- 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. Honey is the free web browser extension that will find you the best promo codes on shopping sites like Amazon,
eBay, Walmart and more. Get it today at joinhoney.com/ltt. (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. - Blinkist takes the best insights and most important
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get special pricing up to 65% off the regular retail price. 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.
