(5 out of 5) Performance (4 out of 5) Value Upon receiving Lawrence Audio’s Cello floorstanding speakers about two years ago for review, it was with great pleasure and to my surprise that they turned out to be the finest speakers I have ever listened to in my reference system. As a result, I bought […]
(5 out of 5) Performance (4 out of 5) Value Upon receiving Lawrence Audio’s Cello floorstanding speakers about two years ago for review, it was with great pleasure and to my surprise that they turned out to be the finest speakers I have ever listened to in my reference system. As a result, I bought […]
(4.5 out of 5) Performance (5 out of 5) Value In a recent news piece, Home Theater Review publisher Jerry Del Colliano mentioned a trend in the AV industry that would be hard to deny. Through the advance of technology, AV components now offer what would have been best-in-class performance not long ago, for a […]
(4.5 out of 5) Performance (5 out of 5) Value In the year or so since the 2013 International CES, two speaker demos in particular have haunted my memory as truly moving, ear-opening musical experiences. One was Wisdom Audio’s behemoth LS4, a wall-mounted planar magnetic line array tipping the scales at 550 pounds and measuring […]
The NHT Absolute Tower loudspeaker is small in stature but capable of playing loud and clear when coupled with a subwoofer. The Absolute Tower is built like a tank but is still slim and sexy with an extravagant piano black finish. Is this absolutely the best loudspeaker on the planet? Well, quite frankly no. Is […]
(4 out of 5) Performance (4 out of 5) Value The “trickle down” effect can apply to many things, with mixed results. In connection with economics, many would say that there is no trickle-down effect. When it comes to technology, though, it’s impossible to deny the benefits. As higher-end technologies trickle down to lower-priced products, […]
(5 out of 5) Performance (3.5 out of 5) Value The English-based speaker company Neat Acoustics has been in business for over 20 years producing very highly regarded stand-mount and floorstanding models in the European market. Throughout the years, I have had the pleasure of listening to different Neat Acoustic speakers either as in-home systems […]
Bang & Olufsen introduced a high-end wireless floor standing loudspeaker, called the BeoLab 20, which follows the recently released BeoLab 17, 18, and 19 wireless speakers. With its minimalist lines and relatively small footprint, the new BeoLab 20 gives little indication of the expansive musicality that lies within. According to Michael Langager, Vice President Core […]
(4 out of 5) Performance (5 out of 5) Value Tweeters can be troublesome things. The smaller they are, the more broadly they disperse high-frequency sound – but the more they also tend to distort at lower frequencies. With a typical one-inch tweeter, the speaker engineer usually has to specify a crossover point somewhere around […]
(4 out of 5) Performance (5 out of 5) Value I admit it, I’ve always been more of a traditional AV enthusiast who appreciates the value and performance of using traditional floorstanding loudspeakers for my front channels, as opposed to the super-thin on-wall speakers that are all the rage these days. Sure, like most others, […]
(4.5 out of 5) Performance (5 out of 5) Value Ask some old audiophile (like me) about Infinity, and he’ll probably tell you about the Infinity Reference Series speaker, which broke the $40,000/pair price barrier way back in the 1980s. Or he might talk about the Servo Statik 1, which was the first subwoofer/satellite speaker system […]
Sonus faber introduced the Lilium full frequency range high end floor standing speaker, built around the knowledge gained through the creation of their flagship Aida loudspeaker. There is one enclosure for the subwoofer, with a “no port noise” passive radiator (heritage of Ex3ma), decoupled from the enclosure of the main spectrum radiators and with the […]
(4 out of 5) Performance (5 out of 5) Value None but the most pedantic of commenters would debate the contention that Sony has made more great audio products than any other company in history, but Sony typically hasn’t made particularly good speakers. Why? I don’t know, but the situation has spawned all sorts of […]
(5 out of 5) Performance (4 out of 5) Value A little more than two years ago, I reviewed the superlative Aerial Acoustics 7T loudspeaker and was informed by the owner and designer, Mike Kelly, that the model 7T was the start of a new generation of speaker design regarding cabinet materials, types of drivers, […]
(5 out of 5) Performance (3.5 out of 5) Value There aren’t a whole lot of audio brands as universally respected as Bryston. They’re popular with studio professionals. They’re popular with audiophiles. And because Bryston has mostly stuck to what they know – high-end audio electronics and, in particular, amplifiers – the company has never […]
PSB Speakers announced their top-of-the-line floorstanding loudspeaker for stereo or home theater use. The new Imagine T3 Tower represents the latest and most advanced thinking from the company. Always aware that the room has a large effect on the sound of any loudspeaker, PSB made sure that the T3 interfaces smoothly and predictably with the […]
You’ll lust after the way the CM8 S2 look, but you’ll fall in love with the way they sound. (8 out of 10) Pros More forceful bass requires subwoofer Port plugs may not be useful Cons More forceful bass requires subwoofer Port plugs may not be useful If you had asked me 15 years […]
(5 out of 5) Performance (5 out of 5) Value In his masterpiece Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space, the great Carl Sagan wrote, “It does no harm to the romance of the sunset to know a little bit about it.” This ethos was echoed (although perhaps less succinctly) by […]
There are speakers, then there are loudspeakers. The Estelon Extreme are the latter. These ultimate audiophile loudspeakers are taller than LeBron James (6′ 8″), and come with a price tag only he can afford, $239,000 a pair! In addition to being 550 lbs behemoths, the Extreme’s have a unique feature that can remotely raise or lower […]
(4 out of 5) Performance (4.5 out of 5) Value You’d think that, after so many decades of speaker development, we’d have settled on a perfect driver complement. Actually, we kind of have. Once you look carefully at what kinds of speakers work best in most rooms, with most music, and for most listeners’ tastes–and […]
Juno Audio has crafted the first-ever loudspeaker to play music derived from the soniferous perfection of violins. The $25,000 Viotone M One floorstanding speaker claims to be able to transform everyday audio into pure, natural sound. Viotone is the only speaker in the world that utilizes the natural shape and wooden resonance of a violin […]