I'm having a house built which has 10 feet ceilings in the living
room. I'm debating where to put the surround speakers. One side of
the room is all sliding glass doors, thus ruling out the possibility
of putting a speaker on the wall at ear-height.

Therefore I need to put them either in the ceiling, or close to the
ceiling (between 8 and 10' up). If wall mounted, I could angle them
down to point at the couch, but the room is 20' wide and hence the
speakers are going to be a long way from the audience.

I'm thinking I may to better to get in-ceiling speakers and move them
in from the side walls. Anyone have any practical experience or
opinions on this topic, or know of a good source to help me resolve
this.

In article ,
(stankley) wrote:

I'm having a house built which has 10 feet ceilings in the living
room. I'm debating where to put the surround speakers. One side of
the room is all sliding glass doors, thus ruling out the possibility
of putting a speaker on the wall at ear-height.

Therefore I need to put them either in the ceiling, or close to the
ceiling (between 8 and 10' up). If wall mounted, I could angle them
down to point at the couch, but the room is 20' wide and hence the
speakers are going to be a long way from the audience.

I'm thinking I may to better to get in-ceiling speakers and move them
in from the side walls. Anyone have any practical experience or
opinions on this topic, or know of a good source to help me resolve
this.

http://www.thielaudio.com/THIEL_Web/...tdiagrams.html

Hope this helps!

Stephen

I too had the same problem of where to put rear surrounds. Lots of people
gave me their "expert opinion" of putting them all the way in the back of a
long room when only the first half of the room was the TV area, getting
floor standing ones, getting "suspended" bose speakers, etc. All those
suggestions were either ugly, cluttered or impractical. I finally decided to
go with in-ceilings and don't regret it one bit.

A few things to keep in mind:

1) Don't put in-wall speakers in the ceiling, while they may sound a little
better because the drivers are completely seperate, they will look huge and
dominate the ceiling.

2) Don't put in-ceiling speakers in a plaster ceiling, you'll likely shake
plaster loose.

3) Stay away from the cone-in-a-cone designs. Those don't sound that great.
Most in-ceilings will have this design. The non cone in a cone design
in-ceiling speakers are both rare and expensive. But worth the investment
IMO.

4) Don't get a model with fixed drivers. That will direct the sound straight
down instead of spreading it out.

All that said, I got the Polk Audio LC60i speakers:

http://www.polkaudio.com/home/produc...edde3764868e91

These are awesome speakers... good size, nice low profile sleek look, good
power and good frequency response.

The mid range driver is angled 15 degrees and you have a rotatable tweeter
that can be rotated 360 degrees.

And as I said earlier, these speakers don't use the cone in a cone design,
the tweeter floats slightly offset in a bracket.

They are a bit pricey, $699 per pair, but I found them for $375 brand new on
ebay.

stankley" wrote in message
m...
I'm having a house built which has 10 feet ceilings in the living
room. I'm debating where to put the surround speakers. One side of
the room is all sliding glass doors, thus ruling out the possibility
of putting a speaker on the wall at ear-height.

Therefore I need to put them either in the ceiling, or close to the
ceiling (between 8 and 10' up). If wall mounted, I could angle them
down to point at the couch, but the room is 20' wide and hence the
speakers are going to be a long way from the audience.

I'm thinking I may to better to get in-ceiling speakers and move them
in from the side walls. Anyone have any practical experience or
opinions on this topic, or know of a good source to help me resolve
this.

stankley wrote:

I'm having a house built which has 10 feet ceilings in the living
room. I'm debating where to put the surround speakers. One side of
the room is all sliding glass doors, thus ruling out the possibility
of putting a speaker on the wall at ear-height.

Therefore I need to put them either in the ceiling, or close to the
ceiling (between 8 and 10' up). If wall mounted, I could angle them
down to point at the couch, but the room is 20' wide and hence the
speakers are going to be a long way from the audience.

Sounds like a pair of thin Magnepans in off-white would be a
great option. The new MMG-W center they came out with would be
nice - the curve would give you great dispersion and they are
only 9.5 inches wide. At $300 each and wall-mountable, it's
not so bad.

A reprint of a review from their site:
"The MMG C does have a "box" -- sort of. It uses a version of the same
panel as the MMG W (and has the same 100Hz-16kHz frequency response),
but it's curved, so that the speaker's horizontal dispersion is broader
than it would be if it were flat. Because of the panel's curvature, the
MMG C is mounted within a bowed framework that is 36" wide by 9 1/4"
high by 5 1/2" deep at its front, tapering to 2 1/2" at its tips.
Speaker-wire connections are made through small set-screw-tightened
sockets, a non-standard but very secure arrangement. The MMG C weighs 18
pounds."

You can mount this at a downward angle, so the 9.5 inches can rapidly
drop to 5 or 6 inches space above the glass, which is a snap to do.

These will sound much better than an in-wall speaker.

They also might end up requiring you to get a full set as they
tend to spoil you