Mirage Incognita HDT-WM1
In-Wall Loudspeakers
 Although I called myself a
carpenter, the fact is that back in my days as a wood-butcher, I made a lot more money
tearing things apart than actually assembling them. I have no idea how so many people
could intuit that my talents lay more towards deconstruction than reconstruction, but I
had a profitable run removing all the old fixtures from a series of former dance studios,
restaurants, and stores -- and I gained an embarrassingly intimate knowledge of obsolete
insulation, plumbing, and electrical technologies in the process.
Even back in the '70s, there had been huge strides in all
three areas. The old batten insulation I removed was probably asbestos-laden, many of the
pipes might have been lead, and I know that much of the wiring I ripped out was a fire
hazard. However, the 30-year-old ceiling-mount speakers I removed were still nearly state
of the art -- not because they were any good, but because in-wall and in-ceiling speakers
were supposed to be crap.
Everybody knew that.
And everybody still knows it.
Why is that? Why hasn't anything changed in the last 60
years? Actually, it has -- it's just that not all that many people have noticed.
One of the biggest problems in designing loudspeakers is
that the designer has no idea where they are going to be used in the room. With an in-wall
loudspeaker, you eliminate that uncertainty -- you know where the speaker is in
relationship to the boundary. With modern drivers and an intelligently designed crossover,
you can achieve sound quality that cedes no ground to an equivalent box-enclosure
loudspeaker.
So why aren't there any in-walls as good as stand-alone
loudspeakers?
Now there are -- the Mirage HDT-WM1. In fact, it's an HDT-F
without the box. Now maybe in-walls are finally going to get a little respect.
What you want, Baby I got
The HDT-WM1 is a big speaker (23.75" by 9" by
3.5") boasting five drivers: two 6.5" polypropylene, mineral-injected bass
drivers; a 1" "Pure Titanium Hybrid" (PHT) dome tweeter; and a pair of
1.5" PTH domed midrange drivers.
Mirage describes the driver array as a "dual
D'Appolito configuration," meaning that the drivers are symmetrical from the outside
in: the bass drivers are on the extreme outer edges and the two midrange domes flank the
tweeter. But there's a twist -- the mid-tweeter-mid are in a diagonal line, which allows
the speaker to be mounted vertically or horizontally.
The HDT-WM1 also has a front-mount Boundary Compensation
switch that allows you to adjust its frequency tilt for mid-wall or corner placement and
two additional switches that boost the high-frequency and midrange response by a few dB
(my guess is 3dB, but Mirage doesn't specify).
The HDT-WM1 is essentially a 1" MDF baffle with the
drivers and crossover mounted to it. It doesn't have a box, of course, and you'll need to
choose a mounting kit to install it. (You basically have two choices -- one for new
construction, one for retrofitting the speaker into an existing wall. Either way, the
price is $1250/each.)
What you need, Baby I got
I installed the HDTs into my new kitchen, so I used the
retrofit kit, which consists of a template, a framing bezel, some damping material, and
Mirage's WallBracers, which add rigidity to the hole you have to cut into your wallboard.
Installing the speakers was easy. My new kitchen has a
soffit under the ceiling over the cabinets, which seemed like a natural location for a
pair of speakers -- all the more so since it was adjacent to a built-in shelf the perfect
size for a Linn Classik.
Cutting holes into walls -- especially ones 23.5" by
9" -- is not to be undertaken lightly, so I affixed double-sided tape to the
cardboard cutout templates and eyeballed several different locations within the soffit.
When I came up with positions that seemed to offer the best overall coverage combined with
symmetry, I traced the templates with a Sanford Sharpie and drilled pilot holes that
allowed me to attack the sheetrock with a saber saw.
I may have majored in deconstruction, but I was able to cut
a pair of speaker-sized holes in the wall pretty neatly. Besides, the framing bezel covers
any minor cutting irregularities quite nicely. It also installs into the hole extremely
solidly, using spring-mounted clamps to brace the wall and grasp it tightly.
The next task is to install the batting insulation above
and below the speaker's position, using the WallBracers to reinforce the whole structure
and keep the batting in place. Once you're braced and insulated, you just slip the
speakers into the bezel (remember to wire the speakers first) and tighten the mounting
screws to cinch everything up nice and tight.
This is a good time to experiment with the Boundary
Compensation and EQ switches. Given the HDT-WM1's high-on-the-wall placement, I set
Boundary Compensation to "corner." I went back and forth on the HF and midrange
boost, finally opting for a flat response, although I had anticipated needing a slight HF
upswing. I didn't, as it turned out.
The last step is installing the perforated metal grille,
which is a task requiring a surprising amount of finesse -- meaning it was not one suited
to my abilities. However, with a large rubber mallet and a great deal of cursing, I
finally got the grilles installed.
Give it to me when you get home
Maybe you think I'm strange to put a pair of $2500
loudspeakers in my kitchen, but as Jona Lewie put it, "You'll Always Find Me In The
Kitchen At Parties," and I see no reason not to always find a party in the kitchen. I
like to cook and I like to have company when I'm cooking -- so putting a good hi-fi in the
kitchen seems like a no-brainer to me.
But the beauty of high-quality in-wall speakers is that
they can put real music reproduction in places where it was never possible before. I'm
sure you have your own suggestions. Need three front speakers to unobtrusively flank that
sexy new flat-screen TV? Three HDT-WM1s would fill the bill nicely. Like to lounge in bed
listening (heh!) to Quiet Storm? A couple of these Mirages will deliver all
the mood-enhancement you want. In the hall, family room, or workshop, you don't have to
listen to a boom box -- you can have the real thing, no matter how tight your space.
I ain't gonna do you wrong
At least, that proved to be my experience. I didn't really
believe I would revel in the sound as much as I did, er, do, but it turns out that
musical enjoyment is a lot more transportable than I imagined.
I've long suspected that limitations in our playback
systems tend to edit our musical choices. If all you have is a boom box, you'll probably
end up listening to a lot of talk radio simply because music won't please you very much.
That's not the same thing as preferring talk radio -- it's settling and why settle
when you can have what you want?
I do listen to radio in the kitchen, but I live in New York
and in WNYC we have a great radio station. What surprises me, though, is how much music I
listen to through the HDTs -- not just rock and jazz, but early music, folk, and, most of
all, baroque trio sonatas.
That isn't what I used to listen to in the kitchen because
it tends to be quiet music with real dynamic range, which means it goes from soft to
softer. Running water, dishwashers, and even the gentle ebullition of hearty stocks tend
to overwhelm that sort of material -- unless well reproduced, that is.
A good example is Viaggio Musicale [Teldec Classics
82536-2] by Il Giardino Armonico, which is all about dynamic changes and contrasts. Even
when played through many freestanding box loudspeakers, these pieces can have a deceptive
metrical similarity. That's not really the case --like many types of music based upon
fairly rigid formal structures, these little gems live or die in the subtlest details. The
HDTs give them a solid foundation that allows the churning continuo to set up furious
swoops and runs by the rest of the ensemble. The result is music that's hard not to
listen to -- and extremely easy to hear.
David Russell's The Music of Mauro Giuliani [Telarc
CD-80525 CD] is another disc that you wouldn't want to relegate to background music
status. These are glorious, serious works for solo guitar, and Russell brings precision
and a stately authority to them -- especially in the Op. 15 Sonata in C, which melds a
pulsing bass line to finger-tangling lines of melody. The trick is not letting the work's
difficulty show -- Giuliani is supposed to float and soar, which is what Russell
accomplishes. The HDTs manage to present that grace without damping a jot of it -- I would
find myself standing at the sink with a bottlebrush in one hand and suds up to my elbows,
transported completely into the soundscape of New York's American Academy of Arts and
Letters back in March 1999. You don't think that's special? When was the last time that
happened while you were washing dishes?
But classical guitar and baroque concertos won't cut the
mustard at parties. That's when you want to truly move some air, and that's something the
HDTs do really, really well. Once In A Lifetime [Warner 73934] by Talking Heads
proved a less-convincing career than I had hoped it would be, but I've been listening to
it a lot anyway. Guess I'll get another chance to buy that music again.
"I Zimbra" proved perfect party music, melding
African rhythms and a huge, fatback bottom end to chanted lyrics and Robert Fripp's
elephant guitar. The HDTs delivered the music with tons of slam and lots of juicy top-end
detail. Maybe the new box set's mix is better than I initially thought -- listening
through the Mirage in-walls was just about the best I've ever heard the song sound.
Just a little bit
You're probably asking whether the HDT-WM1s are better
than, say, the freestanding HDT-Fs. That I can't answer, since I haven't heard the box
speakers. What the HDTs do not deliver -- at least not where I have mine installed
-- is a great deal of soundstage depth. Roger Kanno compared the sound of the HDT-Fs to
his reference Infinity Compositions Preludes, which do soundstage particularly
well, so I suspect that's an area where freestanding speakers probably do perform better.
But his review does mention that "the lower registers
were missing" on the Mirage, at least compared to the Infinities, and that's
an area where the HDT-WM1s simply aren't weak.
It's difficult to compare the HDT-WM1s to any similar
speaker, since the whole point of the speaker is that it can be used in places where you
simply can't use any other speaker of similar quality. I'd trade a little soundstage depth
for full-range musicality where I otherwise couldn't have it. Oh yes, I'd make that trade
any day of the week.
Take care, TCB
Ultimately, that's what the Mirage HDT-WM1 is all about. It
lets you have a high-quality, full-range loudspeaker in places where you'd otherwise have
to listen to background music at best.
And that you've got to respect.
...Wes Phillips
wes@onhifi.com
HDT-WM1 In-Wall Loudspeakers
Price: $1250 USD/each.
Warranty: Five years parts and labor.
Mirage Loudspeakers
3641 McNicoll Avenue
Scarborough, Ontario
Canada, M1X 1G5
Phone: (416) 321-1800
Fax: (416) 321-1500
Website: www.miragespeakers.com
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