Home theater in-wall speaker mounts

So the wife and I are moving into a house that comes with a sound system that is wired into the house with ceiling mounted speakers in the sitting room, the office, the bedroom, and patio speakers. The great room has no mounted speakers but does have two hook ups for surround speakers on the back wall. My plan was to put my bose 201 speakers there but that was quickly vetoed by the wife. She wants everything mounted in the wall. I guess to do this I would need to cut holes in the wall, build mounts and cover the speakers with some sort of screen. Also I will need to install the sub somewhere and I sure as hell am not going to mount this in the wall. My questions for everyone.....has anyone done this recently and how hard is it? Secondly how can I accomplish this and still make it look good? Lastly is it worth it to compromise the sound or should I just buy in wall speakers and mount them that way?
Thanks
Chris

I would buy new in wall speakers. Much less hassle and probably better sound quality than cannibalizing your Bose speakers and trying to cram them in the wall. Most grills are actually the mounts as in they clamp onto the drywall. Most grills are also printable to match the walls.

Just my $.02

Awesome.....will save a hell of a lot of trouble and probably bickering!
Chris

In this instance there wasn't anyplace to fut the front speakers, so they went into the ceiling. The light can trims and sprinkler trims were copper so we painted the grills to match. (The speaker is in the red box). If I remember right they are 8's with directional tweets.

BTW the grill above to the right of the fireplace is a return air and the one to the left is a dummy grill to make everything symmetrical.

Wow! That looks amazing!

Damn dude, that is one sick living room.

I have a great pair of Boston in ceiling mounts for my living room surround sound. At the retailers they were high end speakers but too expensive, the awesome thing is I found out they have the same exact speaker under a different model number in security equipment catalogues for half the price. With four of those and a 12 inch sub my home theater sounds amazing.

Here is another house I did last year. 3 in ceiling for left, right and center. There are 2 more on the other side for rears. The sub is in the farthest left cabinet. We used Speaker Craft speakers. They sound amazing and are somewhat reasonably priced. http://www.speakercraft.com/products...tectural-audio

Oh yeah, if you look through the window in the very top right corner you can see one of the two outside speakers for the patio. We even put a separate audio controller outside so you can change the music without going inside.

I have posted this pic a few times of my living room.

A few years ago I re-did my living room fireplace and boxed down the ceiling for recessed lighting. This allowed me to run all my speaker cables around the room. The front and rears are all mounted in the wall. As mentioned everything can be painted to match the walls. The speakers come with a template to cut the drywall and just clip in. Before you actually mount the speakers run the screws in and out on the tabs as they can be stiff the first time as they aren't threaded. This will make it a lot easier to install and pull out if you ever need too. The second pic is our summer house. The deck has three pairs of speakers along the front. The biggest thing you will want to look at is a zone amp as multi room audio is set up differently then your regular tuner is usually capable of.

oh, and home theatre speakers should always be setup ( when able) to project horizontally across a room at sitting ear height rather then straight down from the ceiling as the sound fills the room better.

Thanks for all the input! Amazing set ups. If you guys are bored and want to come help me you are more than welcomed. I will have the liquor cabinet stocked!
Chris

I am more then willing to help. On top of the stocked liqour cabinet you just have to add flight and accomadation.lol. It's too bad because I can get all of this gear quite cheap from my suppliers.

If only I were a pilot! How cheap? How does your gear compare to paradigm?

I can get Polk, Russound, Proficent, Posh, Pro Linear, and a few others. Russound and Proficent are Multi room audio products. Proficient is probably a better product then Paradigm. You have to remember with ceiling speakers you can get away with a not so expensive speaker as you are never really pushing the limits of the speaker because you typically don't have them really loud. At a relatively low volume you wouldn't be able to tell the difference between the two. Somewhat like getting caught up in the monster cable compared to regular cables debate.

Dave, make sense. Thanks again for all your input!
Chris

So closed on the house today and got to take a better peak at the built in sound system. Its a Russound with four zones plus two speaker outputs in the main room. Here is a link to the exact hub that I have; http://www.russound.com/product_detail.php?i=977. Does anybody have any experience with this?
Chris

Bose will make any audio purist want to puke.

There are a ton of nice in-wall speakers. We added some to our family room and have some nice gear driving them. Sounds quality is pretty amazing. Grills can be painted to match. They have back-boxes and clamp themselves in place to the sheetrock. All you have to do is cut holes and wire them up. We did a 2-6" ported set-up with 1" aluminum dome tweets. They're a bit light on the bottom end so we added a powered velodyne sub. I can't remember which brand they are right now. Something my brother got on manufacture demo.

Beautiful houses guys.....

I have Russound in our summer house above with 2 -6 zone amplifiers. I don't know much about that hub though.

The 4 Cat5 plugs on top are wired out to the keypads within the house. The speakers I assume connect to a seperate amp. My russound system has the speaker connections within the same large amp. You may only get volume control out of the keypads or source select. With mine I can scroll my ipod as well. Using a Air port express from apple would be better though.

I just went though this. i built an addition 14/40' with a built in plasma on one end and pre-wired the walls for speakers. Note* I am married and have been for long enough to run two pair to each location to a terminal binding post wall fixture at the other end of the room in the most likely location for her to whimsically move the entire AV system. *end note.
To that end I went 7-1 channel with a C vega 12" powered sub inside the storage seat beneath the TV, a C-Vega complex center channel suspened under the screen and six Monster Audio three way adjustable level directional 7" in wall speakers/ Front, mid and aft. All in walls are at ear height when seated.
Everything runs off a Sony 900 watt receiver and it will make you turn your head.

Anyone walking into the room when a movie is on is always stunned by the clarity and dispersion. That and the plasma picture is unbelievable.
Football rocks! The play by play comes from the center channel. Field noise is surround and the umps come from the rears.

I would take some pics but I have three kids and there is crap everywhere. Embarrassing after seeing y'alls houses.

Anyway the big trick is ear height and a good amp.

Oh yeah: No highs / no lows / must be Bose!

Thanks for all the feedback! After much consideration I plan on adding in wall speakers and eventually re-working all of the speakers as time goes on and the budget allows. I was suggesting Bose to save money.....taking a loss on the current house and closing on the future home has the bank account looking a little low right now.....