Review on Niles CM7MP FG01656: The Ultimate 2-Way In-Ceiling Loudspeaker for Multi-Purpose Use (Each) by Lisa Montgomery

I bought 14 of these speakers for a new house project that I am helping my neighbor with. The home is a two story walker in the town of Egan, MN. I work in the professional AV integration industry and am familiar with the Niles brand. For soundproofing and thermal insulation reasons (as well as sound quality reasons), we installed Sonance "Medium" rear boxes, while the houses' "Medium" boxes have a volume of 0.6 cu. feet and very well built. However, the hole size matches the size of their 6.5" speakers, so we had to zig saw about 1/8" of the wood around the opening to accommodate these speakers. If you are unfamiliar with the thermal insulation speakerphone, note that simply installing a speaker in the ceiling separating the living space from the attic will significantly reduce the thermal insulation of the drywall. When this is done, the drywall has now been replaced with thin speaker cone material and the result is noticeable heat loss in the speaker. By using a back box, the wooden box wall now replaces the drywall and the thermal insulation is retained. For the electronics we chose the Denon Heos system consisting of (2) 4-zone drive players/amplifiers. The Drive delivers 60 watts per channel and can handle a 4 ohm load, which is good because we chose to connect the kitchen and dining room speakers to one of the Zone Player outputs and it worked really well. I mentioned above that I work in the field of integration and have monitored wall and ceiling loudspeakers with a wide variety of amplifiers in many prefabricated houses. This project using Niles speakers was a success. Despite their relatively low price, they sound fantastic in this setup and the homeowner is delighted with the results. The speakers have a very open sound, a wide frequency range and amazing musicality. They present tones in a way that beats their price. Female vocals, piano, electric bass and drums, and characters are reproduced with great detail and presence, resulting in a very entertaining and enjoyable listening experience. I can't say how the speakers sound without the back box. high quality electronics power them, they sound very, very good and deserve a solid 5 stars. Are these the best ceiling speakers I've ever heard? No, but it's the best I've heard considering the cost.