In-Wall Speaker Reviews

I've come to look at home theater's many worlds much like various animals of the same species—common bonds clearly exist, but, at the same time, differences abound. Home theater works the same way. You've got high end and entry level, hobbyist and mass market, retail and custom install, and so on. They're all similar but distinctly different—particularly custom-install components. Anyone familiar with custom A/V systems will tell you that, if you'll allow me a bad pun, they're a very different animal.

To the casual observer, the home theater world probably looks relatively homogenous. After all, home theater isn't big enough, established enough, or varied enough to break itself into endless sub-categories yet, is it? The truth is, categorization has been a part of home theater from the beginning, and the gap between its two main sub-categories—let's call them conventional products and custom-install products—is wide. When it comes to speakers, the gap is only getting wider.

I love chocolate. No, I lust for chocolate. I'm incapable of walking down a candy aisle without lingering to look at the tight foil wrappings and the seductively enticing labels with their bold promises of the sinfully rich pleasure within. Sometimes, I stop, unable to control myself, and furtively fondle a bar of this darkly ambrosial substance that the Aztecs quite correctly considered the food of the gods. Certain no one is looking, I'll even bring a wrapped bar, more precious than its weight in gold, to my nostrils for a fleeting, stolen whiff of its wondrous scent. My mouth begins to water. My body shudders with excitement—an embarrassing moment of weakness in my struggle to remain pure.