Wallspeakers Installation Advice

Category Archives: What Are Wallspeakers?

What are Inwall Speakers?

Posted on by Posted in What Are Wallspeakers? .

Great article on what Inwall Speakers are and are not from Home Theater Review (excerpt from the original article here):

1.0 Overview About In-wall Speakers
In-wall speakers are core ingredient in the custom installer in more and more aspects of his or her projects. In-wall speakers are used in distributed audio systems for their stealth presentation of musical content without the need for bulky speakers. Its not uncommon to see an all in-wall speaker home theater or even in-wall audiophile speaker systems that have systems costing as much as $50,000 per pair and designed to be installed right in your drywall.

2.0 Types of In-wall Speakers

2.1 Traditional In-wall Speakers
Traditional in-wall speakers are designed to be cut into your drywall and fit into the space between the studs in your walls. In recent years, speaker designers have added pointable tweeters, equalizers and sound boxes that tune the audio performance of the speaker to a box that is designed to fit into the wall. This takes away the unpredictable audio environment in between someone’s studs in their walls and creates a much higher performance and audibly superior result. Traditional in-wall speakers come in sizes that are round, square, rectangular and other less traditional shapes.

2.2 Rimless In-wall Speakers
One of the newest trends in in-wall loudspeakers was started by Sonance which is to engineer in-wall speakers that have no baffle thus sit absolutely flush to the dry wall. While on the surface, it seems like this would be a no-brainier, the engineering behind such a speaker is very sophisticated. Just ask any of the dozen companies trying to rip Sonance off for their very good idea. In a modern home installation, baffle-less or rim-less in-wall speakers look fantastic compared to in-wall speakers with baffles. These speakers also come with fabric grills and other out-of-the-box solutions that make in-wall speakers look less and less like actual speaker yet emit audiophile quality sound.

2.3 In-wall Subwoofers
In-wall speakers tend to not have much bass because of the lack of cabinet volume and small woofer drivers. Because of this more and more in-wall speaker companies are making in-wall subwoofers that are designed to fit inside the space between two studs and use a sound box to make deeper audio signals to make for a more powerful in-wall speaker experience especially for in-wall home theater systems that don’t have room or the aesthetics for even a small traditional subwoofer.

2.4 In-wall Speakers Behind Drywall
One of the newest trends in in-wall loudspeakers was started by Sonance which is to engineer in-wall speakers that have no baffle thus sit absolutely flush to the dry wall. While on the surface, it seems like this would be a no-brainier, the engineering behind such a speaker is very sophisticated. Just ask any of the dozen companies trying to rip Sonance off for their very good idea. In a modern home installation, baffle-less or rim-less in-wall speakers look fantastic compared to in-wall speakers with baffles. These speakers also come with fabric grills and other out-of-the-box solutions that make in-wall speakers look less and less like actual speaker yet emit audiophile quality sound.

3.0 Overview About On-wall Speakers
On-wall speakers are a relatively new category of loudspeakers, created due to the recently popularity of flat HDTV systems. For decades, a “good” speaker was a floor-standing rectangle powered by an AV receiver and positioned proudly in a room. With the massive, computer-like price drops in HDTVs over the past few years, it is now possible for mainstream customers to upgrade their televisions from physically deep CRT-based standard-definition sets to ultra-thin HDTVs that hang on walls like pieces of artwork.

While the appeal of a wall-mounted, flat HDTV is alluring to most consumers, the need to match HD speakers with your new flat HDTV set has created a new host of speaker design challenges. This is where on-wall speakers come in. There are all sorts of on-wall speaker designs. Some adjust to match the width of various HDTV sets. Other designs are round and narrow, thus creating a more modern, artistic look. Some on-walls come in custom finishes and other in various colors and grille options. One commonality with on-wall speakers is that they all are relatively physically narrow and tend to rely on a powered subwoofer of some sort to get their bass.

4.0 On-wall vs. In-wall and Sound Bar Solutions
On-wall speakers compete favorably with in-wall speakers in many installations. On-wall speakers are less invasive to install, as you can run cables up (or down) a wall and position on-walls across your front locations and/or for rear or side speakers. In-wall speakers tend to be flush with the wall, working with the thin installation motif, yet the grilles often have a dark tint to them from the perforations and therefore look best when covered by a fabric wall, which can be a significant additional cost.

Sound bars are the easiest solution, as one speaker (and often a subwoofer) can create much of the most important audio needed from DVD-Video, Blu-ray, HD DVR or even an iPod sources. Sound bars must have a subwoofer to give a full-bodied sound. On-wall speakers generally use much less DSP processing to create their discrete surround sound.

Why Do Center Channel Speakers Look Like They Do?

Posted on by Posted in What Are Wallspeakers? .

Typical Center Channel Speaker

Center channel speakers have a different look to them for a few reasons. It all began way back in the late 80’s when Dolby began licensing their surround sound for home use in the form of “Dolby Pro Logic”. That was when surround sound went mainstream. They proposed a system of speakers that would roughly replicate the experience of a movie theater right in your living room. VCR tape rentals were well under way and the consumer electronics industry was all abuzz with this new toy. It would be 4 channels of surround, front left, front center, front right and a shared mono rear channel divided into two speakers for the back left and right. Some had a subwoofer channel, but most used the front speakers as big ole’ floor standing speakers (Bose was just starting their revolution of Subwoofer and Satellite systems around this time too…but that’s another story).

I don’t Mom would go for this!

They made the center channel speaker for our odd shaped living/family rooms. There was only one “sweet spot” for listening in the middle of the sofa in the middle of the room. What about little Joey who had to sit on the other couch on the side of the room right in front of that big ole’ floor speaker? The whole movie would sound like it was coming from that one speaker. In came the center channel speaker. It was to broadcast the dialog of the movie track. All the “action” and things that happened on screen now would sound like they came from the screen and Joey could enjoy the movie from his odd sitting place.

The center channel speaker HAD to go on top of the TV. The consumer electronics industry knew that another big ole’ speaker on top of the TV wouldn’t work, so they made the speaker longer and with a lower profile by putting 2 smaller woofers instead of one larger one on the same plane in the same box. Now they could get the sound of a 6 1/2″ woofer out of two 4″ speakers by wiring them together and combining their effective surface areas.

So we all had TV’s in the living room and they were getting bigger and bigger. But most of us still had a tube style TV 35″ or under. Putting a speaker on a tube type TV is a problem. Tube type TV’s have a permanent layer of phosphor just behind the glass on the screen that is affected by magnetic fields (the back of a speaker generally has a large magnet). The industry took care of this problem by putting a metal shield around each of the magnets in the speaker array and voila` the center channel speaker is born.

Flip forward in time to present day electronics. We have improved our theaters greatly. We have big, BIG screens now. Made not from phosphor but from exotic materials like plasma, LCD, rear projection CRT and front projectors. The beauty of these new technologies is that none are affected by magnetic fields. Also, most of these are designed to be very thin in depth. What do our center channel speakers look like now? Unfortunately, the center channel speaker still holds onto it’s roots. And many of the salespeople (kids) on the floor of the large “big box” stores will continue to tell you that the center channel is the most important speaker in the array and that’s why it looks the way it does and that’s why it has 2 speakers in it.

The new surround technologies from Dolby and others (DTS, THX, etc.) still employ the same basic array of speakers surrounding you, but now all the speaker locations have discrete channels (or dedicated) with the full spectrum of audio (lows to highs) coming from each location. The movie producer knows this and can use these channels in any way they like to enhance their movie’s presence in your theater. There are no more “important” (ie. center channel speaker) or “less important” (ie. rear surround channel speakers) speakers any longer. ALL are important. That’s why we recommend using the same driver in all positions. You get a certain dynamic or tightness to the field of sound when you are using the same driver all the way around.

Now when you’re out shopping for a surround sound theater kit, you’ll be armed with the knowledge of why kits look the way they do.

Speaker Sizes

Posted on by Posted in What Are Wallspeakers? .

Question:
I have just recently bought a house and am looking to install a speaker system within it. It is going to run in a living room, dining room, and kitchen. They are all on the same level so it makes sense. I am really worried about the kitchen which is 22′ x 12′. I have two major questions. The first is if it is better to install the speakers on the wall or in the ceiling? The second question is if it is going to be more beneficial to me to have 6.5″ or 8″ speakers or a mixing. I was originally thinking of having four speakers in the ceiling. I appreciate your help in looking into this issue. Hopefully I can find something here that will be what I need.

The difference in location is type of usage of the room. A social area
where you’ll be walking around and not really stuck in one place, will
like to have ceiling speakers, like kitchens, entry ways, dining rooms,
etc. Placement will just be balanced in the room, usually matching to
lighting fixtures. A place where you’ll typically be in one place
you’ll like wall speakers, study, offices, bedroom (while listening in
bed), theater rooms. These, you’ll set them at a “stereo image” and aim
them at your ears to give you that “sweet spot” of music stage.

The difference in size is two fold. You need more speakers for larger
areas for coverage. You need larger speakers for more volume. Think of
a dive deli store with a boom box playing by the counter trying to give
the place “ambiance”…you can hear it on the far end of the store, but
right near it, it’s blaring. They could use more speakers, not bigger.

You’ll need larger speakers if you like to listen to your music at
volumes that compete with a vacuum cleaner. Otherwise 6 1/2″ versions
will be fine.