Dynabox

This is an amazing product. I built a theatre in my basement about two years ago and decided to go with 5.1 sound at the time because there wasn't enough width to accommodate side surrounds on the walls and I wasn't thrilled with the idea of doing in-wall speakers on the side wall locations. I have since had a change of heart and decided to expand to Atmos surround with speakers in the ceiling. The good news was that I know every inch of what is behind the drywall in this theatre. The bad news is that I don't have the ability to do any soundproofing (in this case, building backing boxes) on new in-wall speakers without cutting out large sections of drywall to get access to the cavities. An installation of speakers in my ceiling would severely compromise the work I did to soundproof the room. I looked into every manner of solving this problem, starting with methods for designing and building my own solution, but nothing was even close to satisfactory. I finally bit the bullet and bought two of these. They are the only thing I found (product or custom made solution) that satisfied both of my needs: mitigate sound transmission through the ceiling, and install without unnecessarily tearing apart (and then repairing) my theatre. I was originally balking at the $100/each price tag, but now that I've installed them I've come to see that they were more than worth the money. The quality of these materials is top notch. That you can roll these materials up tightly and stuff them up through the speaker-sized hole in your ceiling is a revelation. Installation is incredibly straight-forward and easy. You simply cut a hole in the box to match your speaker (and a small slice for the speaker wire to feed through), roll the box up and shove it through the speaker hole, adjust the placement of the box until it's just right, shove the absorption panels through the hole and push them into place, and then seal the boxes to the drywall with a thick line of caulk. Designing and building out my theatre was incredibly complex, and figuring out and installing this product was one of the easiest things I ever did for it. This product introduces two of the four soundproofing methods: absorption and mass. Damping and decoupling methods would need to be satisfied in some other way, which matches my expectations when I bought these. I see other reviews here that say that this product doesn't do a great job in soundproofing, and that's just bull. The reality is that the single greatest method for soundproofing is decoupling. If your drywall is not decoupled from your studs and the studs of the room you are soundproofing are not decoupled from the adjacent rooms then your ability to soundproof the room has already been severely compromised; utilizing absorption and mass alone will not bear great results. This is not the fault of this product. What I can say on this topic is that this product performs as well as one could ever hope. It does a great job, but they are not magic. If your room is not decoupled from the adjacent rooms then you will hear sound from speakers in the adjacent rooms even if they are in these boxes. Obviously, you can't decouple a room once it has been built, so the best thing that you can do to soundproof when retrofitting speakers in walls or ceilings is to use these boxes AND install a thick layer of fiberglass insulation into the cavities above/behind them (and the entire cavity, if possible). If you want to learn more about soundproofing, I recommend starting with <a href="https://www.soundproofingcompany.com/soundproofing_101/4-elements-of-soundproofing">this article on The Soundproofing Company's website</a>. Personally, I think that this product is amazing. I had high expectations and this more than satisfied them. My newly-installed speakers sound great, and the sound transmission into the adjacent rooms is just as quiet as it was before I installed the new speakers (I was actually expecting to lose some of the soundproofing once I installed the new speakers). If you will only be satisfied with a product that completely soundproofs your speakers then this product will not satisfy you. In fact, no product or custom solution will satisfy you because that level of soundproofing is impossible with just a single product or soundproofing method. Factor that in before dropping $100 per box on this product (really, factor that in before you decide to buy in-wall speakers in the first place).

I found this to be an excellent product. It is extremely tough and thick. The outer rubber itself is as tough and thick as an automobile tire. Lining it is some excellent acoustic pyramid style baffling. One of my speakers abutted a joist. Consequently I had to cut out the entire speaker width along the bottom face to one of the sides. Believe me cutting this stuff is really tough. I would be hesitant to use a utility knife. The hole comes with a circular dimension of I think 7 inches. So for each speaker I had to make a larger dimension for the hole. Again, I advise caution while cutting. This requires good sharp durable equipment unless you want to get injured When I had to do the off axis cut this removed a lot of the sound insulation. My solution was to buy some of the regular Dynamat surface stuff that you use in cars. I then cut this out and placed it directly on the attic side of the ceiling on the space that would not be covered by the sound baffle This works out better than it sounds. The speaker enclosure itself is quite pliable and will easily form over any additional sound insulation that you apply to the side of the ceiling that is towards the attic I had listened to the speakers without the enclosure for almost a year. My impression of the sound after putting up the speaker enclosures was that it was more focused. Plus since the attic is the same for other rooms you could easily hear this in the other rooms. The type of insulation I have is sprayed on the inside of the roof and not fiberglass insulation distributed right on top of the ceiling itself. So any sound in the attic goes throughout the house and directly into each room. This was definitely a very good solution. The price is about the same as each speaker but it is what is required

I wasn't sure how this enclosure would install for a retrofit in-ceiling speaker. It turned out to be a piece of cake due to it's flexibility. I did sound tests to verify the sound reduction provided by the Dynabox. I had two in-ceiling speakers in a room. One with the Dyanbox and one without. I switched the sound source between the two speakers while listening to the difference in the room above the speakers. The Dynabox showed a noticeable difference in sound reduction and propagation to my ear. I did not measure the difference using a sound meter. Based on my observation, I bought several more Dynaboxes.

These boxes work! I had 5 in-ceiling speakers in a previous home, and we could clearly hear the sound in the bedroom above. Moved to a new place and installed 5 similar speakers in the ceiling -- but stumbled on these rubber/foam boxes on the internet, and they have made a big difference. There is a noticeable noise reduction in the upstairs room, even though we have hardwood floors (i.e. very little insulation) upstairs and I was very worried about sound transmission. It's not completely silent, but it is noticeably quieter than our previous setup (which even had the benefit of carpet). If doing a retrofit install, there aren't many options available, but these seem to work great. They accommodated 8 inch speakers well, but that is definitely the maximum size. Also, I was a little worried about the speakers getting hot inside, but in the one speaker-box I have access to, I cannot feel any warmth on the outer surface of the box, nor on the front surface of the speaker. Yes, they're a little pricey -- but there isn't really anything else on the market. They were easy to install, and they do make a difference. Just don't expect complete silence.

I have 4 of these in my home theatre ceiling and I love them. Excellent heavy construction and they do the trick. Note, you will never eliminate sound bleed from a ceiling mounted speaker, but you can deaden it enough that it just sounds like a basement home theater vs 4 loud point source speakers under your feet. At moderate volume levels it deadens things enough to make activities on 2 levels possible. This cannot silence speaker noise, but it will make them perform better, eliminate rattles and prevent high frequencies from being localized on the floor beneath your feet. This is absolutely a must have imho. Just know what you are getting it for, and have a realistic understanding of what these will accomplish and you will be very happy with them. lovely product.

I do think, in the perfect situation, that these would work fine however if you have strapping attached to joists for drywall (most new homes do) you will need to build out a frame in between the straps to go on top of the drywall so that the "box" has a complete flat surface to stick to. The instructions are fairly limited in this regard. One other aspect that the instructions do not mention is the size of drywall cutout vs. size of cutout in box. If you have the strapping situation like I did then it is unlikely that the hold down mechanisms on your speakers will engage unless the strapping frame and box cutout are well away from the drywall hole. Take care that your speaker cutout location is perfectly lined up in the centre of the joist cavity. This will greatly increase the likelihood of a successful install. I would love for these to have worked out but unfortunately they did not. I ended up having to throw them out because by the time I figure out all of this I had done too much damage to the first box to use it or return it. I didn't think it was wise to use the other one I bought and have 2 different sounding speakers. I ended up filling the joist cavity with rockwool, sides and top then used the foam pieces supplied with this kit as they would have been used inside the rubber box. Not a total loss but not worth $200 each. :(

I definitely would recommend these, especially if you have a very efficient home theater with atmos speakers