Not everyone who is looking for a good sound in his rooms and wants to hear the right hi-fi speakers will also want to see these speakers. In many cases, the transformation of the living room into a decent home cinema has failed – not to mention the sound of kitchens or bathrooms.
Born in the USA
The leading boxing specialists now offer a range of sophisticated loudspeaker solutions, which can be hidden so well that you can hardly see anything at all. For the typical hi-fi fan who is accustomed to paying homage to his expensive boxes, it may seem like a nightmare: the ceilings and walls open and swallow the sound transducers completely.
There is only the best
One of the sorrows of the other Freud: for esthetes, a wishful dream comes true, as they no longer have the impression of being in a recording studio when they want to enjoy music.
The subwoofer also appears from
With InWall and InCeiling loudspeakers, the Americans began a trend that has now arrived in Europe - despite massive barriers. In this case, this is to be taken literally: in the land of unlimited possibilities, most of the houses are made of wood, which has paved the way for subsequent loudspeaker fixtures. On the other hand, it is an extremely difficult and costly undertaking to install built-in loudspeakers in a typical American brick or concrete building after completion.
Entertainment in the bathroom
InWall speakers: The most important questions
While the Americans need little more than a handy skill and a jigsaw, one has to move up here with heavy equipment and break up the wall. If you can not plan the installation of the building and the cable ducts during the construction of your house, you will be better advised with a second wall. It costs a little space, but it can easily be moved in the drywall process and then adapted to the concealed technology.
Typically, the built-in speakers miss a separate housing behind the second wall. This is to prevent the woofers from interacting with each other. Each loudspeaker also emits sound on its rear, which would then move uncontrolled behind the partition. Some manufacturers offer flat built-in housings, others provide stencils.
The effort is worth it. Installation solutions are anything but a lazy compromise - for the sake of optics. Manufacturers such as KEF, Canton and Focal offer compact high-tech solutions with the high-quality chassis technologies of their best hi-fi and high-end speakers. For example, Focal uses the beryllium tweeter from the reference class in the Electra-In-Wall series. Canton relies on the Pro-House series of proven aluminum diaphragms for InWall and InCeiling transformers, and KEF favors coaxial two-way chassis from their boxes.
But physics also means good with the installation principle. On the one hand the uniform excitation of spatial modes succeeds. The sound produced by the loudspeaker is therefore introduced into the room in an optimal way. And in the bass, the installation process is very close to the ideal of the endless baffle. Because the sound emitted by the diaphragm would radiate forward with the rear radiated, boxes are usually built around the chassis.
This is to prevent the so-called acoustic short circuit and increase the efficiency - ie the acoustic efficiency. In the bass, however, the case can not be large enough to achieve the desired effect with the large wavelengths occurring in this area, a wall already.
For those who are only interested in what comes out at the rear or front: Built-in loudspeakers, despite their inconspicuousness, have an easy play to make the room sound, they can produce a saturated bass and a clean, stable picture from scratch Br>
If you want to celebrate regular bass orgies or feel the low-frequency special effects from the LFE channel on the diaphragm in the home cinema, you can help with a built-in subwoofer like the B & W ISW-3. In the built-in state you can see virtually nothing of the 250 Watt active bass module. Of course, the grilles of the built-in speakers can be painted in the color of the wall - or in the color of the ceiling.
Although the ceiling installation is not exactly as ideal as the wall installation, it is precisely from a spatial representation. However, many house and apartment owners are already leaving the ceiling in the course of renovations - for example to help to improve old buildings or to install ceiling lights. Clever clip systems make Canton easy to install thanks to quick-release fasteners for easy handling and tight fit.
Down into the sinking
The Hessian manufacturer, like KEF, uses coaxial two-way chassis for point-shaped sound radiation. Such ceiling mount speakers are not only suitable for high-quality stereo systems.
Especially as an effect speaker for the surround channel such solutions are extremely popular.
The best choice is
If you want to enjoy the news in the bathroom at the Morgentoilette only the news and some music from the radio, you do not need to do an exorbitant effort. Ceiling speakers, such as the Canton InCeiling 865 DT, have two tweeters and a common low-frequency woofer for both channels.
This gives the playback a certain spatiality from only one loudspeaker. This keeps costs and assembly costs within the framework.
If you want, you can also put on entertainment in a special way: the American bathroom specialist Graff presented a complete solution called Aquasense a year ago. Through their wide-format touchscreen, you can view videos from the system's flash memory in the shower. If you tap your finger on the water-resistant display, you can illuminate the water rush that rolls down from the ceiling in different color schemes and turn it into a rushing waterfall from the tropical rainforest.
Camouflage sounding
The activation of the body nozzles, which are let into the wall, is just as easy on the display as the digital temperature control. If the example makes school, the good old water faucet is threatened with extinction. Graff also provides the right, water-resistant ceiling loudspeaker, thus venturing into the field of classic entertainment electronics.
At a time when bathroom fixtures are digitized and networked, touchpads or wall-mounted control panels are no longer indispensable for controlling hidden speakers. The leading manufacturers and even exotics, such as Naim or NAD, equip their electronic components with interfaces for common device controls.
And without an app for smartphones and tablet computers with an Apple or Android operating system, even today, even more companies do not trust themselves to the market, which 20 years ago preferred the analog record of the CD. As a result, nothing is in the way of the project of completely eliminating an acoustically convincing hi-fi or surround system in the sinking.
With the planning of such perfectly integrated systems, most customers, but also many hi- and television-dealers are completely exhausted. But because the trend can not be overlooked, more and more classic retailers are joining forces with architects, interior designers and installers.
After the strict American laws, the pure HiFi dealer can not perform any installation work. This gives new opportunities to specialist companies, which used to focus their business model on the sale of televisions and antenna construction. Many of them now have the same network cable and are waiting for IT skills.
The importers, who, like AV specialist Michael Liesenfeld from Image AG or Andreas Kayser from the Naim sales department Musicline, support the dealers with expert advice and accompany particularly complex projects. Kayser even offered the luxury of turning his new domicile near Hamburg into a model house for the network solution NaimNet. The sales experience is made available to the trading partners.
However, a problem remains: If the customer is confronted with the dealer before deciding which built-in loudspeaker he should choose from the increasingly difficult to manage supply, he can usually only rely on expert recommendations, his own intuition and the reputation of the respective supplier.
Listening to built-in loudspeakers is usually not possible in the American market. And the result stands and falls with the individual implementation anyway. This means a great risk for all those who are interested in "stealth" technology.
While an ordinary loudspeaker can be moved back and forth until it sounds kind of something, installers have to live with their decision afterwards. If you do not want to get the desired result with your speakers or upgrade your system, you can get a new loudspeaker and get happy with it. If you install, you will find yourself on a very long time.
Every manufacturer does what he wants, there is no uniform integration. Luckily, you can have another speaker insert installed by the manufacturer in its opening, but no third-party.
This means that you should take more time before deciding on a particular installation system. Since manufacturers rely on their tried and tested chassis technology and go with the same philosophy to the vote, one can at least get a clue where the trip goes, if you listen to conventional boxes of the respective manufacturer with comparable chassis equipment at the dealer Code>
But even then, the decision resembles a lottery game, because spatial representation and bass quality stand and fall with the individual integration position.
But there are also gratifying exceptions: Two years ago, we visited the HiFi pros in Frankfurt, not far from the Eschersheimer Turm, where they could actually hear a very rare species of built-in loudspeakers in a sound studio designed as a living room. This is not even a grill, is absolutely invisible and even suitable for overpainting or flush-mounted operation: the unique AmbienTone system from in-akustik.
Practice: How to build AmbienTone boxes
The AmbienTone flat panel loudspeakers use NXTFlat panels, which work according to the bending wave principle. Bend wave transducers oscillate in a complex mode, whereas normal diaphragms perform a piston stroke. It is true that these completely invisible speakers are not exactly the main loudspeakers for demanding CD listening.
But for the sound of kitchens and baths as well as as an effect loudspeaker for surround systems, in-akustik offers a solution that also accepts women who may rarely see speakers in the home. And with the AmbienTech program in-akustik also spills the cables away - without having to torn the wall.
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