[Denton J]

I have a few questions for the HT crowd.  I believe my house was designed to have speakers flush mounted into the ceiling.  I have small white panels on the ceiling with no function.  (They look like power outlets with but with no inlets) I have some physical limitations so I can’t go crawling around tight spaces anymore.  I will look behind these panels later today, I finally took some time off of work.

1. How much of a job would it be to install a couple of in wall surround speakers and wall mount center channel? 
(update) There is wire (blue PVC JKT) run behind these panels, I didn’t bring strippers with me up the ladder, whoever installed it painted over the ends of the wire so I can’t see if it is speaker wire or not, I am guessing it is.  My house is wired for internet use in every room.  I have a control box in my closet where my main internet modem sits.  There are no blue cables running there so I have to find where they come together.
2. Also, I am probably looking at a 20-25 ft run of speaker cable to reach the rear left and right surrounds.  Do you guys use nice speaker wire for the surrounds or just decent?

In addition to all of this I will be integrating a decent 2 channel system.  I have a Denafrips Athena preamp which works well but it doesn’t have HT passthrough.   

[WGH]

I have a few questions for the HT crowd.  I believe my house was designed to have speakers flush mounted into the ceiling.  I have small white panels on the ceiling with no function.  (They look like power outlets with but with no inlets) I have some physical limitations so I can’t go crawling around tight spaces anymore.  I will look behind these panels later today, I finally took some time off of work.

1. How much of a job would it be to install a couple of in wall surround speakers and wall mount center channel? 

2. Also, I am probably looking at a 20-25 ft run of speaker cable to reach the rear left and right surrounds.  Do you guys use nice speaker wire for the surrounds or just decent?

Installing in-wall speakers is easy but dusty. The trick is to have the right tools, drywall mud and matching paint.

The ceiling speakers can be used for Dolby Atmos, most surround receivers will do Atmos but may only have internal amps for the surround and rear channels, the Atmos channels will then require a stand alone amp. The surround speakers should be at the same height as the main L&R speakers and placed on each side of the seating area. There are plenty of surround speaker placement guides on the internet, use what works best for your room, I broke a lot of "rules" with my setup and it sounds fine.

I used 200' of Monoprice 14 AWG CL2 rated speaker wire for my 7.1.4 home theater. Buy a roll, it always takes twice as much wire than you think.
https://www.monoprice.com/product?p_id=2820&srsltid=AfmBOoqekskdPNIMzhKXse2VygUFll8bb3dsMt2ZkJSfml4elm7jZblF

I cut speaker and access holes with a oscillating multi-tool. The circular blade easily cuts drywall splitting the pencil line. I cut access holes in the ceiling with the multi-tool to run wires. When the job is finished, the cut out piece was glued back in with drywall mud, patched and painted. Fishing wires above the ceiling joists was achieved using 5/8" PEX tubing. The tubing is flexible enough to bend through access holes and stiff enough to span 8' or more to the next access hole.

More installation info: https://www.audiocircle.com/index.php?topic=163696.msg1762772#msg1762772

[Denton J]

That looks nice.  Thanks for the information.