HEARD BUT NOT SEEN
Now that I have an inquisitive 2-year-old daughter, using freestanding
speakers is less of a thrill than it used to be. Sure, the speakers sound great,
but I have to keep them pushed out of the way to make room for the mini-tricycle
rides through the house. And at least once every few months, I pull the drivers
apart to remove whatever pint-size (but not chokable) gadget she’s stuffed into
the speaker port. In other cases, your cats may like to use the speaker grills
as scratching posts, or maybe you’re just short on floor space. Whatever the
reason, like me, you may be looking for an alternative to floorstanding
speakers, but are not willing to sacrifice performance. Fortunately, the new
crop of high-end in-wall speakers can deliver.
In our Spring 2005 issue,
I––along with Home Entertainment editor Brent Butterworth and test assistant
Alex Gonzalez ––surveyed some high-end in-walls, but Snell and Triad were late
to the party. Without the previous issue’s speakers on-hand for comparisons, it
was difficult to make definitive assessments of these. Brent and I were able to
compare Snell’s AMC 2000THX in-wall speakers with Triad’s similarly priced
InRoom Gold LCR speakers, though, and we used our best judgement to compare the
speakers with those reviewed in the Spring 2005 issue. Snell makes an “in-room”
(freestanding) version of the AMC 2000THX, and Triad plans to make an in-wall
version of the Gold LCR available next year. We felt confident that comparisons
between like products (in-wall to in-wall, for example) would correlate with our
findings here. And though there wasn’t a clear victor, there was a distinct
difference between them.
|
