Floor Loudspeaker Reviews

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Floor Loudspeaker Reviews
Dynaudio Contour 3.0 loudspeaker
Larry Greenhill  |  Sep 15, 1998  |  0 comments
It was one of those uncommonly warm late winter Sundays when you hardly need a coat. The fine weather had set aside any critical listening sessions, the door to the kitchen was open, and I was playing my audio system—then equipped with a pair of Spendor BC-1 loudspeakers—at moderate levels. Playing on the Linn turntable was an LP that the kids loved—"The Magic Garden Song," sung by the two female leads from the children's television show of the same name (footnote 1), My wife doesn't often comment positively on audio equipment, but that day she walked in from the kitchen to say, "Those voices sound real—as if two people just walked in our living room and started singing."
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Floor Loudspeaker Reviews
Dynaudio Contour 3.3 loudspeaker
Wes Phillips  |  Jan 03, 1998  |  0 comments
"Danes are boring," Dynaudio US's president Al Filippelli said. "Let's face it: They work hard, they tell the truth, they give full measure in deals, and they don't embroider. What you see is what you get."
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Floor Loudspeaker ReviewsAudacious Audio
Dynaudio Evidence Master loudspeaker
Larry Greenhill  |  May 12, 2000  |  0 comments
I can't resist reading about a company's flagship loudspeaker—the price-no-object product that embodies the most advanced ideas from a company's research and design department. Flagship loudspeakers tend to be large, heavy, and complex, and are designed to perform best in large rooms; often, each part of each driver is hand-built to the highest level of quality, with precisely tight tolerances. The cost? Don't ask. Some two-channel, audio-only flagships cost more than a BMW M5 sports sedan or a Porsche 911.
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Floor Loudspeaker Reviews
Dynaudio Evidence Temptation loudspeaker
Larry Greenhill  |  Dec 27, 2001  |  0 comments
Film sequels are a mixed blessing. If an action movie holds my attention, I can't wait to see the sequel: same characters, same actors, new adventures. And if the first film was successful, studios are more than willing to oblige. So Jurassic Park begat The Lost World, which begat Jurassic Park III. But the results are often unsatisfying.
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Floor Loudspeaker Reviews
Dynaudio Sapphire loudspeaker
John Atkinson  |  Jan 14, 2009  |  0 comments
With hindsight, it should have been obvious at the time that the 1970s witnessed a glorious flowering of high-end audio. Almost all the brands now regarded as leaders had their start in that decade, though with perhaps the exceptions of Audio Research, Linn, Magnepan, and Naim, those of us working at audio magazines missed the significance of the new names. Dynaudio, for example, was founded in 1977, but not until the end of the 1980s did I become fully aware of the ground being broken in drive-unit and overall system design by this Danish loudspeaker manufacturer.
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Floor Loudspeaker Reviews
EgglestonWorks Andra II loudspeaker
Paul Bolin  |  Nov 30, 2002  |  0 comments
It's always tough to follow an award-winning act. Wes Phillips raved about the original EgglestonWorks Andra back in October 1997, and it was subsequently dubbed Stereophile's Speaker of the Year for 1997. The Andra won many other plaudits, and found its way into a number of top-shelf recording studios as the monitor of choice. Such a reputation for excellence is the stuff most speaker designers dream of. It also imposes the burden of expectation—the "new and improved" version of such a knockout product had better be good, or else.
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Floor Loudspeaker Reviews
EgglestonWorks Andra loudspeaker
Wes Phillips  |  Oct 04, 1997  |  0 comments
Bill Eggleston builds speakers because his father did. "My dad always told me that when he started, the only way you could get really good speakers was to build them yourself. We always had drivers and parts around, and I just began building my own so early I can't even remember. Much more important, my father passed on his wide-ranging approach to music. He listened to everything, and he taught me to be open-minded about music."
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Floor Loudspeaker Reviews
EgglestonWorks Viginti loudspeaker
Michael Fremer  |  May 24, 2018  |  10 comments
Viginti is Latin for twenty. It's also the name of a new loudspeaker from EgglestonWorks, to be produced in a limited edition of 250 pairs in celebration of the launch, 20 years ago, of the company's original Andra, on which the Viginti is based. The Viginti is a shapely and eye-pleasing 4' 2" tall, and weighs 255 lb—kind of heavy for its size.
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Floor Loudspeaker Reviews
Elac Adante AF-61 loudspeaker
Thomas J. Norton  |  Nov 27, 2018  |  37 comments
German manufacturer Elac had a significant North American presence in the 1960s and '70s, primarily with its Miracord automatic turntables. While it eventually disappeared from the US market, Elac never ceased to be a player in Europe, where it eventually shifted its primary focus from turntables to loudspeakers.

When Elac decided to reenter the US market a few years ago, its success was hardly assured. Faced with hundreds of brand names and thousands of models fighting for attention, it hired veteran speaker guru Andrew Jones to improve the odds. In his previous work, first for KEF and then for TAD and Pioneer, Jones had built a solid reputation on designing well-received, cost-no-object speakers as well as high-value budget designs.

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Floor Loudspeaker ReviewsHistoricalJ. Gordon Holt
Electro-Voice Model Two & Model Six loudspeakers
J. Gordon Holt  |  Nov 11, 2020  |  First Published: Sep 01, 1964  |  9 comments
These are two of Electro-Voice's "middle-ground" speaker systems, filling the quality (and price) range between the huge Patrician 800 and the diminutive Coronet system.
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Floor Loudspeaker Reviews
Eminent Technology LFT-III loudspeaker
Anthony H. Cordesman  |  Feb 24, 2009  |  First Published: Apr 24, 1987  |  0 comments
There is something especially exciting about a new loudspeaker design, if only because speakers are the component where one constantly hopes for the sonic miracle that will suddenly make it all sound real. No other component has the same overall impact in coloring the system, presents more room problems, or inspires more frustration on the road to the perfect system.
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Floor Loudspeaker ReviewsBudget Component Reviews
Eminent Technology LFT-VIII loudspeaker
Corey Greenberg  |  Mar 30, 2008  |  First Published: Feb 02, 1993  |  0 comments
"And I say panel speakers can't rock'n'roll—"
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Budget Component ReviewsFloor Loudspeaker Reviews
Emotiva Audio Airmotiv T2 loudspeaker
Thomas J. Norton  |  Apr 23, 2019  |  13 comments
Visit any consumer audio show these days and you'll see rooms full of systems costing from six to seven figures. Manufacturers like to put their best foot forward, and demoing systems with loudspeakers designed to sell for $50,000/pair and up (often up) seems an obvious way to go.

It's also common for an audio company to launch its flagship models first, and only later release more affordable products, for a wider range of buyers. The hope is that the promotional shine of the dream products will be reflected onto the budget models.

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Floor Loudspeaker ReviewsBudget Component Reviews
Emotiva X-Ref XRT-5.2 loudspeaker
Robert J. Reina  |  Aug 02, 2012  |  0 comments
We've all read about how bookstores, appliance stores, and other bricks-and-mortar retailers are suffering with the increasing domination of Internet sales. That got me thinking about audio dealers. I've always believed that one can't really make an informed purchase of audiophile equipment without hearing it in a system properly set up by and at at a serious audio retailer. Here in New York City, we're blessed with six first-rate audio dealers in Manhattan alone, with more in the suburbs. I estimate that 90% of the products reviewed in Stereophile can be auditioned at a dealer or two within a two-hour drive of anywhere in the New York metropolitan area.
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Floor Loudspeaker Reviews
Energy Veritas v2.8 loudspeaker
Thomas J. Norton  |  Jun 07, 1995  |  First Published: Jun 07, 1994  |  0 comments
If Canada has emerged as a hotbed of loudspeaker production in the past few years, the folks at Audio Products International must be positively sizzling. Of their three lines—Mirage, Energy, and Sound Dynamics—Mirage is perhaps the best known in the US, with Energy running a distant second. Mirage, at least in their flagship M series, features rather esoteric bipolar designs, while Energy sticks to the more conservative, forward-radiating approach. Stereophile has had extensive exposure to the various Mirages (a review of one of the M-series babies, the M-7si, is scheduled for a future issue); our exposure to Energy has been virtually nil, save for the odd Hi-Fi Show and CES. And thereby hangs a tale.
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