching on eBay, I came across somebody who had a "New/Old Stock" Phase Linear single speaker that I was able to pick up for a song (about $30 after shipping).

Then came the loooong wait. I wanna say that those poor things sat out in the garage close to 5 years before we got around to putting them in. My buddy Pat (who had originally helped me pull the wiring) was in town this last weekend and he's worked for quite some time as an A/V installer. Other than, never having done it before and being nervous about it (my former co-worker Kurt had stuck his foot through his ceiling doing something similar), I had always told my wife that it would literally take me all day to do something that would take Pat an hour. This turned out to be exactly true. It took him almost exactly an hour with me as his semi-able assistant.

Well, in the end, it turns out that I was right! They sound great! It doesn't matter that they don't match, although you absolutely can't tell by looking! Plus, the wife is very happy that the black surround speakers that used to sit on the end table and shelf in the living room along with the wires that ran to them are gone. The 3 round white speakers in the ceiling are all but unnoticeable. It's not a sexy change, but cheap and VERY worthwhile to do!