I'm looking at speakers for audio only listening. My issue is that I have young kids and can't have mounted bookshelf or floor standing speakers - I know we've all seen this problem posted here before- I basically have to have everything off the floor. I'm looking at totem on wall, Vienna acoustic one all, paradigm and sonance in wall. I was hoping to get some opinions on finding the best compromise between having speakers onwall and getting a real full range sound. I want as close to that "seamless" "large sound stage" feel as I can get while having speakers on wall. I understand that there is a compromise I'll be making. But I wanted some input as to the brands I'm looking at and if technology has reallyade it possible to have the smaller drivers in larger on wall enclosures give great sound or if larger driver in wall speakers are still the best route to go. Thoughts please…any other brands to recommend? Budget approx $1000 per speaker and room size 20' x 10'
I'm in the same boat as you. I have a 1 year old daughter that loves to run, and no extra room to keep my stereo in. I rent, so in-wall isn't the best option for me.
Regardless of that, I'd go on-wall personally. I'm sure their are some great in-wall speakers out there, but I haven't heard them. I think they're more of an aesthetic thing than a hifi thing, but I could be wrong.
The selling point of on-wall speakers to me is that you can move them around with far less fuss to get the best sound possible before making a final decision. With certain brackets and speakers, you can angle them up, down, and toe-in or out. Can't really do that with an in-wall. Once in-walls are where they are, that's pretty much it.
The Totem Tribe series sounds great to my ears. The Dreamcatchers and Mites can be wall mounted too.
PMC's DB1i and Linn's Majik 109 can be wall mounted as well. Great speakers IMO.
There are countless more. I was going to go the on-wall route, but instead put my monitors and stands in a closet that's pretty much in the same room. I pull them out when I have some quiet time. I have a no-name small iPod dock system that we have my daughter's music on.
If the closet thing is an option, perhaps a small floorstander like the Totem Arro?
I would say that, in general, you will find most inwall speakers to be more for asthetics than sound while you will also find most box speakers which can be wall mounted to be more for sales than for sound.
Keep in mind a speaker which has not been designed from the ground up as a wall mount will probably have significant issues when mounted directly on a wall. While two decades ago - in the dark ages of speaker design before CAD became the norm - we had numerous "bookshelf" speakers, today we have "standmounted" speakers. Standmounted because they have been designed to provide their best performance when mounted on a stand well away from boundary walls. I would say a standmounted speaker attached directly to a wall has about as much chance at providing satisfying performance as an economy compact car has at towing a 40' boat uphill.
When properly designed - without an inset baffle to defract signals for one thing - a wall mounted speaker does not have to deal with those issues which would bedevil a standmounted speaker attached to a wall. On the other hand, unless there is a specific volume of enclosure behind the woofer, a low frequency driver will never preform as intended. This gives a well designed box speaker the edge, in low frequency response at least. This advantage does not, however, extend to floorstanding speakers directly attached to the wall.
The permanent positioning of inwall speakers is, as Stu has said, a distinct disadvantage unless a room's dimensions and lay out permanently restrict its furntiure arrangement. And, of course, wherever you want to place in wall speakers, you'll have to deal with running cables to them. Though I can't really say I think moving a bad sounding speaker to just another wall is any great advantage. If you decide on a standmounted speaker to attach to your wall, certainly do stay away from rear ported models for what should be obvious reasons.
Possibly Stu can create a link to his original thread. There were a few suggestions made which you might find useful.. Something such as Magnepans which were designed ground up specifically for wall mounting might be the best idea.