At CEDIA Expo in Denver last week, high-end audio vendor Meridian announced and demonstrated a new line of in-wall and in-ceiling loudspeakers, designed to allow high-end home theater customers to make their speakers invisible without sacrificing performance.

The active (powered) in-wall speakers featured were the model 350i ($14,000/pair as configured, available now). These were mated with Meridian's upcoming in-wall subwoofers ($TBD) to produce a full-range stealth multi-channel surround system for environments where visible speaker cabinets just won't do. Meridian has been perfecting in-wall and in-ceiling speaker designs for years and feels that with their new 200-series (in-ceiling) and 300-series (in-wall), they finally arrived at the point where flush mounted speakers can perform admirably against their free-standing peers.

Rather than build the speakers simply to reproduce the sizzle and boom of action-packed movies, Meridian designers pursued a loftier goal - if you can get the speakers to count "correct" with real acoustic instrumets, like woodwinds, piano, and unadorned human voices, then the rest is easy.

Meridian's 300 series powered in-wall speakers provide discreet high performance music or home theater sound without visible boxes.

In a series of musical demos, featuring piano and acapella vocal material, the in-walls created a deep image and 3-dimensional soundstage the likes of which I've never heard before from a flush-mounted speaker. The 200 series in-ceiling and 300 series in-wall loudspeakers are available now in powered, passive (non-powered), in-wall and on-wall (surface mounted) versions.

Pricing for the 200 series begins at $397 (each), while the 300 series ranges from $2,395-$4,895 (each) depending on configuration.