Hi, looking for some ceiling speakers to go in my house, always had conventional but the new place has clean lines( very modern) I love a crisp sound, don't mind spending a bit extra on a hard wired set up, any recommendations? I'm into my pommy bands mainly
Radiohead
Oasis
Noel Gallagher acoustic
Jake bugg
Cheers cauncy
A good mate who is a massive tech nerd of mine has Bose 791's in his theatre and alfresco and it sounds pretty good but apparently his amp etc are good as well. He got it all off Ebay. Apparently loads cheaper but going by everything else he has, it would still be expensive.
I'm looking at a set of yamahas for my alfresco and they were about $400 a pair in the shop and sounded ok.
Had a demo of the Bose gear tbh over rated
Bower Wilkins, Celestion, wharfdale, cambridge audio had more quality for my ear, heard the yamaha and Bose outdoor gear , happy with both in my alfresco,
Looking at a high end harmon kardon or cambridge audio 7:2 to power them
^^ You know your stuff huh. You need to have a listen to my Toshiba SS-30's
Hen's teeth and rocking horse sh!t all mixed up.
hey
Cauncy is rite with brands.
Ive got B+W (bowen and winkler)flush mounts in ceiling rear with directional cones.
they are OK at around $200 each.
spend up big on brand and speaker quality and read reviews at audio head forums
Hi Cauncy
You seem to be very into your music and know good sound.
Have a listen to a Sonos, I was very impressed
www.sonos.com/en-au/home
The Trueplay room tuning function is awesome
Check Aaron as well, good Aussie manufacturer. My surround system (ats-5 mains) is 15 years old&sounds perfect still.
Www.Aaronhifi.Com.Au
Ceiling speakers sound like ceiling speakers I reckon.. OK for music but not ideal
Check out Krix too. Aussie made.
www.krix.com.au/
Got phoenix's inside and aquatix out. They do a great range of in wall and ceiling speakers
www.krix.com.au/home-entertainment/concealed-audio.html
Check out the Loudspeaker Kit
www.theloudspeakerkit.com/
I got onto the for Tactile transducers for my gaming seat
All sorts of kit for the audiophile
I have Bose and other custom built and surround sound systems in the past, but now use my sound bar for nearly everything. It's brilliant. It's a Phillips fidelio which is their high end stuff. I run a large flat screen through it with Apple TV and watch tv, music, film, and can bluetooth directly. You can pull the end speakers off and place them behind you for true wireless surround sound. Check out the reviews, you will struggle to find one under 5 stars anywhere. Connects via HDMI. I paid around $875. I just use a Bose sound dock for outdoor or beach. It's the best portable by far.
My mate has the SONOS and it is impressive for whole of house solution but he paid serious $. He uses it as a selling point for upmarket houses. 
www.philips.com.au/c-p/HTL9100_79/fidelio-soundbar-wireless-surround-cinema-speakers
Not to be a smart arse but home theatre gear is not really audio quality.
If you want quality you should look at studio quality equipment.
Yamaha, sonos, bose etc aren't studio grade.
^^^Pretty right mate though studio stuff is often "characterless". Studio monitors are a bit dead. Hi fi is the go imho. Australian speakers are especially good in the mid/ high end. Osborn, duntech, krix, DC from Adelaide are real giant killers. Check em out
Select to expand quoteGestalt said...
Not to be a smart arse but home theatre gear is not really audio quality.
If you want quality you should look at studio quality equipment.
Yamaha, sonos, bose etc aren't studio grade.
Not wrong, had a demo at west coast with the sonos, everyone seemed impressed except me, cambridge audio is winning so far, had a bang & olufsen system years ago which had a stunning tone, some systems are all round, ie cinema and music, it's purely music I'm chasing, pretty sure I'll have to back the ceiling speakers with a bass speaker, a very decent amp/ speaker set up can be upward of $50'000, my budget is around $5000
Select to expand quotelog man said..
DC from Adelaide are real giant killers. Check em out
I've had my DC's from VAF for nearly 20 years, love them, as others have said go Aussie. I was thinking unless you like elevator music ceiling speakers aren't going to do it. Please don't take that the wrong way, I know how it is, my wife hates our big black speakers but hey they sound awesome and that's what I want 
Select to expand quotecauncy said..Gestalt said...
Not to be a smart arse but home theatre gear is not really audio quality.
If you want quality you should look at studio quality equipment.
Yamaha, sonos, bose etc aren't studio grade.
Not wrong, had a demo at west coast with the sonos, everyone seemed impressed except me, cambridge audio is winning so far, had a bang & olufsen system years ago which had a stunning tone, some systems are all round, ie cinema and music, it's purely music I'm chasing, pretty sure I'll have to back the ceiling speakers with a bass speaker, a very decent amp/ speaker set up can be upward of $50'000, my budget is around $5000
the studio I use has second hand b&w 805's with a mid level hafler pro 500 power amp. probably about 3.5k all up and it sounds stunning. actually I'd happily put it up against any 50k system and I reckon it would do the job.
I also use a ross martin audio converter from the cd player. that converter cost me $150 second hand and is also stunning.
the reason audiophile gear costs 50k is because......it's sold to audiophiles.
I agree with everyone else. if you want to listen to cd's you need 2 speakers and ceiling mounted is not going to get you there. cd's are mixed in stereo so you should really listen back in stereo.
Select to expand quotelog man said..
^^^Pretty right mate though studio stuff is often "characterless". Studio monitors are a bit dead. Hi fi is the go imho. Australian speakers are especially good in the mid/ high end. Osborn, duntech, krix, DC from Adelaide are real giant killers. Check em out
I want to agree with you. part of me deep down has been imprinted with the same thoughts.
but reality is this is just no true. we get conditioned to thinking this way by marketing slogans. in reality there is only good speakers and bad speakers. being studio grade or hi fi grade doesn't predispose them to sounding a certain way.
what you do find is that studios tend to lean towards transparency. so you can hear the music. there is no reason why that is not also the desired outcome in a lounge room and is what the speaker designers are also trying to achieve.
Room acoustics is an issue, polished concrete and internally tiled feature walls and lots of glass, more church like than recording studio, conventional carnt be done due to concealment of cables for my future system
I'm glad you raised the idea of acoustics because it is a major part of the deal. I see people with 10k systems in their houses and not a piece of acoustic treatment anywhere.
I designed and built the studio i'm currently using. have done a couple so have some experience there. studios also need a high level of isolation to remove the background noise which allows the listener to hear the fine detail. something you will struggle to achieve in a house if you are not using a sealed isolated room like a movie room.
a uniform stereo response is also desirable. a rectangular room. there are ratios that get used. the location of the speakers is critical. well designed speakers come with a chart that provides information on where to place them away from boundaries. something you can't do with ceiling speakers.
polished concrete is a very desirable floor surface. well that or something hard. carpet not so good. wall reflections and ceiling reflections are not so good if those reflections are hitting the listener too soon after the original sound reaches your ears. if you hear the reflected sound to soon after the initial sound you loose clarity. 20ms is what gets used in some situations.
you can deal with some reflections by how you position your speaker/couch arrangement. then you use acoustic treatments to deal with the surfaces that are causing issues. either absorbing the sound to reduce it's reflected volume or reflecting it away from the listener so it takes longer to reach them. remember we are not talking about the initial sound reaching your ears but the reflected sounds.
a classic example would be the wall behind the listener reflecting sound back to the listener. all surfaces have the same issue though. ceiling, side walls, floor etc.
there are also flutter echoes that cause issue.a flutter echoe occurs between 2 parallel surfaces and sound like comb filtering or phasing.
that's your average lounge room. taking it further, if the room is a sealed room like a movie room then you get other issues.
1. bass build up. for that you need bass trapping in all corners as a minimum.
2. room modes. specific treatments are needed dealing with peaks and nulls occurring due to room volume and dimensions.
so it's give and take. a sealed room provides a lower ambient noise level but needs more acoustic treatment and an open room suffers less from modes and bass issues but has a higher ambient noise level.
all just comes down to budget. in my mind it's worth it. a mediocre system will sound better in an acoustic space then a high end system in an untreated space. with the stuff I listen to I can put my hand into the sound stage and hear every detail of the room the music was recorded in. badly done recording sound badly done.
How did I get redthumbs for offering a listen to the rarest speakers in Oz, and amongst the most highly regarded, anywhere?
Strange mob.
Lesson - you don't need to spend $5K to $10K you just need to know what is good. Fk the label.
Select to expand quoteGestalt said..
I'm glad you raised the idea of acoustics because it is a major part of the deal. I see people with 10k systems in their houses and not a piece of acoustic treatment anywhere.
I designed and built the studio i'm currently using. have done a couple so have some experience there. studios also need a high level of isolation to remove the background noise which allows the listener to hear the fine detail. something you will struggle to achieve in a house if you are not using a sealed isolated room like a movie room.
a uniform stereo response is also desirable. a rectangular room. there are ratios that get used. the location of the speakers is critical. well designed speakers come with a chart that provides information on where to place them away from boundaries. something you can't do with ceiling speakers.
polished concrete is a very desirable floor surface. well that or something hard. carpet not so good. wall reflections and ceiling reflections are not so good if those reflections are hitting the listener too soon after the original sound reaches your ears. if you hear the reflected sound to soon after the initial sound you loose clarity. 20ms is what gets used in some situations.
you can deal with some reflections by how you position your speaker/couch arrangement. then you use acoustic treatments to deal with the surfaces that are causing issues. either absorbing the sound to reduce it's reflected volume or reflecting it away from the listener so it takes longer to reach them. remember we are not talking about the initial sound reaching your ears but the reflected sounds.
a classic example would be the wall behind the listener reflecting sound back to the listener. all surfaces have the same issue though. ceiling, side walls, floor etc.
there are also flutter echoes that cause issue.a flutter echoe occurs between 2 parallel surfaces and sound like comb filtering or phasing.
that's your average lounge room. taking it further, if the room is a sealed room like a movie room then you get other issues.
1. bass build up. for that you need bass trapping in all corners as a minimum.
2. room modes. specific treatments are needed dealing with peaks and nulls occurring due to room volume and dimensions.
so it's give and take. a sealed room provides a lower ambient noise level but needs more acoustic treatment and an open room suffers less from modes and bass issues but has a higher ambient noise level.
all just comes down to budget. in my mind it's worth it. a mediocre system will sound better in an acoustic space then a high end system in an untreated space. with the stuff I listen to I can put my hand into the sound stage and hear every detail of the room the music was recorded in. badly done recording sound badly done.
That's some good advice right there
Select to expand quoteGestalt said..
Not to be a smart arse but home theatre gear is not really audio quality.
If you want quality you should look at studio quality equipment.
Yamaha, sonos, bose etc aren't studio grade.
I agree. I assumed he was looking for surround sound with ceiling speakers. Wish I had your advice years ago. I built a system through components and expensive salesmanship. I ended up with a dust gathering unit that sounded better 1 room away; and when hooked into home theatre had a miniscule lag. It also, for my crappy hearing, was ordinary with voice dialogue at times. At least because I purchased high end, I had no trouble selling without resorting to losing $,000s in a garage sale.
I'm just really happy with that soundbar as a simple solution. It's certainly not as high end as you guys are talking. Just a matched system that has clean lines, with no need to carve into ceiling. It's clarity is excellent, especially as a replacement for TV panel speakers and watching anything online with music.
Reminds me of what a teacher used to say to me RTFQ.
Select to expand quoteGestalt said..
Not to be a smart arse but home theatre gear is not really audio quality.
If you want quality you should look at studio quality equipment.
Yamaha, sonos, bose etc aren't studio grade.
Just a general question on people's opinions, but should an equaliser be used?
I have a colleague that refuses to use an equaliser despite having spent many tens of thousands on equipment. His argument is that 'that is the way it was meant to be listened to'. I disagree. The medium it is recorded on has its limitations, and the speakers we listen to it with have their own limitations.
As a result, I think his very expensive setup sounds boring. So much so, that I prefer listening to music in my car. My own speakers are home-built that I cobbled together from a project in an electronics magazine and uses a mixture of VAF drivers and a Kenwood car Subwoofer 
, but I think it sounds far better than my colleagues very expensive system.
I don't think there is any right or wrong answer there's just opinions.
I don't really know what you mean by sounds boring. To me if the music sounds boring then it was played poorly or was recorded poorly or just isn't music I like.
preferring eq could be the room acoustics are no good, could be you are listening to the music at a quiet level and want more bass, could be you don't like the way the music was handled by the mastering engineer and want either more top end or more mids or whatever or it could be you are listening to mp3's or yo ujust don't like the sound of the speaker or the amp or the converters.
in commercial club's and pub's eq is used to balance the room because it's cheaper than designing the room properly. EQ does degrade the quality of your audio signal. it introduces phase shifts and artefacts. that is the reality. if you prefer those things or if those things outweigh other issues in the signal chain or room then fair enough. my money is on the room acoustics being the issue and you are using EQ to make up for that. like in a car for example. could be your mate sits in the sweet spot and your sitting in a null.
ultimately, one mans clean is another mans dirty. it all just depends. I just go with what sounds good to me and honestly believe that eq is not needed and the shortest path to the speakers is the best outcome with the highest fidelity.
with that said, my home stereo has a 2 band eq that I really don't use so much. it's a rotel preamp and allows the eq to be bypassed which I find is how I prefer the sound. sometimes on really harsh sounding cd's i'll engage the eq and roll off some top end. sometimes on quiet listening levels I'll add some bass. but I don't have it engaged as a default setting.
By boring, I mean it sounds dull, as if I wasn't sitting there listening to someone play live. Not an over amped 'live', but as if I was sitting there listening to an acoustic set.
On my home system I like to believe that I can hear cymbals, and kick drums as if I were only metres away, and still able to hear the lyrics easily.
I guess one of the reasons I am an advocate of using equalisers is that the response from speakers is never linear, and thus would rarely have a response the same as what the engineer that recorded the track had.
I do agree, you are right in that it is up to what the individual likes, but I must say I was underwhelmed by this system that was demoed to me.
I know next to nothing about instruments, but there is a track on a Jimmy Barnes acoustic album that has a few notes played on a grand piano, and for me, that sounds brilliant, as if I were there in person. That's what I want to hear.
I think it comes back to what we were talking about earlier which is you can't say because one hifi system is crap they all are. from what you've described, if the system is a good system, then the issue is room acoustics are making the music sound muddy. if it's not room acoustics then the system is poorly designed.
but again if you want an accurate sound using eq is not the way to go. dealing with the acoustics is a better though more expensive solution. in your case you are using your eq to fix room acoustics issues.
the biggest complaint you will hear in the studio world is that modern gear is too linear. in real terms speakers, amps, cd player that are designed correctly certainly are linear and way more linear than a home stereo eq is capable of achieving.
for eg, speakers are +/-2db from 40hz-20+khz and power amps are .5db from 10hz-200khz. converters are the same. so it's not gear which is making the music sound muddy.
the room on the other hand will have 10-20db peaks and nulls across the frequency spectrum.
gear that is purposefully designed not to be linear is gear you find like home stereos, home theatre gear, mp3 players etc. there they are using psychoacoustic methods to convince you the detail is there.
Select to expand quotesotired said..
By boring, I mean it sounds dull, as if I wasn't sitting there listening to someone play live. Not an over amped 'live', but as if I was sitting there listening to an acoustic set.
On my home system I like to believe that I can hear cymbals, and kick drums as if I were only metres away, and still able to hear the lyrics easily.
I guess one of the reasons I am an advocate of using equalisers is that the response from speakers is never linear, and thus would rarely have a response the same as what the engineer that recorded the track had.
I do agree, you are right in that it is up to what the individual likes, but I must say I was underwhelmed by this system that was demoed to me.
I know next to nothing about instruments, but there is a track on a Jimmy Barnes acoustic album that has a few notes played on a grand piano, and for me, that sounds brilliant, as if I were there in person. That's what I want to hear.
I hesitate to say it but how good is your hearing. I know after 20 years of playing in loud/ very loud bands my hearing has dulled at both ends of the spectrum......though not as bad as a drummer I worked with who now has bad tinitus and has no idea where sound has come from. Most Hi Fi gear is better than the ears that hear it. I realised that after I got a Sheffield HiFi test disc and heard 15k........or didn't !!!!!!!
Yeah it starts getting pretty hard to hear the higher freq. In an isolated room with a studio level background noise I can get to around 18k. At home pretty much same as you log man. 15k ..... Maybe 16?.
A non scientific way I test a room is to sit in the listening position and do a sine wave sweep. You can hear all of the issues as the sound losses and gains volume depending on frequency.
There is also this fun site for audio nerds.
www.audiocheck.net/blindtests_level.php?lvl=0.5
I bought a second hand 20 year old Carver amp CM 1090 a year ago for around 400.
It had just been serviced. No problems so far and it sounds pretty good.
My previous Nad amp had given up on me. Sick of getting it repaired.
i have two 15 year old B and W 601 speakers that i bought new,though I have only one speaker wired up due to noise
restrictions ( neighbours)
I only listen to 93.7,have no CD player.
Sound quality for me is more to do with the room than the equipment.
Go to Surround Sounds and every piece of equipment sounds awesome due to their rooms absorbing the sound.
Thin,soft plasterboard that absorbs sound guessing is what works best.
How long do speakers last? As I said I only my listen at very low volume for around 2 hours per day.
Reckon these speakers should be right for another 15 years.
