In-Wall Survey: Triad InWall Silver/4 MiniMonitor and DALI Euphonia IWS 3 Phantom

There are literally dozens of look-alike in-wall speakers on the market—white flushmount frames, perforated metal grilles, black woofers and tweeters. To the uninitiated, they’re all the same, and purchase decisions are based on price. To experienced ears, there are huge differences that make some more desirable than others, and much more satisfying over the long haul.

For this installment of TPV’s ongoing in-wall speaker survey, I took two similar products for test drives—the Triad InWall Silver/4 MiniMonitor and the Dali Euphonia IWS 3 Phantom. Both have sealed enclosures to guarantee repeatable performance regardless of where they’re installed, and both share a similar price point. The Triads retail for $1300 each; the DALIs go for $1600 per speaker.

Using an old receiver in my garage workshop, I subjected both sets of speakers to a 24-hour break-in, then mounted them in freestanding “stud bays,” or sections of wall constructed for this purpose. Because the MiniMonitor is the smaller of the two, it went into the false walls first—to minimize the amount of drywall replacement I’d have to do later.

Setup

A long length of Red Rose 336 speaker cable, exiting through a small hole in the back of each stud bay, connected the speakers to my Halo A 51 power amp. Other gear included an Integra DPC-8.5 universal disc changer feeding Perpetual Technologies P/1A and P/3A outboard processors. For two-channel listening, the analog output from the P/3A was looped through a Margules Magenta ADE-24 harmonic sweetener to a Halo C2 preamp/ processor. The Integra's digital output was also plugged into the C2 for surround decoding, and I have a modified Denon DVD-2900 hooked up for both digital and 7.1-channel analog.

One system with several different audio paths makes it relatively simple to determine whether a sonic artifact is coming directly from a loudspeaker or from elsewhere in the system. Other significant components included a James SG-10 powered subwoofer and an American Power Conversion S15 power conditioner.

I did almost all of my listening with the C2 in stereo mode with the main speakers set to SMALL (limited low-frequency capability) in the set-up menu. While listening, I alternately muted and un-muted the subwoofer with its remote control to see how low-frequency reinforcement affected perceived performance. As it turned out, both products needed the sub to sound their best.

Triad InWall Silver/4 MiniMonitors

Measuring only 8-5/16" wide by 11- 15/16" high—almost the same as a standard sheet of paper—and 3-15/16" deep, the Triad is designed to fit flush front-toback in walls framed with 2"x4" studs. In such walls, you simply cut open a rectangle and slip the speaker all the way in. Metal braces on the front baffle extend to secure it against the inside of the drywall, and the grille attaches to the front. Included instructions caution that you should tape a piece of foam to the back when installing in 2"x6" stud bays, to prevent losing the speaker inside the bay.

Without its grille, this diminutive speaker weighs in at a hefty nine pounds, owing to robust construction and high-quality parts, including a braced and damped medium density fiberboard (MDF) cabinet outfitted with a 5-1/4" ScanSpeak midwoofer and a 1" SEAS fabric-dome tweeter. “The fully sealed-enclosure design prevents sound from ‘bleeding through’ to adjacent floors in the home,” an executive told me in response to an inquiry about its construction. “Additional benefits of the Silver/4’s sealed-enclosure design include protection of the drivers and crossover components from moisture, dust, and settling construction materials.”

This little speaker was a sonic surprise. On Gregory Isaacs’ reggae hit “Night Nurse” [Night Nurse, New Music], it showed good dynamics and clarity, with startlingly good bass (given the typical constraints of small drivers in small enclosures). Acknowledging this reality, the manufacturer specifies a frequency response of 80Hz–20kHz (±3dB). With low-end support from the subwoofer, the Silver/4’s performance improved considerably, gaining image size and depth. One of the mysteries of audio is how the output from a properly dialed-in subwoofer can appear to come from the main speakers. No one looking at the little MiniMonitors would think them capable of deep bass, but what they produce blends in so well with a sub that it creates the impression of bigger sound. A punchy mid-bass helps.

The Stan Getz/Joao Gilberto classic “Girl from Ipanema” [Getz/Gilberto, Verve] sounded a tad metallic in the top octaves, but another Brazilian favorite, “Manha de Carnival,” from the Black Orpheus soundtrack, was wonderfully moody without any upper-octave raspiness. I pushed the drive level up for the Dixie Chicks’ “Tonight the Heartache's on Me” [Wide Open Spaces, Monument] and thought that, although the Triads delivered the music's compelling essence, they sounded a tad strained without the subwoofer—not surprising given their 80Hz low-frequency limit. On the other hand, Kitty Margolis’s jazzy interpretation of the Pink Floyd classic “Money” [Left Coast Life, Mad-Kat Records] was deep and dreamy. Hugh Masekela's “Stimela,” on the Burmeister CD-3 demo disc, was appropriately dramatic, the drumming insistent and the sax and trumpet mournful and indignant.

The Silver/4s did an admirable job of delivering the music without editorializing, except for what I suspect is a bit of peakiness in the top end, something that variously made itself apparent as a hint of nasality or edginess. It's a characteristic that sometimes adds clarity to dialogue in movie soundtracks.

That proved to be the case with the opening sequence from the DVD of The Wedding Singer. In this wedding party scene, the dialogue was crystalclear, and the background voices of the wedding guests were cleanly differentiated from the music of Adam Sandler's band. The Triads also handled big effects, such as the horrendous battle scenes in Black Hawk Down, without bottoming out.

The InWall Silver/4 MiniMonitor is well designed and solidly constructed. It's a good solution for small-to-medium- sized rooms and for mediumbudget systems. It needs low-frequency enhancement to do its best, something the manufacturer has addressed with its in-wall subwoofers (untested). It would be an excellent choice as a surround-effects speaker in situations where space is at a premium. The Portland, Oregon-based company also makes the Silver/4 in a freestanding bookshelf model and an “InCeiling” version, to insure sonic consistency regardless of application.

DALI Euphonia IWS 3 Phantom

At $1600 each, Dali’s Euphonia IWS 3 Phantom is approximately 25% more expensive than the InWall Silver/4. A new product this year, it’s also physically larger than the Silver/4, with a heavy cast-aluminum enclosure with internal ribs and “Vibrasorb” damping material to minimize vibration, resonance, and internal standing waves. Eyebolts mounted at the top and bottom provide installation security, especially useful when working on a ladder. Like the Silver/4, the DALI fits flush front-to-back in 2"x4" framed walls. And like Triad, DALI believes that “the main problem with the sound quality of in-wall speakers is that the wall and the cavity influence the reproduction tremendously.”

The Phantom’s one-piece construction makes installation a breeze: Simply cut a rectangle, hook up the speaker wires, and push it into place, without the grille. The frame prevents inserting it too far. Tighten the six clamps with a cordless drill set to low torque and you’re done.

The Phantom has an unusual 6 1/2" woofer made of a wood/fiber composite, with a concave dish shape and no dust cap. This proprietary design is said to be an improvement over most synthetic drivers (polypropylene, Kevlar, etc.), which DALI engineers believe tend to lose energy. The Phantom’s woofers are claimed to have excellent rigidity and very fast transient response, translating to more nuance in reproduced sound, even at low listening levels. High frequencies are handled by a module mating a 1" silk-dome tweeter to a 2 1/4" ribbon tweeter, for what a DALI distributor called “super high frequencies and overtones beyond human hearing, to create a sense of air or space around the sound.” Internal circuitry is all point-to-point wiring, hand-soldered “for maximum transparency.”

Dali claims that its combination of custom-made ScanSpeak drivers and crossover network yields good frequency linearity up to 30 degrees offaxis, for a “deeper, wider sweet spot, and better room integration,” cautioning that the Phantoms should be mounted on a flat wall, never toed-in. All the engineering effort that went into the speaker results in, “better time-alignment (phase linearity), better 3-dimensional soundstaging, and precise imaging.”

With the Phantoms installed, I listened to the same selections of music and watched the same scenes from the same movies as I had with the Silver/4s. Although DALI claims higher sensitivity for the Phantom than Triad does for the InWall Silver/4 (89dB vs. 87dB), my subjective impression of the Phantom was that it needed more amp drive to reach the same level of loudness. The display on my Halo C2 read “-9” for the same sections where I had felt comfortable at “-15” with the Silver/4. This may be due to a mid-bass hump in the Silver/4’s response that makes it sound more punchy. The Phantom had a smoother bass response, with a softer roll-off, but didn’t sound as dynamic in the lower registers despite claimed low frequency-response extending down to 64Hz.

As with the Silver/4, augmenting the bottom end with the James subwoofer helped create a seamless and rich foundation for the mid and upper frequencies, an area where the Phantoms were clearly superior. Notes I took during listening include “very natural harmonics,” “sweet top end,” and “compelling rhythm and drive.” The Phantoms create a deep, seductive soundstage. They never exhibited any strain regardless of how loudly they were played, were much more revealing of musical and vocal nuances, and were easy to listen to for prolonged periods. They also got approving comments from my wife about how nicely they filled the house with music during the day.

Although a notch below the $2000 MartinLogan Voyage in absolute performance, the DALI Euphonia IWS 3 Phantom is an excellent loudspeaker, understated in design and beautiful in performance. With a good subwoofer, it’s a world-class contender. By year’s end, Dali plans to add two models to the Phantom line. If anything like this one, they should be nothing less than exceptional.