I have these mounted in a newly constructed backyard pavilion with a house-like shingle roof, attic, and finished ceiling below. It is completely open-air. The speakers are flush-mounted in the ceiling.
The speakers have good range with crisp highs and solid, distinctive bass that is not muddied.
The reason for the average review is not directly correlated to their performance, rather their performance as a function of their price. At $539 EACH, they should sound unbelievably great. Although, I would not consider myself an “audiophile”, I have always owned high-end audio equipment and know excellent speakers when I hear them. These are average to above-average ceiling speakers, and in my humble opinion, don’t warrant their price tag.
I do have a fair basis of price/performance comparison. When I ordered these speakers, I thought that I was buying 2 pairs, rather than 2 speakers. When my contractor asked me for the two pairs that he was planning to install in the ceiling of my new structure, I found that the boxes only contained 2 speakers. I guess that I should have read the description more closely since the other speakers that I was considering came in pairs.
After checking for local availability of a second pair at the local BestBuy, I found that I would need to wait over a week for them to be ordered online and shipped. In lieu of waiting, I decided to try the Sonance-Magnolia 6.5″ speakers that were on-sale for $159/pair. Worst case, I could return them if they didn’t sound comparable to the front pair of Extreme’s, and if they only lasted a few years, they’d be “disposable” at the sale price.
I was pleased to find that the $159/pair speakers sounded almost indistinguishable from the almost $1100/pair Extremes. The latter have slightly cleaner bass lines, but the highs and midrange sound almost identical in an outdoor installation. Sadly, my contractor had disposed of the boxes for the Extremes, otherwise I would have returned them and installed the other Sonances in all four of my new structure’s ceiling.

Replaced some 15 year Sonance speakers with the Visual Performance Extreme, and I am super pleased! The speakers were very well made, binding post securely hold wires, speaker install very easy and solid. The grill is held on by strong magnets, so they are not going anywhere. These sound incredible, and should last a long time. They are expensive, but provide a very open sound with solid base. Sound great loud too.