Equipment and Setup:
Despite the 4 ohm impedance rating, the Denon 4311 receiver had no issue driving all 3 speakers to uncomfortable listening levels. As I used separate recordings, I did my best to level match each track, focusing on vocals, using my trusty RadioShack SPL meter. Audyssey was not enabled.
It should be noted that I tend to prefer the sound of speakers without their grills. The Triad’s were no exception. However the grills themselves are very sturdy and easily replaced thanks to their magnets. For casual listening, the timbral changes are too subtle to notice, and the grills certainly provide that extra bit of protection for the speakers.
The ‘ole reliable Sony DVD player and a Denon 5 disc changer provided the sources, certainly nothing fancy, connected via HDMI and analog, respectively. My wife and I tend to watch movies to fall asleep to in our bedroom, so we prefer the reduced light output of our little 20 inch monitor. But of course this audio upgrade is giving her other ideas….
While movies sound great with all 3 speakers playing, music mixing variations made the choice of Stereo or Pro Logic 2 a matter of personal preference. For consistency and comparison, all listening was done in Pure Direct - 2 channel.
Listening Tests:
In trying to keep some familiar reference tracks from past reviews, the following were used:
CD:
Tori Amos - Live from the Choirgirl Hotel “Northern Lad”
Meschiya Lake and the Little Bighorns - Fooler’s Gold “Catch ‘em Young”
DVD:
The Sondheim Birthday Concert - Bernadette Peters and Mandy Patinkin “Move On”
Rush - Exit Stage Left “ByTor and the Snow Dog”
Tori Amos - As the title suggests, this is a live recording. Her breathing is an audible component that lesser speakers were some how able to overlook. The Triad Bronze InWall LCR’s, however, stayed true to the recording while keeping her voice full and rich. The bass guitar, piano and drums played comfortably behind her and never missed a beat.
Tori’s vocal crescendos in this track have been cut short on other speakers, but not here. The 2pi ‘InWall’ speaker loading ensures that low frequency sounds like bass guitars really come through. I did not take measurements, but my RBH WM30’s OnWall speakers have a stated roll off of 80 hz, same as the Triad’s, but there is no question the bass of the Triad’s is vastly superior! My only criticism of this track’s presentation was an unnaturally damped sound of the cymbals.
Meschiya Lake - A New Orleans jazz singer that I have seen live. I doubt she is more than 5 feet tall but possesses a voice that can soar far above her jazz ensemble. Similar to my complaint of cymbals with Tori Amos, the brass and wood-winds sounded unnaturally soft, but still remained musical and provided a solid backing to her voice. She has a unique timbre to her voice which was only partially lost on these speakers as compared to my reference Philharmonic 3’s.
Bernadette Peters and Mandy Patinkin - The operatic duo brought everything they had for this performance, and the Triad’s did not disappoint. While I noticed Mandy’s voice to be a bit higher than on other speakers, their voices never fought for dominance of the soundstage. This did seem to come at a bit of a cost to the resolution of the symphony playing behind them, strings varied throughout the recording and sometimes sounded synthesized. With the grills on, there were some bass resonances that were diminished or absent with the grills off.
Rush - Anyone who knows me, knows my affinity - or - obsession, with Rush. This track has presented an enormous challenge to many speakers. With three musicians effectively soloing through the entire song, 2- way loudspeakers have sometimes cancelled out one or more instruments for brief moments. The Bronze InWall LCR’s never once replicated this issue and really put Geddy Lee’s bass guitar on center stage. The dexterity of both guitar players fingers was never lost, not even the fret harmonics or pick slides of Alex’s Gibson ES335. Without a subwoofer, the bass drum of course was soft or absent, but the drum solo on Toms was nearly as exciting as on my reference system.
Movies - Despite only using the front 3 channels, the sense of envelopment this system offers is superb. What the tweeters give up in high frequency extension, they make up for in horizontal dispersion. Being the sweetheart that I am, I positioned the center channel in line with my wife's side of the bedroom. Little does she know it really made no difference and even where I sit in our King bed just barely inside of the Left channel, the sound is the same!
Additional Comments on Listening:
It should be noted that I had been primed with the notion that these particular Triad InWalls are intended for home theater cinema systems. Despite that, I threw a diverse and challenging selection of music at these speakers. Considering the InWall Bronze LCR’s are intended for smaller rooms I genuinely feel that for most types of music, the clean installation and no loss of floor space makes a compelling argument for these speakers as opposed to a typical bookshelf speaker. The loss of some high frequencies and sibilance of voices or brass may disappoint some listeners, but the abundance of musical bass and overall clean reproduction while disappearing into the wall is a pretty neat party trick.
My interior wall construction does not have any insulation. Despite that, nothing ever sounded boomy or caused any part of the 25 year old wall to add its own soundtrack. I also measured the sound in the bathroom that shares this wall, with both room’s doors closed, and found a full 20 dB SPL attenuation just from the drywall. And as I have a reference system downstairs, it will not be often that a movie will playing above 80dB as it was for this test - the Triad’s are not likely to startle someone in the next room, even without insulation!