Mounting speakers beside the fireplace

[restless turtle]

I am thinking of adding upgraded speakers to our sound system in the living room, but there is not much room for them.  Has anyone cut holes in the fake rock surrounding the fireplace and mounting them there.  If so, is the fake rock difficult to cut?

[Darryl&Rita]

Depending on the manufacturer, it's either a Styrofoam like material with a harder surface, or a fiberglass front with nothing behind it. Either way, woodworking tools handle it easily. With the fiberglass type, I've drilled small holes through the face, and mounted the speakers to the plywood behind. The holes were a pain to touch up. 

[Smitty77_7]

http://www.bowers-wilkins.com/Speakers/Theatre_Solutions/Mini_Theatre/mt-60d.html#limitlessversatility

 

Perhaps a black pair of M1's mounted to the wood trim? Would not protruded too far from the wall, and relatively decent sound out of a small package. Especially if you add the matching sub, and tuck it somewhere out of the tripping zone of walking:)! 

Could luck to you, and please let us know what you end up doing, as it could help others down the road too:)!

Smitty

(I cut into our coaches ceiling, and placed installed Martin Logans EM-R's for L/R Stereo duty. With the 8" drivers, I have not added a sub (98% of the time, these do well without a sub, and for the final 2% - well, we're camping - so I survive:)!). But I had the depth in the ceiling needed to make these work well, in addition to the angled design of the speaker, I offset the mount a bit more too, to add even more angle. (Not needed in home applications with 8' + ceilings, but with the coach ceiling not having that much height, I needed to angle them a bit more to aim them to the primary seating areas. When I tuned the sounds, we set up two zones. Zone 1, is the mentioned listening position being optimized, which in our coach is in the driver's side deeper slide, where we have out two lounge chairs. Zone 2 is optimized tuned/calibrated to the middle of the coach. We use that when entertaining and say preparing dinner, as it provides a more balanced sound thru the front of the coach, galley and dining area. The LM's EM-R's tweeter does a good job on say vocals, strings, piano reproduction. It did take well over 300 hours of playing for the tweeters and driver to finally break in. At first brush, I was very concerned that they were way too harsh in the mid to upper ranges. Talking with LM Tech support, they encouraged me to let them play and burn in for a couple hundred of hours, and then re-tune the two zones one more time. They were right, the sounds did open up quite nice. Of course in a narrow tin can of a 40' coach, many compromises are made in sound quality. The nature of the the beast:)!) (By the way, the LM's ElectoMotion's also have a smaller speaker with a 6" driver. My buddy installed a pair in his Alpine, and they with a sub do a good job too. The depth of the 8" would not fit his  desired install location. He snugged the 6" drive EM's were he wanted them. So another option.)

https://www.crutchfield.com/p_839EMR/MartinLogan-ElectroMotion-R.html