Mirage HDTWM-5 Brochure

As Featured In

HDT Series In-Wall Speakers

Reviewed Inside

“...the finest in-wall speakers

I have heard”

-Brent Butterworth

Robb Report Home Entertainment

B

uilding a house from balsa wood or a car
from aluminum foil would be ridiculous,
right? But anyone who owns in-wall

speakers has probably committed a similar
crime—they have, in essence, built their speaker
cabinets from flimsy, brittle gypsum board.When
the speaker plays, the gypsum board vibrates and
makes its own sound, almost as if someone was
singing the Gilligan’s Island theme while you are
trying to listen to Beethoven.The problem is most
acute in the bass, which is why so many in-walls
sound boomy, indistinct and annoying.

Some manufacturers solve this problem by
including back boxes with their in-walls; the back
box serves as a speaker cabinet and prevents most of
those troublesome wall vibrations. Back boxes, how­ever, can greatly diminish deep bass response, and
they can be complicated to install. Mirage proposes
a simpler solution: Minimize the vibrations by stuff­ing the walls with foam and adding spring-loaded
dampers.The company includes two dampers and
four pieces of foam with every model in its
Incognita HDT line of in-wall speakers.

The foam itself is nothing special, but the
damper, which Mirage calls the WallBracer, merits
examination. It works like a spring clip, but back­ward—your installer pushes its two legs together
and slips them inside the wall.When released, the
two legs push out against the drywall panels on
both sides of the wall.Two pieces of foam and one
WallBracer go both above and below the speaker.

Wisely, Mirage did not rest its hopes for good
sound solely on a couple of springy gizmos.The
products it sends me—the HDT-WM1 and HDT­WM5 in-walls, and the HDT-CM1 ceiling speak­er—rank among the best-built architectural speakers
I have encountered.All are of three-way design,
with one or two midrange drivers in addition to
the tweeter and woofer(s).The midrange drivers—a
relatively rare feature in an in-wall or in-ceiling
speaker—make voices sound clearer and help even
out the way a speaker spreads sound into a room.
The front panels of the in-wall models are made
from medium-density fiberboard, just like most
freestanding speakers, instead of the molded plastic
most in-wall speakers employ. All of the speakers
have switches that allow fine-tuning of the sound to
suit the acoustics of your room.

I experiment by installing various combinations
of the HDT speakers in my listening room’s walls
and ceiling. (The room includes special wall bays
that let me insert and remove these speakers with­out having to patch the old holes and cut new
ones.) I use the ceiling speakers for the surround
channels, installed a few feet behind and to the sides
of my favorite listening chair. For the front left, cen­ter and right speakers, I try using three of the large,
top-of-the-line HDT-WM1s, then try the mid­sized HDT-WM5 in the center, then use two
HDT-WM5 speakers as left and right speakers in a
stereo system.All of the combinations prove quite
workable, but getting great sound from these speak­ers takes a little bit of strategizing.

Let me start with this comment: Any combina­tion of the HDT-WM1 and HDT-WM5, used in
conjunction with a good subwoofer, gives remark-

NEW REVIEWS

BOOM BUSTERS

A couple of unusual accessories rid Mirage’s Incognita HDT series in-wall speakers

of the bloated bass so typical of the breed.

Although the Incognita HDT line employs an unusual sep­arate bezel that snaps into a wall without the use of tools,
the speakers appear as inconspicuous as any in-walls.

BY BRENT BUTTERWORTH PHOTOGRAPHY BY CORDERO STUDIOS

march/april

200

5

home entertainment