Does anyone have rear surround speakers mounted IN the ceiling (or is it acoustically a bad idea)? If you have mounted them, did you buy a kit? And did you install it yourself?

My wife nixed the idea of mounting rear surround speakers on (not IN) the wall.

I work for a major Home Automation company in Mi.
Well it is true that you will have better sound out of a box speaker, we occasionally will flush mount rear surround speakers and they perform quite well. The Triad speaker and PSB speakers are your better pair on the market ($1000.00) range but there are others less exspensive speakers.

Bryan

The rear speakers need to be at ear level if they can be. That is why you will see many setups where the rear speakers are on stands. The placement is something that can be tuned with many receivers, for instance my Sony will let me set the rear to either behind me, by so many feet, where the feet are adjustable, or to the side of me, and I think there are some other choices in the setup. As for the box speaker versus ceiling mount, you can mount the box in the ceiling with only the grill protruding out. I have my rear speakers to the rear of my by one foot, on the ceiling angled toward the listening area, but they are not flush, they are on brackets. You can always get inventive in the palcement, like putting them in a pot mounted tree, fake or otherwise, or put them in the wall to the rear, and put a shelf over them, make them look like they are holding the shelf up. Paint them to match the surrounding area to take attention away from them.
It's always a pain the be a slave to two masters, one tells you to make the sound great no matter what, and the other says to make the sound great as long as I can't see the speakers. I vote for a functional setup, no plastic on the seats, no seats that nobody can sit in.

Roland,

Go to this site: [Link: dolby.com]

Yup, you guessed it. It's the official Dolby site, creator of Dolby Digital. They have suggestions for speaker placement (for surround, 2-3 ft above the listener ear, with the listener sitting down).

From my experience, if you can't mount it on the wall, then mount it IN the wall, since surround speakers are for creating soundfields, not imaging.

Good Luck...