In-wall performance?

JimAckley wrote: »

How many of you use a complete in-wall system? Does anyone have the RTS line? I'm curious to know how well in wall speakers perform compared to conventional speakers.

Depends on how well you design the wall cavity for the speakers. The design of a speaker enclosure is an important component of the sound quality of the speaker. Sheet-rock has less than ideal acoustic properties. Unless you take the time to carve out and design a wall cavity that is well braced and acoustically 'dead', you're going to have a lot of resonance that will impact sound quality. The problem is, most people just cut holes in their drywall and plop speakers in.

Beyond that, having the drivers sit flush with the wall can cause unwanted reflections and mess with the frequency response and tone of the speaker.

In general, one has to be mindful of how a speaker will interact with the walls/room...with floorstanders and bookshelves moving speakers a few inches can have a rather profound effect sometimes. With in-walls, you don't have the luxury of adjusting placement, and you're stuck with an innately bad placement.