Ceiling Speakers Sound Quality Test

Hello
I just taken delivery of a set of POLK RC60i's and a Yamaha AS501 Amp and a Wharfedale 150 Subwoofer.

I wanted to test the speakers and make sure they sound okay before 100% deciding on keeping them.
Now, I know you are all going to say I am an idiot lol, however, at this moment in time, I have no ceiling to mount them in as my Kitchen is completely gutted of everything.

I have tested the speakers and they sound OKAY, but my question is, Will I ever be able to give a proper test until they are put in the ceiling?
Will adding them into the ceiling improve sound greatly as I assume it will have some sort of baffle effect when installed?

I don't want to install them only to find I am unhappy with them, but equalyy don't want to be too harsh because they are not in their correct surroundings.

What do you think please?

Regards

Paul
 

Benedict_Arnold

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In-Ceiling speakers will sound at their best if you put them within some kind of wooden box, either mounted in the ceiling plasterboard or on top of the celing plasterboard.

For my home theatre in-celing speakers (Yamaha NS-IC800 50 watt RMS / 150 watt peak units) I knocked up some very rough 15 inch x 15 inch x 6 inch boxes made out of pine with 1/2 inch plywood back boards. My woodwork teacher would have had me nailed to a tree if he'd seen them, but they do the job and they're jidden in the ceiling so who cares? Luckily for me, the media room has an attic above it, so I was able to mount the boxes on top of the plasterboard, not in it, if you see what i mean.

The benefits for me are that the sound is supposedly refected back down into the media room, not lost into the attic above, and also that since we have that horrible, cheap, blown cellulose fibre loft insulation, not pukka fibreglass or mineral wool, I don't get "snowed" on if / when I need totake them down for any reason. Finally, it means the speakers don't get clogged up with insulation either. Mind you, there was no science behind my dimensions so I can't be sure I got the optimium dimensions for sonics.

Polks should be okay, maybe better than my Yamaha-has, but then the Yamaha-has were cheap and they're only used for surround sound and muzak, not critical listening. Some would say Klipsch are better than Polks, and some "Polkies" would lynch me for saying that. Some would tell you to spend gazillions on speakers with cones made from the hides of unicorns, tanned by vestal virgins using their own urine, by moonlight, within the inner ring of stones at Stone Henge...

Now. Most in-ceiling speakers aren't going to sound like the greatest floorstanding hifi speakers whatever you do to them. Sorry. That's it. Get used to it. So unless they don't work when you test them with some speaker cable hooked directly to your amplifier, there's not much more you can do to decide whether you like the sound or not, except, perhaps, to build the boxes, then fit them to the boxes (temporarily) and see how they sound hung from the ceiling somehow.
 

spiny norman

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paul wilkinson said:
I wanted to test the speakers and make sure they sound okay before 100% deciding on keeping them.Now, I know you are all going to say I am an idiot lol, however, at this moment in time, I have no ceiling to mount them in as my Kitchen is completely gutted of everything.

Get an offcut of plasterboard, use the speaker template to cut a suitable hole, mount the speaker in it and then put the board on the front of a suitable box. You know, an old kitchen cabient or something. ;-)

Put an old blanket or some towels inside the box to simulate the insulation between the ceiling and the floor above, hook the speaker up and have a listen.

Not neat or scientific, but should give you a pretty good idea. Makes you wonder why magazines don't review in-wall/in-ceiling speakers, doesn't it?
 

spiny norman

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Benedict_Arnold said:
Ever seen a journo sober enough to climb a stepladder?? ;-)

Hence my idea of a grounded review set-up. Also easier on the weight created by the pocketsful of brown envelopes, by removing all the climbing.

If you were doing it properly, I'm sure you could build some kind of standard box for reviewing such speakers, onto/into which a piece of board cut for each speaker on test could be clamped, one after the other. That might even make group tests possible. ;-)
 

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