Yes but read the OP request. Less than 6 inches on a budget, you aren't going to get anything with remarkable sound.
Those ceiling speakers work perfectly fine in the bathroom as the room enhances the acoustics.
5 speakers at decentish quality and linking together with individual settings is still going to set you back a minimum of £750-1000.. On a budget you could do it for £250 but yes you have to sacrifice some quality. Least with Amazon you can buy and test and send back if not happy
No matter how I say this, it's going to come across as harsh, so I might as well be direct. I don't believe that
@ChrisTheMusicLover's wish-list can be satisfied realistically.
If we recap what he has said so far in the thread: '
less than 6" in any direction '; '
a house that's on 2 levels '; '
Each can be set independently for the volume and a alarm? '; and '
Looking for really good quality sound '
- and then from a later reply about Sonos, where the range starts with the Play:1 speaker at £139: '
price is a little steep for my wallet at the moment '
I've been in the sales game for for more years than I care to remember. In that time, I've sat down with loads of clients who had some thoughts about what they wanted, but had no real idea of what it should cost. Oh they'd seen some stuff, not exactly what they wanted, but maybe close enough in their mind that they felt they could come up with a budget. That's the problem... "
maybe close enough" doesn't cover all the necessary bases to deliver a working solution.
Aside from needing a sub so they have any chance at all of producing '
really good quality sound ', your suggestion of the Bluetooth in-ceiling speakers need (a) fire hoods for any that are going to be installed below any inhabited rooms; that's an extra cost of roughly £10 per speaker, and (b), wiring in to the mains, so potentially adding the cost of an Electrician on top of the hardware bill. Even if the amp modules are kept out of the ceiling voids, there's still the cost and disruption of lifting the floors or breaking in to the ceilings to run speaker wires.
The next question regarding them is how effective they'll be at doing multiroom, because that's not something that Bluetooth generally does very well at all.
Switching over to the Apart satellite speakers, They're not going in-ceiling, but they still need speaker wires running back to an amp of some description to drive them. That's yet another cost and a whole bunch more headaches finding suitable amps that tick all the boxes of being individually addressable, capable of doing multiroom properly, accessing streaming media and home media library, and actually having an honest specification rather than something full of caveats. Oh, and of course, they have to fit the budget too and it would be nice to have a little confidence that the manufacturer might be around for 5 years to support the product. Have you noticed also that the Apart speakers use a single driver rather than separate tweeter and midrange driver?
Sonos isn't perfect, but by God they've got a really good product and tick a hell of a lot of the OP's boxes.
Maximum dimension is the height.......................................... 6.3"
Individually addressable.........................................................Yep
Alarm..................................................................................Yep
Access 10,000 tracks on home library.......................................Yep
...and 'really good sound' features:
- Tweeter and mid/bass driver..................................................Yep
- Actively driven speakers.......................................................Yep
- Efficient class D amplifier......................................................Yep
- Acoustic tuning app - okay, limited to Apple iOS devices, but.... Yep
Now for the stuff that you didn't realise you wanted until you come to use the gear for a week / a month / a year and you have that epiphany moment:
The broadest support for streaming apps...................................Yep
One of the best media management interfaces in the business......Yep
Zero installation cost...............................................................Yep
Mesh wireless networking that gets stronger with more devices....Yep
Scaleable architecture.... start small, add more, easily.................Yep
iOS and Android compatible, regardless of cost...........................Yep
Proven consumer support........................................................Yep
Industry leading brand and tech...............................................Yep
.......and I've only just scratched the surface.
This is one of those gift horse moments that people don't see until it's too late. Play 1s are £139 each. For what they do that is phenomenally cheap. These products are a huge leap forward from a typical Bluetooth portable speaker. It's akin to comparing a flintlock rifle with a modern sniper rifle.
If Play 1s are too much money to do all five rooms in one hit, then buy three or four and add the final ones when funds allow. We're talking about £139 for an all-in-one compact speaker product that works and sounds great compared to a hotchpotch of bits for maybe ten or twenty quid less if you're lucky, but a hell of a sight more limited and nowhere near as well supported. Any purchaser would be kicking themselves for wasting their money on anything else.
