# behind sheetrock speakers



## Ben Pierce (Apr 15, 2016)

I am building a house and my rear surround speakers in my TV room will either need to be mounted in the ceiling or behind the sheetrock in order to get the placement close. Anybody use the new behind wall speakers vs ceiling?


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## lcaillo (May 2, 2006)

What do you mean by "behind wall" speakers?


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## willis7469 (Jan 31, 2014)

I wonder if he means "in wall" on the "back wall"?


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## 86eldel68-deactivated (Nov 30, 2010)

I think he means something like these:


> Sonance Invisible Series is the ultimate expression in architectural audio. Installed into the wall or ceiling and then finished over with the surrounding surface, Invisible Series speakers deliver ambient music that emanates throughout the space with no visual footprint.


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## tonyvdb (Sep 5, 2007)

Ive gotta say that does not sound like a very good idea. There is no way a speaker could produce any decent fidelity being placed behind drywall.


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## DqMcClain (Sep 16, 2015)

tonyvdb said:


> Ive gotta say that does not sound like a very good idea. There is no way a speaker could produce any decent fidelity being placed behind drywall.


While I agree that if you want it to sound as good as it is designed to sound you need to have line-of-sight to the driver (regardless of the level of quality), there are ways round this idea that sound vastly better than one might expect. I've played with tactile transducers on occasion, and I have to admit that they are every bit as capable as they claim to be. 

As much as I like them though, I'm not certain putting them in as surround channels would yield a good tonal and power balance against exposed front speakers. The other down-side is that maintenance becomes virtually impossible without cutting into the sheet rock. But... if the whole system were composed of them and you had some kind of access panels, it might work. You would have a comparatively low ceiling on your output, and the response of this type of driver is highly subject to all of the physical properties of the surface on which they are mounted (rigidity, density, surface treatments, bound/free edges, size, etc). They are so subject to these things that the manufacturers often don't publish anything other than a power rating and an impedance... but considering the cost and the success of my own experiments, I can say that they generally sound pretty good. 

As I'm thinking about this concept, there might be a way to do this and maximize their potential though. If you left a cutout for a speaker in between studs (say, 9"W x 18"H), and built a mount for the back side of the transducer, you could then mount your surface to the transducer and cut that surface so there's a small gap between its edges and your cutout. So, if you had a 9"x18" cutout, you could cut a piece of foam core to 8.75" x 17.75" and have a 1/8" gap all the way around. Your speaker would be a solid surface that is flush with the wall. These do have one other massive advantage: You can get a 24W driver for <$10. So, counting your surface material, it would be possible to do an 11 channel setup for less than $200. 

DISCLAIMER: I wouldn't do this for myself unless I had some really weird situation that mandated invisible speakers, but it's an amusing concept for a build. It would work and would sound much better than the total cost suggests, but almost certainly not as good as conventional speakers. 

As for the speakers linked above, I'd guess those are either some AT material with a conventional driver behind that surface, OR they are what I just described but built into a convenient box and with some kind of surround to make the whole surface seamless. That's pure conjecture on my part though.


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