Carving holes in your ceiling to fit the Opus OP365 in-ceiling speakers might not win you any brownie points with your other half, but when you’ve got them up and running, you’ll wonder how you ever lived without them. From the simple, clean installation, to the warm, enveloping sound you’ll enjoy, not to mention the cracking price, the OP365s are a luxury you really ought to afford yourself. Read on for our full Opus OP635 review.
You can read more about the installation process below so first we’ll skip to the important bit – what do these things sound like? We hooked ours up to a Technics amplifier, fed by an Arcam Solo irDock which was home to our ageing iPod touch. Even though we were playing music mostly from iTunes, the sound was solid regardless of whether we had some background music over dinner, or blasting out some classic Beastie Boys. The combination of a decent amp and the irDock helping to ensure a pretty decent sound was being fed to the OP365s.
We installed two in a living room roughly 20-feet by 16-feet and that was ample to fill the room with sound. Thanks to the amp’s fade function, we could isolate the sound to either speaker, with some gentle tunes over the dinner table or the living room area. Cranked up to 11, the speakers coped admirably with no popping or hissing, just solid, clear sound.
How to install in-ceiling speakers
In-ceiling speakers like the Opus OP365 offer up a very different experience over their standalone counterparts. For one, nobody knew they were there until we’d point them out – the standard white finish fitted perfectly with our white ceiling, however the speaker grill can be spray-painted to match whatever colour your ceiling is. More importantly, the enveloping sound you get as a result, simply fills the room more effectively than standalone units we’ve tried. There’s no feeling that the music is coming from anywhere, it’s just there.
Sure, in-ceiling speakers like the Opus OP365 won’t work for everyone. For starters, you’ll need a ceiling you can access from above, ideally. Pulling up carpets and floorboards isn’t nearly as daunting as it sounds either, but obviously the best time to install is during a new build or an extension. If you have the opportunity to fit them though, take it. You will not regret it. The only downside, as happened to us, is that you can’t bring them with you when you move. That said, they did help sell our house.
