SIMPLY SURROUNDED
Let’s face it, installing a typical surround-sound loudspeaker rig in most
households is enough to make Martha Stewart consider breaking back into Camp
Cupcake. With left, right, center, and two surround speakers––not to mention a
big hulking subwoofer in the corner––it really doesn’t matter how pretty the
wood veneer is, because in plenty of homes, a room dominating setup like this
won’t even get past the front door.
 | Mirage’s UNI-Theater speaker uses a tweeter module that rests just above the
woofer. The backside of the module helps to disperse sound coming from the
woofer in an even, circular pattern. |
Combining auditory and domestic bliss has
been a primary goal for many loudspeaker designers, but with surround sound, it
is mostly the sheer number of speakers involved that makes reconciliation
difficult. Flat on-wall, and even in-wall speakers have done their share to
alleviate the conflict, but even with these solutions you’ll still need to run a
bunch of wires around to each location, and hacking up the walls to install a
set of in-walls simply isn’t an option for many.
Moving a step further in the
direction of eliminating the speakers, a recent trend is to combine the function
of several speakers into a single enclosure. With plasma TVs now selling faster
than the latest DVD of Paris Hilton’s exploits, we’ve seen a whole slew of new
“plasma friendly” speakers that combine left, center, and right channels into a
single long and slim enclosure that you can sit under the screen, or in some
cases attach to the wall right above it. While this does tidy up the
cluster of speakers positioned near the set, it still leaves you with the little
matter of installing some surround channel speakers. In many layouts, the
surround speakers end up situated in one of the toughest spots in the room to
pull a wire to, so even with a three-in-one front speaker, a complete
surround-sound system might not be possible if installing the surrounds proves
too tough.
Getting all of the speakers needed to create surround
sound––except of course the deep bass––into one single enclosure near the
television will ultimately prove to be the tipping point in many households, and
the pairing of a single point surround speaker with a hideaway subwoofer might
even make it past Martha’s front door. The problem, however, is that getting a
speaker near the TV to resemble a surround system isn’t exactly easy––even if
the ads in the back of our old comic books convinced us that we could buy a
device that would “throw your voice” for just $4.95.
