car speakers as ceiling speakers?

[GeX]

I'm in the process of replacing my, frankly awful, ceiling speakers.

My amp will deliver 40W RMS per channel. In the master bedroom I have fitted a pair of Yamaha NS-IC400 speakers. They were about £100 for the pair. They sound ok, but they're a bit lacking in the bass department. Which I guess is unsurprising given their size and the fact they're 9ft up in the air.

I've noticed that similar spec'd car speakers are much cheaper. Other than the mounting mechanism, they look like they fit fine. Has anyone tried using them?

Or can anyone recommend any slightly punchier ceiling speakers?

 

[chaparral]

Check what Ohms the speakers are and if your amp supports it

https://www.lifewire.com/speaker-impedance-3134705

Can Your System Handle It?
When choosing a 4-ohm speaker, make sure the amplifier or receiver can handle it. How can one know? Sometimes it's not clear. But if the amplifier/receiver manufacturer publishes power ratings into both 8 and 4 ohms, you're safe. Most separate amplifiers (i.e., without a built-in preamp or tuner) can handle 4-ohm speakers, as can probably any $1,300-and-up A/V receiver.

I'd be hesitant, though, to pair 4-ohm speakers with a $399 A/V receiver or a $150 stereo receiver. It might be OK at low volume, but crank it up and the pump (amplifier) might not have the power to feed that bigger pipe (speaker).

Best case, the receiver will shut itself off temporarily. Worst case, you'll be burning up receivers faster than a NASCAR driver wears out engines.

Speaking of cars, one last note: In car audio, 4-ohm speakers are the norm. That's because car audio systems run on a 12 volts DC instead of a 120 volts AC. A 4-ohm impedance allows car audio speakers to pull more power from a low-voltage car audio amp. But don't worry: Car audio amps are designed for use with low-impedance speakers. So crank it up and enjoy! But please, not in my neighbourhood.

 

[GeX]

4ohm is listed http://www.daytonaudio.com/index.php/ma1240-multi-zone-12-channel-amplifier.html

 

[lucid]

I'm in the process of replacing my, frankly awful, ceiling speakers.

My amp will deliver 40W RMS per channel. In the master bedroom I have fitted a pair of Yamaha NS-IC400 speakers. They were about £100 for the pair. They sound ok, but they're a bit lacking in the bass department. Which I guess is unsurprising given their size and the fact they're 9ft up in the air.

I've noticed that similar spec'd car speakers are much cheaper. Other than the mounting mechanism, they look like they fit fine. Has anyone tried using them?

Or can anyone recommend any slightly punchier ceiling speakers?

In general, car audio speakers suck for home audio applications.

It starts with the environment they're designed for. Car interiors get very hot, very cold, very humid. The whole environment shakes and rattles as we drive over Britain's patched-up road network. There's also a tonne of background noise to contend with. All of these demands mean that the speaker has to be more rugged than a typical home audio speaker and as a result audio fidelity takes a back seat. Rugged in this sense isn't a good thing when it comes to home audio. It means that the cone material is thicker therefore not as agile as its home audio counterpart. Think of it as more agricultural.

The other thing is that unless you're driving a bus, the car audio speakers are only trying to fill a relatively small space. It's far easier to pressurise a small space than a large one. In-ceiling speakers have to work much harder to fill a bigger area with sound.

The other main difference is fire-proofing. When you cut holes in the ceiling you wreck the fire rating of that room. That's because plasterboard has to withstand a fire burning in there for a minimum of 30 minutes before the flames reach the space above. Filling those holes with in-ceiling speakers means that they must reinstate a minimum fire rating of 30 minutes too. All the major brand speakers do this. (That's also why I worry about folk buying unknown product direct from Far Eastern suppliers.) Car speakers have no such requirements.



The problem you have with the Yamahas is two-fold. First, they probably haven't got a backbox to help pressurise the driver. They're venting in to the ceiling void which is huge in comparison to the speaker's cone area. That's a minor issue though. The bigger problem is the physics of small cone speakers. Your Yams are rated at 95Hz for bass from their 4" cones. That'll be 95Hz @ -3dB, so the bass is already tailing off and half as loud at 95Hz than at the octave above. The bass you've got coming from them is about the same as from some small satellite speakers from all-in-one home cinema kits when the sub isn't working.

If you want more bass then you need to move air. You do that with larger diameter drivers. 6.5" is the minimum I fit for main listening areas. Those speakers are £300/pr, not £99/pr.

I use 4" speakers for incidental areas such as corridors and vestibules, utility rooms etc.... Basically the non-essential or pass-through areas where it's enough just to hear that something is playing. Regardless of what you were told when purchasing those speakers, that's what the Yamahas are for.


The bottom line is you need either bigger speakers that go down to 40-45Hz (that's about the same frequency that you'd get from a Bose subwoofer from their Acoustimass speakers), or you need an in-ceiling subwoofer to supplement the Yams.

 

[GeX]

Thank you for the comprehensive reply lucid.

With regards to fire rating, I'm not sure that is correct. I've not seen any fire rating mentioned on any speakers I've looked at - they require fire hoods to cover them to maintain the fire rating of the ceiling. However, my ceilings are 115 years old and I'm sure lack any rating anyway.

I was indeed looking at larger speakers, namely the Yamaha NS-IC600. I went with the IC400s for the bedroom as I concerned about trying to enlarge the cut out in the lathe and plaster ceiling without doing damage to it. The cutout was similar in size for the speakers I removed. I wasn't expecting punchy bass from them, but in other areas of the house I do want a bit more punch (and I can make more mess in those rooms they're not freshly decorated with new carpet in them!).

Do you think it's worth trying to add a backbox to the IC400s, or to look at doing that for the bigger speakers? I'll stick with ceiling speakers instead of car speakers.

 

[lucid]

The IC600's are a step in the right direction but still bass limited @ 65Hz. That's a function of its price. They've got less bass than the tiny £39 Wharfedale Diamond bookshelf speakers (60Hz) which are bass ported and use the room boundary for a bass boost.

If you want something that's going to sound like a decent-sized stand-mounted speaker but in the ceiling you need to get some bass out of them. 45Hz is a sensible target. 20Hz extra might not seem like much of a difference compared to the IC600's, but believe me, you'll definitely hear it.

Adding a backbox to any in-ceiling will help a bit. But it won't bridge the gap from 95Hz to 65Hz or 65Hz to 45Hz.

 

[GeX]

OK, thanks again for the advice. If it were you, which 6.5" speakers would you pair with this amp?

 

[lucid]

Blucube BCK65's


Back before the brand was renamed Blucube I did an ad-hoc demo with a pair and a Connect Amp to a doctor in Bowden (WA14) who was interested in Sonos. It wasn't ideal conditions, I just propped the speakers up against the skirting board in his games room and played some music off my phone. He went really quiet. That's not normally a good sign.

Then he grabbed his Bose Lifestyle system remote and played some music through that. It sounded terrible by comparison. We went back to the Sonos/ceiling speaker combo. It had just wiped the floor with his £1500+ Bose kit.


Another little anecdote. I did an install for a Health Authority chief exec at High Legh. The ground floor lounge and dining room was was gutted as I was doing lights as well as home cinema. I mentioned to the client that it would be possible to put some speakers in the kitchen and run these from Zone 2 on the amp controlled by her phone. She does a lot of entertaining so the kitchen is an important area so she agreed. I was on-site doing some final tweaks when one of her friends called round. She also appreciates good sound and runs a Linn system with some Monitor Audio Silvers. I had Jazz FM playing from net radio in the kitchen. It wasn't on particularly loud but the lady came up to me and said "Those are really good speakers, aren't they?"

I think it had been mentioned in a conversation but their expectations weren't that great. It's nice when you can surprse people in a positive way and change their perceptions.



The Blucubes are more than double the price of the Yamaha IC600s, but they're less than half the price of B&WCCM662s, and yet they stand toe-to-toe with one of the worlds most respected speaker brands.

 

[SupraWez]

Interesting info.

 

[GeX]

Added to my list, thank you for the recommendation. I hadn't heard of Blucube before.

In the bathroom and one of the back bedrooms there is only one, centrally located speaker currently. Would you replace those with BCK65-SS's, or just a normal BCK65 and put that zone as bridged?

 

[lucid]

Without knowing more about your system and seeing the wiring plan and zone allocations it's difficult to make any absolute recommendations, but if this is your multi-channel amp...

4ohm is listed http://www.daytonaudio.com/index.php/ma1240-multi-zone-12-channel-amplifier.html

...then depending on how many channels you're running (can you spare 4 channels out of 12 to run 2 stereo in-ceilings?) you certainly could consider running mono in each room. Bridging 2 of 12 gives 80Watts but the minimum impedance on the bridged channel is 8 Ohm. BCK65's have switchable impedance, so with a bit of rewiring you could engineer an 8 Ohm load, but I can think of simpler ways to achieve two mono speakers without the need to change from star wiring to a daisy-chain run.

 

[GeX]

Sorry, I wasn't as clear as I could've been with that. In the rooms with one speaker, I'm considering if it'd be better to have the BCK65-SS with its twin voice coils using two channels on the amp (and 40W) or to use a BCK65 using two channels on the amp bridged (80W).

I have 5 zones, 2 of those have 2 speakers and the other 3 have 1 in each.

 

[1pudding1]

I bought some Blucube speakers after Lucid's recommendation on here a few years ago, running in a 5.1 setup in an open plan area with a sub, very happy with them 3+ years later. Blucube outdoor speakers still going strong too

 

[GeX]

How do the Blucube CCL-650 compare? They're a bit cheaper, but do they still sound good? 49Hz-22KHz.

 

[SupraWez]

Using a Sonos Connect:AMP would you run two BCK80 or four BCK65 in a room around 30 sq/mtr?

 

[lucid]

Sorry, I wasn't as clear as I could've been with that. In the rooms with one speaker, I'm considering if it'd be better to have the BCK65-SS with its twin voice coils using two channels on the amp (and 40W) or to use a BCK65 using two channels on the amp bridged (80W).

I have 5 zones, 2 of those have 2 speakers and the other 3 have 1 in each.

Painting with a very broad brush, stereo will sound better than mono, and two speakers will sound better than a single point stereo.

In order of quality then, starting at the lowest - 1 x BCK65 running bridged mono, then 1 x BCK65SS running stereo, then two BCK65 running stereo

In theory 1x speaker running from 80W should produce 103dB, and 2x speakers running @ 40W should produce 103dB in total as well; so in theory there's no difference in loudness. However, in practice we don't use the full power of the system much at all, and so we generally prefer the sound of two speakers spreading their output over a wider area at a low to moderate volume level rather than one speaker running louder and all that sound coming from a single point. This is subject of course to the room being large enough for it to make a difference.

If it's a straight choice between a single BCK65 running mono, or a BCK65SS (single point stereo) then personally I'd choose the stereo option.

 

[lucid]

How do the Blucube CCL-650 compare? They're a bit cheaper, but do they still sound good? 49Hz-22KHz.

The specs I have for the CCL-650 suggest the bass frequency is 55Hz rather than 49Hz.

Do they sound "good"? For a contract speaker, Yes.

Do they sound as good as the BCK65's? No.

The first clue is in the weight. The 650's weigh about 0.9kg a piece. The 65's close to double that. Most of the difference is due to the much larger drive magnet and the more sophisticated crossover. The magnet size is dictated in part by ow far the bass driver moves. We've become familiar with the advantages of long throw drivers as a way to deliver increased bass power where the driver size is limited.

The rest of the differences are down to materials mostly. The Mylar tweeter is cheaper, but the titanium dome tweeter on the BCK produces less distortion and a sweeter treble. The polypropylene bass cone is thoroughly decent but the Kevlar one is stiffer and lighter so it has lower inertia which means better definition to bass notes. The rubber drive surround on the Kevlar driver allows for larger cone excursions and, if past experience with home speakers is a guide, lasts far longer than the foam surround of cheaper drivers.

 

[lucid]

Using a Sonos Connect:AMP would you run two BCK80 or four BCK65 in a room around 30 sq/mtr?

Given the choice I'd always go for 4x 65's over 2x 80's

The extra 5Hz bass extension of the 80 isn't going to make much difference to the sound. We do most of our listening at low volumes, so the sound spread from 4 speakers works better for that.

When you want to crank up the volume, the surface area of 4x 6.5" drivers gives you 33% more driver area than 2x 8", and since bass and volume often come down to how much air you can move, then more driver area means more air moved.

 

[SupraWez]

Thanks for the info, so run two pairs in parallel at 8 ohms to provide two channels at 4 ohms.

 

[lucid]

With the BCKs they have 8/4 Ohms switching. Wire two on each channel in series and you get 8 Ohms. This means your current draw is only 2.5A rather than 5A, and that means you don't need to run anything bigger than 1mm Cross Sectional Area cable up to 15m or 1.5mm CSA @ 25m.

If you run with 4 Ohm per channel the current draw goes up to 5A @ 100W/ch. More current flow means a thicker speaker wire is required to transport that current safely so the wire won't get hot. Using a thinner wire than recommended will act as a current bottleneck. The speaker won't be able to pull as much current as it needs and so the effect is a loss of power. To run 5A without impacting too much on the current you need a 4mm CSA cable for a 10-15m run. To maintain the same power through a 1mm cable you'd be restricted to 4m.


Running 8 Ohm has another advantage. It leaves more headroom in the amp for peak transients.

We know that the power supply and output stage in the Connect Amp can drive 100W @ 4 Ohm. That gives us 5A of current per channel. But we also know that the Connect Amp isn't rated beyond that; it won't drive a 2 Ohm load for example. We can deduce then that running at 4 Ohm is using almost all of the amp's power if you crank the wick up. From that we could say that the power supply is rated at roughly 100VA, and since VA means Volts x Current then our 100W @ 5 Amps of current means that the speaker is receiving 20 Volts. (V x A = Watts. 20 x 5 = 100).

Amplifiers are voltage devices. When resistance changes the current alters in response. The voltage remains constant for a given drive level.

Running the amp in 8 Ohm mode @ 50W means the speaker is drawing 2.5A, and so we can calculate the voltage. 50W/2.5A = 20V again. As far as the speaker is concerned then the power supply behaves like a 50VA/ch PSU, but we know it's bigger than that. It's at least a 100VA/ch power supply. Than means we have power in reserve if needed.

The slight contradiction appears to be resistance or impedance. We think of lower resistance as a good thing. However, the above shows that a higher impedance (within reason) is better. How can a lower impedance speaker be worse? The answer is Current flow. Having a lower impedance speaker is akin to fitting a smaller propeller to an outboard motor. It might be easier to turn in the water, but it has to turn a lot more times to move the same volume of water as a bigger propeller. That means the engine burns through its fuel faster.