I had a home installer wire my new construction house. He ran my ceiling speaker wires to standard blue electrical boxes, which the sheetrock guy worked in as if it was a standard electrical box.

Question - if I buy the Polk round RC80i speakers will the speaker+grill cover up a rectangle hole? I can't simply 'round out' the hole since the box is snug up against a ceiling joist. As it is I figure I will have to pull out the box to create clearance for the speaker guts.

Anyone have ideas? Easiest would be to pay the custom electronics installer to finish the job, but this seems like it should be easy.

Thank you!

I'd start by beating the hell out of the sheet rock guy.

Yes, I'd pull out the box and carefully round out the rectangle to fit your in-ceiling speakers.

Frankly, if it was me, after spending as much as you probably did on building a new home I'd demand the builder correct the mistake. But that's just me.

Common mistake. You can do square speakers or convince the builder to come back or learn spackling!

The problem is that when you cut the speaker template close to the existing elec. cut out the stud that is close to the edge won't allow the speakers tab to grab at that side. Try to position the round speaker tabs away from the stud so it grabs evenly. Hope this helps. :cool:

Yes, we spent a ton, and yes, the sheetrock and painting crew were all very "non-thinking". We'll be spending the next weeks having them re-do things.

I'm also going to ask the low-volt guy to find out what solution they proposed.

I'm okay with square - I need to buy three pair anyway. I went with front as standard wall-mount and rear surround as ceiling for main room. All ceiling for the kid's gameroom.

The RC65i look pretty good. Any opinions?

They're probably decent, but check out NHT's iW3 at the same price. Wide dispersion, 3-way design. It will likely help for the HT setup. You can't get the wires moved to inwall for the rears? Or external?

Can you move the speaker wires in the kid's room? In ceiling is the worst position for an HT speaker. I mean, while they're fixing things.

RMasterson,
how did it go? I'm in the same boat as you with round speakers and the wiring boxes right up against joists.

I'm thinking I'll remove the boxes and widen/round the hole to fit the speaker guts. I'm hoping I can get 3 of the 4 cams to grab and hold.

I just finished dealing with this same situation with these speakers. I have 1 very small gap from the corner of the box but you have to be standing in a specific spot and really look to see it(an easy fix with spackle). I had no problem with the brackets as you can just turn the clamps away from the stud. Since there is a fairly wide lip outside the speaker "guts" I can't imagine these not working as long as youre careful.