- A whole home sound system
is one of those things
that used to only be achievable
by people with way too much money on their hands.
But nowadays,
you can dot your house with Amazon echos,
get it,
connect them to powered speakers,
and have music in every room to enjoy
while you cook, clean, or have RGB dance parties.
Of course,
not everyone wants to see the wires
or even the speakers for that matter.
So today's video is going to be about, on a budget,
converting my Sonos setup to one
that can be hidden away in my ceiling.
Not quite like that.
And it's gonna be brought to you by Honey.
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(upbeat music plays)
So in my review six years ago,
I praised
the convenience and reliability
of Sonos wireless Audio Gear, but,
criticized the quality of the Integrated Speakers.
To be clear, they're fine, but for pickier ears,
Sonos has a solution, anyway.
Their Amp lineup of products
allows you to connect your own speakers
to their app for easy wireless streaming
and control.
So let's just go ahead and grab an Amp,
and a couple of in-ceiling- oh my goodness.
Each room is gonna cost me, even with the bundle savings,
over 1,200 U.S. dollars
in amps and speakers.
Surely I can do better than that, right?
Yes.
Yes, I can.
One of my other criticisms of Sonos was their high prices.
Although to their credit, they've actually done
a pretty darn good job of supporting their products.
If you don't mind using their S1 or Legacy app,
you can pick up a Connect Amp,
which is the older version of the amp for as little as $250.
That's a product from 2008 that is still usable today
without any kind of subscription fee.
That's actually a rarity among IOT device makers.
If you have other newer gear though,
you're gonna wanna watch out
and get one that is compatible with the S2 apps.
So that's one that was made in March, 2014 or newer.
So for example, I've actually got this Sonos Arc,
their new soundbar.
I'm working on a review of that,
make sure you're subscribed, so you don't miss it.
So I needed to make sure that all of my gear was "S2 ready"
for that I ended up spending around $370 a unit
for two more Connect Amps.
Although, I still think that's pretty good bang
for the buck, especially when you consider
how well Sonos gear tends to hold its value
and the fact that they often offer
generous upgrade programs, so you can consider
that investment in the legacy product
as sort of a discount on your new one,
when you do eventually have to upgrade.
On the speaker side of things,
I actually ended up very pleasantly surprised.
I ordered these Polk Audio, RC80I from Amazon thinking
that there was only one speaker in the box,
but as it turns out, it's actually just 165 U.S. dollars
for not one, but two in-ceiling speakers.
Here we go.
My kids are getting in-ceiling speakers in their bedroom.
One cool feature of these speakers is if you pop the grill,
you can actually redirect the tweeter slightly,
according to where you think your audience
is going to end up
and given I've already got a pair of them installed
in my living room.
I can say with confidence that you'll be pretty surprised
actually, especially for the price,
by the sound quality you get out of these things.
The best part of it, of course though,
is that for less than the price of a brand new amp,
I have got my last generation S2 Compatible Connect Amp
and a pair of speakers to install in this room.
That's half price baby.
So the story behind this room is this is actually two rooms,
what you're looking at up on the ceiling
is what used to be the closets for each of the rooms.
And at some point they may become two rooms again.
That's why this single room got two air conditioning units.
So it'd be nice if we could just do a single speaker
in each room.
Did we figure out, what the deal was, like why
it didn't fit right away?
Because see, there's the two different
- [Yvonne] Well-
- [Linus] -layers.
- [Yvonne] We're not painting it,
So we should be popping out the outer layer.
We should be taking that.
It's tight.
Yeah.
- [Linus] Tight. Really tight.
- [Yvonne] It's perfect.
- Okay, So where do you want it?
- Okay keep in mind
these things have to come out.
That's how they anchor down.
So it needs to be able to touch the dry wall.
So it can't be right next to the stud.
Little more than three inches, it's like so close though.
Does that look good?
- Yeah, it looks great.
- Okay, I am actually concerned about that one
because these things are what hold it in place,
and if the dry wall is already cracked there,
I don't think it's going to be structurally good enough
to hold it in place.
- Feels like two or three pounds.
- No, it's more than two or three pounds.
This is more than two or three pounds.
- It's from 117
to 112,
so okay five pounds.
- 5.8 Pounds.
Okay.
And also I feel like I need to set the record straight
people thought I bought this leopard print stuff.
- [Linus] What?
I bought it, obviously a stylish guy.
Oh yeah.
(drill whirs)
Oh, balls.
For those wondering,
the reason we're cutting it from the bottom side
is that it actually,
the reason for this whole bullet hole situation over there
was that it was cut from the top,
which can be a lot messier.
So this is to get a nice clean hole.
Always make sure you got a clean hole.
- Oh boy.
What did I marry.
- For those who didn't catch it,
I unplugged this before doing what I'm doing with the blade
before you guys "re" at me.
(drill whirs)
- [Yvonne] Oh boy, you missed by a lot.
- [Linus] All right, woo circle-ish.
It's a good thing the electrical cable here is
an armored one.
See, Brian knew who he was dealing with.
This one in first.
Oh yeah.
- Nice.
- [Linus] What kind of a screwdriver bit does it use?
- This cross.
- [Linus] Cross.
Okay.
Alright that's in there.
- Oh wait, Yeah, it is.
- You're on suck duty (chuckles)
(drill whirs)
Oh my nipple.
Oh yeah.
Wow, it's so tight it even just like sticks there.
Now all that remains, is to run speaker wire under here.
Well, you guys aren't going to be able
to see this I'm afraid,
but they go into the back of the speaker kind
of like a speaker.
Now, I'm just going to,
don't worry,
I'm not gonna put this down all the way or anything,
but I just want to hold it kind of in place.
That's good enough.
I've got a couple of outlets in my attic
that I'm no longer using for anything,
since Brian wired in proper lights here a little while ago,
so I'm just gonna plug two of these puppies,
One of these Connect Amps per room,
I'm just gonna plug them into power here,
And then probably, realistically,
I'm just going to throw like a piece
of two by six or something on top of the insulation,
or maybe I'll just make a little shelf right here
and I'm just gonna chuck them right here.
You just pop that through there
and this thing should pick up
and I should be able to press play.
So let's go ahead and just grab some music here.
That's a good sign.
Let's run downstairs.
(upbeat music plays)
Which way do you want them pointed?
- Maybe one right here where my hand is
and then one like where the beanbag is over there.
- Okay, you ready?
- [Yvonne] Yeah.
(upbeat music plays)
- Yay!
Yes, they're both working.
- Okay.
Nice.
- Okay.
Now let's have a look
at what kind of sound quality we get
If we don't care about saving any money,
And we were to spend like
as much if not,
actually more than Sonos' own speakers
on the in-ceiling speaker component.
Do you want square or
do you want circle
for your grill?
Oh, these are adjustable too.
Okay, nevermind.
So these just have a different mechanism
for adjusting the angle that they sit at.
I mean, that's fine,
because depending where we want to put it,
we might just want to-
like this would be for like a home theater setup
where you'd want to angle it towards the listener,
but here we might just put it in the corner of the room
and then just kind of angle it out towards the room,
because we're just putting a single speaker in here.
Sorry, audiophile people.
- Can we hide it in that corner?
- Yeah.
So we're gonna want to angle it kinda like that.
Nope, can't do it there.
- Oh, why?
- Ah, there's a joist like right here.
So basically, or like here,
so it'd have to be like right there
and there is a big thing around it,
like it's not gonna fit.
- [Yvonne] Okay, well what if we
- So it would have to come out
to like here.
- The speaker is actually really heavy.
It's a good thing that the mounting mechanism
is separate from it.
You just pop this in first
and then put this in it and then turn it to lock it.
Pretty cool.
It's actually really nice that this one has it like that.
Yeah, you can do it all from this side.
- [Linus] Oh yeah, that's sweet.
(drill whirs)
Alright, let's see how this one sounds.
You know, I might actually like the look
of the grills on the other one better.
- [Yvonne] I was just talking to Andy about that
because the other ones have a ring around them
so they almost in some ways-
- [Linus] Matches everything else.
- [Yvonne] Yeah.
(upbeat music plays)
- Yeah, okay, it's a lot better.
- [Yvonne] It's a lot more clear.
- Well, yeah.
It's way better.
I don't know if I would pay
six times as much or whatever that works out to but-
- [Yvonne] Well, are you sure?
Because you do that for your computer speakers and stuff.
Maybe you would.
- Definitely a lot better.
Okay.
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If you guys enjoy this video
because you just love seeing me
crawl around in my attic-
Did she keep that center?
Yeah, that does look pretty good.
Then you can check out the video where Brian and I
installed air conditioning.
That was- that was rough.
It was hot up here.
(singing) It's getting hot in here.