Review

Holographix Complete Review - Audio & Video Lifestyle - Australia

01 Jul 2005

There are more and more of us who want our loudspeakers to be heard but not seen. To an increasing number of aesthetic-conscious consumers, a loudspeaker is an ugly and unnecessary piece of living (or home theatre) room furniture. If you feel the same, then you’ll want concealable loudspeakers.

Not so long ago, the sort of loudspeaker you could hide in a wall or ceiling space was little more than a white in-car speaker, which could deliver background music at best. Today, the types and quality of loudspeaker you can pop out of sight, but not out of mind, has become quite extraordinary. It’s become a big growth area of the market and everyone, it seems, is doing it. Traditional hi-fi loudspeaker manufacturers are joining the ranks of the custom installation brands and offering their own solution to hiding away those ‘unsightly boxes’.

Personally the bigger my loudspeakers the better and I love looking at as well as hearing them, but in some instances, out of sight is definitely an advantage. Which is something I found out fairly recently when kitting out my new AV room. In this age of multichannel audio, having eight loudspeakers in a room can be physically hard to accommodate, so getting them into wall or ceiling spaces makes a whole lot of sense. I already had a pair of dipoles positioned on the side walls as rear surrounds, but needed a pair of small in-ceiling speakers that would do the job as rear centre surrounds. As it happens Krix has earlier sent me a pair of its smallest in-ceiling loudspeaker, the Holographix and I’d promised to get round to reviewing them once installed.

I didn’t have much ceiling space to play with, just a few centimeters in fact and at only 10.8cm deep, proved ideal for my needs. Of course, they can be installed in much greater roof space, but if space is really tight, these are great.

A quick spin with an 83mm drill bit and the holes were cut. I’d already laid the wiring and it then just took a few seconds to install the Holographix. The speaker is fitted with a couple of ‘arms’ that unfold once in the ceiling cavity and hold the speakers firmly in place.

Remarkable simple installation, the Holographix are a very well made little speaker and look particularly inconspicuous once mounted. Finished in all white, krix is also toying with the idea of an aluminium grille version, which would give the speaker the appearance of a downlight, concealing them even more if you use this sort of ceiling lighting.

Despite being used as rear centres, I hooked the Holographix up to the main front outputs to hear how they sounded as a stereo pair. For such small drivers and enclosures, remarkably substantial was my first, quite surprised, impression. They are a full range loudspeaker and it was all there – bass, midrange and treble. The dynamics of the sound will hardly blow you away, nor will the volume levels achievable, but even on their lonesome, a pair is still quite listenable. They provide far more than just background noises and certainly perform really well for their size.

As surrounds, the Holographix blended well with my other home theatre speakers and on those films with Dolby Digital EX or DTS ES encoding, proved right at home adding the additional surround effects and spread to the rear soundfield. They handle themselves well with big, fast action sequences as well as interjecting plenty of ambience with quieter movie moments.

Practical and with a wide range of uses, these concealable Krix’ are excellent value.

Verdict: * * * * *

- Audio & Video Lifestyle - Australia , Nic Tatham

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