Read our Opus O365 in-ceiling speakers review? Like what you see, and want to hear it too? We’ve got a handy guide to show you just how to install a pair yourself right here. Grab a toolkit, and read on for the instructions.
We spent most of our planning time on cable routing. After calculating the best routes for both speakers we ended up with 40 meters of speaker cable to run, using a chimney void to bring the cable back down to earth. Our whole install process took two of us about three hours from start to finish. Whilst I was lucky enough to have a friend who’d fitted the speakers previously, there’s nothing too complex about the process. Here are our top ten tips for taking the task on.
Read our Opus O365 in-ceiling speakers review
1. Measure thrice, cut once. My old art teacher told me that and he wasn’t wrong. Get the positioning wrong and you’ll regret it badly. The speakers come with a cardboard template to help with cutting the hole. Set this in place and spend plenty of time double checking the measurements. Take a look at it from different parts of the room, too, to make sure you’re happy with the siting.
2. Don’t cut the whole straight out. Instead drill holes about a couple of centimetres apart all the way around the cut line. This will help reduce any flaking of the ceiling plasterboard.
3. When your holes are cut, simply use a jab saw (or drywall saw) to cut between each hole. We used a vacuum cleaner under the knife whilst cutting to keep the mess to a minimum.
4. WARNING – MAKE SURE YOU FIND OUT WHERE THE WIRES AND PIPES ARE RUNNING IN YOUR CEILING. YOU DON’T WANT TO DRILL OR CUT THROUGH EITHER!
5. With your hole cut, installing the speaker is simple. Hook up the speaker wire, loosen the SmartLoc screws and slot your speaker into place. The speaker comes with an Allen key to tighten up the two SmartLoc bolts and lock the speaker into place. Stick your speaker grill on and you’re good to go. If you followed the cutting instructions above, you shouldn’t have any nicks in the plaster so there shouldn’t be any extra finishing to do.
6. When the speakers are installed and hooked up, ensure you pack the ceiling void around the speaker with roof insulation. This will stop the sound filling the room upstairs when you have the speakers on downstairs.
7. Routing cables is the trickiest part of this process. We followed the line of existing electric cables for the most part as we were able to squeeze the speaker cable alongside the electrics and use the same cut holes through the ceiling joists. As we were pushing through 10-12 joists, this saved us an awful lot of drilling. We didn’t notice any interference with the sound either, but it’s a good idea to avoid running right next to electrical cable if you can.
8. Taking an as the crow flies approach to cable routing might not always work. Spend time working out the best route. It might require more cable, but the installation will be much simpler if you follow pre-installed paths. It’s much easier (and cleaner) if you can route cables from above, too, rather than going up through the ceiling from below. Utilise things like chimney voids if you have them, and aim to drop your cables down as close to the source as you can.
9. You won’t need to pull up every floor board you’re running cables under. We used a drain cleaning kit to push cables from one end of a room to the other. This only works if you’re following the line of the joists, and you’ll need to work around crossbars and other obstacles along the way.
10. We used basic four-core speaker cable but got a tip after the job was done to use eight core cable. This would have enabled us to wire up both speakers with a single cable, instead of having to run two sets of cable, a big benefit when it came to squeezing cable through holes in joists.
