Monoprice in-wall, in-ceiling speakers - Page 6

If you have a box built inside the wall or ceiling then it will be easy to see where the wire should come out. The confusion comes when there is no box, just a coiled up wire, that is when it needs to be clear with the drywallers what the plan is. If they pop a hole and pull the wire out the wrong spot, you might be the person patching the hole when you move the wire to the correct location.

As far as running parallel to high voltage lines, 3 foot is extreme for speaker wire, you can get much closer without any interference. Chances are you can run it right next to 120V for the entire run and not get any noise. Usually running it in the next joist or stud bay is more than adequate, 12"-16" is plenty of space. The only requirements for speaker wire is that it is of a large enough size and it's rated for in-wall use. The electrons won't care about anything else, there is no shielding or super duper technology required, any of that is simply snake oil. Copper is at an all time high (trust me, we just paid $65,000 for a reel of 500MCM feeders), there is no need to spend even more money on a fantasy.

Line level is what you need to be careful with since it hasn't been amplified yet (and when it's amplified down stream the noise will be amplified too) so good shielding is a must. For subwoofers, typical RG-6 will work fine, go with quad shield if you are anal. I've wired hundreds of houses with Belden 7915A Tri-Shield without a single hiccup, it's excellent coax and at a great price. It will work well for cable and satellite feeds, audio and component video, etc.

Certainly agree with that (and I was going to point out that, in a typcial modern build it's almost impossible to have all your speaker wire runs that clear of electrical cable anyway).

Monoprice has pretty good prices on non-nonsense speaker wire 12, 14 or 16 gauge and also for RG59 coax audio cable. You could run these in your wall if you wanted but they're all terminated with RCA so if you want a nice wall plate finish or if your run is >50 feet then might as well get unterminated wire and create your own into the F=>RCA wallplate. 'Course I suppose you could just use this stuff in-wall if the length was right and then connect to an RCA=>RCA wall plate. I use the 3 and 6 footers as cables from the wall plate to my subs.

One warning if you're going to use the non-CL2 speaker wire rolls from Monoprice though. The rubber is very tough to strip off without pulling some of the copper with it. It's a very soft, pliable and thick so tough to cut through with a stripper without also going into the wire itself even if you're using the right gauge size on your stripper. My recollection was that I had to go 2 or 4 points less (i.e. larger) in guage size to get it to come off clean.

I like those F=>RCA wallplates, it allows people who only have the less expensive (and more commonly used) F-connector tools to make custom installs.

That sucks about the insulation sticking to the conductor. If you use one size bigger on the wire stripper and pull hard, it still takes copper with it?

It does, I had to use teh 10 gauge setting and wrestle with it to get the rubber of their 14 guage wire. These are the ones with the clear rubber for outside the wall use. I was using teh wire for short connectors from teh wallplates to my receivers. It's a rubber that has a kind of "chewy" consistency (so to speak) and the copper inside it seems to cling a bit to the material. Bascially I had to use the stripper to cut down through it, leave a small amount of rubber around teh wire and then pull it off by hand to keep all the copper. It was a PITA considering that I had to fashion 20+ leads that way.

Looks good.

I'm seriously considering these for my new house, but am wondering what subwoofer would be a good cost/performance match for these Monoprice in-wall speakers. Possibly in-wall?

Any suggestions?

A wise choice as no 6 or 8 in wall speaker is going to give you decent bass.

See my previous posts but I've paired Hsu Research subs with 3 7.1 set ups I've installed with these speakers (two rooms about 17 x 17 with an STF-1, one room about 17 x 25 with an STF-2), really amazing true bass (i.e. muscial not just noise) that has been an excellent complement to these. I think the STF-1 is about 250 and the -2 is 350 or so.

SVS has got lots of positive press from forum members but they're significantly more expensive and I'm not sure how they stack up head to head with the Hsu Research products which are widely regarded as the best bang for your sub buck. Another plug for the Hsu people (no I don't work for them), the STF-2 I received was DOA and they were amazingly responsive replying to my emails trying to trouble shoot it and then in promptly sending out a replacement amp. Very very good customer service.

I've not heard great things about in-wall passive subs and the active ones are expensive or bad from what I've read.

When you get this set up you'll be amazed at the diffference in sound quality if you toggle the bass on and off. Make sure you also get a decent AVR that can autocalibrate your speakers. This will make the whole set up that much better.

I'm putting the 6" speakers in-ceiling for distributed audio and was wondering what size I should make the enclosures for the speakers?

Thanks in advance.

just bought 2 pairs of the ceilings (8 inch) and 2 pairs of the in-walls (8 inch) for a temporary setup for my HT. I will go for a higher end AVR and will tackle better speakers down the road as this can get pricey! I will be using my 10 inch PSB Sub Woofer that'll rattle the fillings out of your head so I think this setup will be good for now. Worst case scenario I'll grabba 12 inch SVS. Will box the in-walls foresure; I'll have to figure out the box size somehow too...maybe some experimentation....

How well would these speakers work if installed into an exterior wall with insulation? Would all the insulation right up against the speaker muffle all the sound?

bought some of these, not bad for price. looking at outdoor speaker depot tho. there speakers have some impressive frequency ranges. cant find any photos of crossovers except ths one:http://www.outdoorspeakerdepot.com/iwkepa61hoth.html

I was going to get either

http://www.outdoorspeakerdepot.com/pgico.html

or

http://store.outdoorspeakerdepot.com/asinwaspico1.html

It's going in an angled woof mantle above where my screen will drop down. this seems to be the best cost/benefit ratio. blue would look cool with grills off but the copper would with the goldish color of my walls and wood floors..

and then have two together for the left, a pair for the right, and pair for the center. any ideas? seems people liked the mono crossover even though it was off, and were going to try to fix them. the monos arent bad, and my supercube ref sub can make up for the bas and mids (ew sub doing mids). These are for my ht, im on a budget, as this is a duplex i bought for while im in college and will be using as rental property when i graduate. I don't need my paradigm studio 100's getting damaged during a party thanks so some drunk idiot.

So I feel it is my duty to warn people not to buy these speakers. I fell into the trap created by all the great reviews on this thread, but since I need to buy 13 pairs of in-ceiling speakers for my distributed audio system I decided to buy 4 different pairs of speakers first, then decide between them for the rest.

I bought the following:
Monoprice 8" in-ceiling ($56 shipped)
AudioSource 8" AS8C ($75 shipped)
Phoenix Gold 8" AS8C ($85 shipped)
Polk Audio RC80i 8" ($250 retail, I got lucky and got them for $134 shipped)

I received the Monoprice ones first, and hooked them up to my Denon AVR-2808CI receiver. I tweaked all of the settings to my taste and let the speakers play for 24-48 hours before listening to them. Before getting any of the other speakers I felt like they did a decent, albeit not spectacular job. They have a good soundstage, but the vocals are very muddled compared to all of the other speakers. The bass is a bit flat and doesnt resonate the way I tend to like.

The Phoenix Gold speakers were up next. These were much clearer, but had even less bass. These are definitely what people mean when they refer to speakers as being "bright". Overall I didnt like these very much, but I would probably still prefer them over the Monoprice because of the clarity issue with the Monoprice ones.

The AudioSource speakers were actually very impressive. The match the clarity of the Phoenix Gold speakers but tone down the brightness a bit and add a little bit of punch in the low end. Overall these are definitely the best bang for the buck out of the four.

The Polk RC80i were a clear winner, but they should be considering basically everyone on the web sells them for $250 per pair. The clarity was by far the best, soundstage was better, and they had the most bass.

So, as the saying goes, you get what you pay for. That being said, however, for most people I dont think the difference between the Audiosource and the Polks would be worth $180 extra per pair. At the price I got the Polks ($134/pair) it really makes it a tough call. I decided to get 5 total pairs of the Polks (2 in kitchen, 2 in basement, 1 in master bath) and use Audiosource for the other lesser used areas to save some money.

For surround speakers I think all of them are servicable, but given that the Audiosource speakers are only $20/pair more I dont think there is any reason to consider the Monoprice ones unless you are really strapped for cash.

Id really like to test out more speakers (this is fun), but cant really afford to keep buying random speakers. Other things I considered were the Cambridge Soundworks 6.5" in-ceilings and I looked at every 8" speaker on Amazon and picked the ones that seemed to have the best specs under $150/pair.

A few other notes... all of the speakers except the Monoprice have pivoting tweeters. For anyone who swears that weight of a speaker relates to quality, the Monoprice are by far the heaviest, the Phoenix Gold are the lightest.

The one major positive of the Monoprice speakers? They come with this handy little curved wire thingy to pull out the grilles, which works on all of the other speakers. None of the other ones were bright enough to include something like that and taking the grilles off without it is a huge pain.


EDIT: The monoprice do have pivoting tweeters, my mistake.

I just received my 8" monoprice ceiling speakers today and can confirm that the tweeter pivots.

These are going in my kitchen.

I was lucky enough to have my builder let me run speaker and cat6 wires where I wanted to. I wish I had the forethought to build boxes where I wanted my speakers to go.

Though above the kitchen would have been tough because of all the electrical, plumbing for upstairs, and the duct work.

I know it's been mentioned before, but are there any step-by-steps to how to build a box in a ceiling after the fact?

I'd think it would be almost easier to build parts of the box first, then assemble it in the ceiling.

Problem is, it's kind of hard to experiment with box sizes when you're dealing with this kind of situation.

No I definitely got the right speakers, but Ill take a look when I got home, I may have just overlooked the fact that they pivot..

hehe everytime I read/hear the word pivot I cant help but laugh because of that one Friends episode where they are trying to get the couch up the stairs PIIIIIIIIVOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOTT!

Okay I just checked the speakers and they do in fact have pivoting tweeters. I dont know what I was smoking.

Another point, I think if you take off the foam between the grille and the speaker it helps improve the clarity a tiny bit, but then you can see the yellow part of the woofer through the grille.

Looks like they are going to stock 5 1/4 centre channel. How about an 8"

Can you tell me the difference between these 2? Is phoenix gold owned by audiosource or are they related in any way? Why do these have the same model number? It's a bit confusing to me. I"m trying to find some to buy, but I'm getting the 2 mixed up.

I think they are actually different speakers, and some of the sites seem to get them confused as well, as they change the model numbering around. The actual phoenix gold model # is atc8. Here are both of them on Amazon:

http://www.amazon.com/AudioSource-AS...3928256&sr=8-7

http://www.amazon.com/Phoenix-Gold-E...3928326&sr=1-1

The best deal I could find on the Audiosource was from J&R was using live.com's cashback.

Personally I think the Audiosource are a clear winner when compared to the Phoenix gold as they had a smoother midrange and low end, and the phoenix gold seemed way too bright, even if I dialed down the high end on the equalizer. The Polks I got are now back to the regular price of $250/pair and arent really worth it unless you're just buying one or two pairs for a HT setup.

Thanks for those posts, that's going to be really helpful to people evaluating these speakers. I see you've already corrected teh pivoting tweeter thign and also added the tip about removing the foams. I had posted about the foams a while back but I think that was deleted in teh db crash.

I searched all over when I was trying to figure out what to buy for a comparative review and found nothing so big kudos for going out and doing that yourself (and posting it).

Your description of the sound lines up pretty well with mine, I had mentioned in my original post that on their own these speakers sounded a bit muddy in the mids and harsh in the highs. The auto setup on my Yammy receiver seemed to improve that a lot but I definitely agree about teh low end which no reciever is going to fix. As I had mentioend before, if you're going to use these for an HT installation, you must be able to EQ them and have a very good sub. The 7.1 set ups I have sound very good but if I flip off the processing it's pretty crappy.

Certainly for whole house audio you're not going to be able to have a sub in every room so low end response will be much more important. I have two pairs of these on their own in separate rooms and would describe the sound as OK for casual listening.

The only other issue I would mention is that, for Canadian buyers, Monoprice's shipping costs are pretty reasonable and that was a big factor for me when comparing to other manufacturers (Home Speaker Depot was insanely high for e.g., 10 times what they charge to US customers). That being said, with the dollar where it is now, it's a lot pricier in general for Cdns ...

O.k. take a look now at the cool stuff added.. 8" and 10" inwall subs plus some other goodies. I'm going to sit on this project for awhile and see what they can offer.

If anyone is interested the Polks can be had for nearly the same price as Audiosource on Ebay now using the live.com-Ebay cashback deal. I just bought 9 pairs of the Polks to finish off my system after thinking Id have to settle for the AudioSource because of price. Ended up around ninety bucks per pair... not bad at all and *definitely* worth the difference.

Just to add some more info, I just bought two pairs of Paradigm SA-35s and one pair of Paradigm SA-30s. These are *not* in the same class as the speakers being discussed here, in price or quality, but just for informational purposes I thought Id throw out my opinion. The Paradigms are simply amazing. I have them sitting against the wall (not in the wall yet since my new house is still being built) and they completely blow away even my floorstanding Polk towers in every respect. In all honesty I dont even think I need floorstanding speakers anymore after hearing these. Pricewise they hurt a bit though, around seven to eight hundred per pair depending on the dealer. If anyone needs high quality in-walls for a home theater these should definitely be considered. (Although I havent heard any other comparably priced in walls, so take that with a grain of salt)

I am new to this and am wanting to put a low cost 5.1 system in my living room. My wife wants all the speakers to be in the ceilling. How do the Monoprice 6 1/2's compare to say a similiar product from Pyle? I will be using a seperate sub if that information helps. Thanks.

Fronts in the ceiling are very bad unless you are spending moolah on those Speakercrafts that come down rotate and point towards your listening position. Anyway you can convince her that in-walls are better for your fronts, whereas in-ceiling is okay for surrounds?

Unfortunately no. The way our living room is set up there is no open wall where the T.V. sits. It is surrounded by glass bookshelves that I am not allowed to put any speakers on.

Unfortunately no. The way our living room is set up there is no open wall where the T.V. sits. It is surrounded by glass bookshelves that I am not allowed to put any speakers on.

Hello everyone,

I've been a troll for quite some time, perusing the threads but never having entered an opinion. I wanted to take this time to do two things:

Firstly, I want to send my thank you to all of you who take the time to give back to the community. There are many of us who truly appreciate your input.

Secondly, I want to put my 2 cents in on this topic.

I just installed my Kevlar 2 way in-walls from monoprice. I love them so far. The sound is not so "in-your-face" as the Onkyo surrouns I had previously. With the speakers I had before, whenever there was sound in the surround speakers, I knew exactly where the sound was coming from. With these, the sound seems to bounce off the walls much better, thus, giving a true surround effect. Gunshots, missiles, bombs, glass shatters, birds, atmosphere, all sounded great on these. Very impressed!

I pumped some music into them and they seemed to hold up well. Sound is clear & without distortion up to high levels...and I still haven't broken them in! This test was done right after I installed them. Can't wait until they're broken in.

I took many pictures for those interested in seeing step-by-step installation. These were installed as surrounds in my bedroom which is 15x16x8.

picasaweb.google.com/mikemusica/BedroomTheatreInstallation