Asked by a buyer from Delhi NCR.
Yes. A serious cinema can be built with nothing visible but the screen, provided the invisible parts are engineered rather than merely concealed.
We have specced full 7.2.2-class cinemas where the entire front stage is THX-grade in-wall left, centre and right, the surrounds are in-wall, the Atmos channels are in-ceiling, and the only equipment in view is the screen. With an acoustically transparent screen even the front three hide behind the picture, which is how commercial cinemas have always done it.
What makes it work at a serious level. First, components engineered for the job: reference in-wall LCRs are a different species from the ceiling drivers used for background music in a corridor, with proper motors, controlled directivity and the SPL capability to fill a room from inside a wall. Second, correct back-box treatment, so the wall cavity behaves like a designed enclosure rather than a random hollow. Third, walls that do not rattle: a stud partition wall with a speaker in it is a drum unless it is built and damped for the purpose. Fourth, and non-negotiable, planning before civil work, because every cable, cavity and back box must exist before paint. Retrofitting this into a finished Delhi NCR apartment is possible in theory and painful in practice.
Where the physics still holds a vote. At the very top end, the biggest cabinet speakers keep an edge in ultimate scale and bass authority, because a large enclosure with large drivers moves more air than a wall can politely house. Subwoofers still need somewhere to exist, though they hide in furniture and under platforms more easily than people think, and two well-placed hidden subs beat one visible one in most rooms anyway.
For most rooms and most families, a properly engineered hidden system gives up remarkably little, and it wins the argument that matters: it is a room everyone actually wants to live in.
If you are at the drawing stage, send us the plan now, before the electrician does. That is when this is cheap.
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