Stand Loudspeaker Reviews

Sort By:  Post Date TitlePublish Date
Stand Loudspeaker ReviewsThe Fifth ElementBudget Component Reviews
The Fifth Element #48
John Marks  |  Jul 01, 2008  |  First Published: Jun 01, 2008  |  0 comments
Ah, Miss Julie.
Continue Reading »
Stand Loudspeaker ReviewsBudget Component Reviews
Energy Connoisseur C-2 loudspeaker
Thomas J. Norton  |  Jun 28, 2008  |  First Published: Sep 28, 1996  |  0 comments
Reality check number one. Tired of reading about the latest and greatest $65,000 loudspeakers? Or even the current hot ticket at $2500? Such loudspeakers promise to bring you the audio truth, or the golly-gee-whiz, honest-to-gosh, absolutely positively real sound. And some of them do seem to come awfully close, though truth be told, we're still a long way from replicating reality—and will never do it with just two channels.
Continue Reading »
Stand Loudspeaker ReviewsAudacious Audio
Cabasse La Sphère powered loudspeaker
Michael Fremer  |  Jun 20, 2008  |  0 comments
In an unfortunate coincidence, a few nights before the Cabasse team arrived to install the company's unusual-looking La Sphère powered speaker system, VOOM HD Networks, Monster HD channel, which is exclusively devoted to B horror movies, broadcast The Crawling Eye (aka The Trollenberg Terror), a 1958 black-and-white howler starring Forrest Tucker. I watched.
Continue Reading »
Stand Loudspeaker ReviewsBudget Component Reviews
Fourier 6 loudspeaker
Larry Greenhill, Dick Olsher  |  Jun 17, 2008  |  First Published: Mar 18, 1984  |  0 comments
The Fourier 6 has the special ability to generate large coherent sonic fields, from a box small enough to slip into an ordinary shopping bag. At $499/pair, the 6 competes directly with another remarkable-imaging, compact American speaker, the Spica TC-50 ($420/pair).
Continue Reading »
Stand Loudspeaker Reviews
Westlake BBSM-6F loudspeaker
John Atkinson  |  Jun 06, 2008  |  First Published: Jan 06, 1992  |  0 comments
I've been musing much of late on what enables some hi-fi components to sound natural while others always seem to add an edge of artificiality to their sound. This dichotomy was examined in last month's "As We See It," where I asked a representative group of Stereophile writers to discuss the fact that many high-end components regarded as being neutral in their sonic character, with apparently little wrong in their measured performance, can actually sound quite unmusical. This would seem to suggest that the nature of what a component does wrong is of greater importance than the level of what it does wrong: 1% of one kind of distortion can be innocuous, even musically appropriate, whereas 0.01% of a different kind of distortion can be musical anathema.
Continue Reading »
Stand Loudspeaker Reviews
Usher Audio Technology Be-718 loudspeaker
Wes Phillips  |  May 25, 2008  |  0 comments
When I attended the 2006 GuangZhou Hi-Fi Show in China, it seemed as though most of the Asian-built loudspeakers I saw were huge, astonishingly efficient, and had horns. When I walked into Usher Audio Technology's room, however, Paul Chen was making music happen with the Usher S-520s ($500/pair).
Continue Reading »
Stand Loudspeaker ReviewsBudget Component Reviews
Paradigm Reference Studio/20 loudspeaker
Robert J. Reina  |  May 21, 2008  |  0 comments
One of the first affordable loudspeakers I reviewed for Stereophile was the original Paradigm Reference Studio/20 bookshelf model, in the February 1998 issue (Vol.21 No.2). At the time, I felt that the $650/pair speaker was a breakthrough—although not completely devoid of colorations, its ratio of price to performance set a benchmark a decade ago. I kept the Studio/20s around for several years to compare with other bookshelf speakers I reviewed, and they remained listed in Stereophile's "Recommended Components" for several years after that. The Studio/20 is now in its fourth (v.4) iteration, so I thought I'd grab a pair to hear how they compared with current affordable bookshelf designs.
Continue Reading »
Stand Loudspeaker Reviews
Harbeth BBC LS5/12A loudspeaker
John Atkinson  |  May 08, 2008  |  First Published: Jan 08, 1995  |  0 comments
In the ice-cream world, chocolate is the universal end of the line. Vanilla experiments that taste great but look foul, maple syrup flavors that are more maple than syrup, tutti-frutti that's too tutti—all are recycled as chocolate flavor, their visual sins permanently hidden from view. In the world of wood, the equivalent of chocolate ice cream is the ubiquitous "black ash" veneer. The original color and character of the wood are irrelevant: it all ends up stained black.
Continue Reading »
Stand Loudspeaker ReviewsBudget Component Reviews
Triangle Esprit Comete Ex loudspeaker
Art Dudley  |  Apr 24, 2008  |  0 comments
The first reference I saw to the Count of Saint Germain was in Foucault's Pendulum, Umberto Eco's dense novel about a man whose paranoid delusions become so overpoweringly real that, by the end of the book, the reader is left wondering whether the protagonist's enemies actually exist. That their number should include Saint Germain was a nice touch: Part cabalist, part confidence man, the real-life Count was thought by some to be immortal (in Pendulum he's pushing 300), and while Casanova wrote vividly of meeting Saint Germain at a dinner party in 1757, so did the English writer and pederast C.W. Leadbetter—in 1926. Like Aleister Crowley, the Count of Saint Germain can be seen peering over the shoulders of countless parlor (but not parleur, or even haut-parleur) occultists: He keeps popping up all over the place.
Continue Reading »
Stand Loudspeaker ReviewsBudget Component Reviews
Silverline Audio Minuet loudspeaker
Robert J. Reina  |  Apr 23, 2008  |  0 comments
I always look forward to Stereophile's Home Entertainment Shows, where I scout out interesting new models of affordable loudspeakers. At HE2007 in New York City, I was struck by the Silverline Audio room—not only by the sound I heard there, but by the way Showgoers reacted to that sound.
Continue Reading »
Stand Loudspeaker Reviews
Monitor Audio Studio 15 loudspeaker
John Atkinson  |  Apr 02, 2008  |  First Published: Jun 02, 1992  |  0 comments
I believe Ken Kantor said it first: a couple of years ago, in his September 1990 interview with Robert Harley (Vol.13 No.9), he remarked that "there's no reason why a two-way 6" loudspeaker can't be the equal of almost the best speaker out there from a certain frequency point upward, with the possible exception of dynamic range." When I read those words, they rang true. If you put to one side the need to reproduce low bass frequencies and can accept less-than-live playback levels, a small speaker can be as good as the best, and allow its owner to enjoy the benefits of its size—visual appeal, ease of placement in the room, and the often excellent imaging afforded by the use of a small front baffle.
Continue Reading »
Stand Loudspeaker ReviewsHi-Rez Disc Player/Transport ReviewsMusic in the Round
Music in the Round #29
Kalman Rubinson  |  Mar 25, 2008  |  0 comments
For years, I have espoused the use of the same speakers (except subwoofer) in all positions for multichannel music. To have no speaker in the system contributing a different voice to the choir seems as intuitive as having the room acoustics not color the sound. Of course, this still doesn't guarantee perfect timbral match—positioning and room acoustics usually impose some unique characteristics under all but the most perfect and symmetrical conditions. You can hear tonal imbalances even between the left and right speakers of most two-channel systems simply by switching pink noise between them. On the other hand, there's no reason to superimpose on these unavoidable differences the additional imbalances inevitable with using different speakers in a multichannel array.
Continue Reading »
Stand Loudspeaker ReviewsBudget Component Reviews
Fried Q/4 loudspeaker
Robert Harley  |  Mar 06, 2008  |  First Published: Oct 06, 1990  |  0 comments
During the late 1970s and early '80s, I worked my way through college by selling hi-fi, or more precisely, mid-fi. During those years, I heard and sold several hundred different loudspeakers costing under $1000/pair. Despite the fact that I experienced them under less than ideal conditions, I was nevertheless able to get a feel for their relative performance. When switching between speakers, the differences between them were drastically juxtaposed. No two loudspeakers sounded even remotely similar tonally, indicating that they all had severe colorations.
Continue Reading »
Stand Loudspeaker Reviews
Celestion 100 loudspeaker
John Atkinson  |  Mar 01, 2008  |  First Published: Jun 01, 1992  |  0 comments
I believe Ken Kantor said it first: a couple of years ago, in his September 1990 interview with Robert Harley (Vol.13 No.9), he remarked that "there's no reason why a two-way 6" loudspeaker can't be the equal of almost the best speaker out there from a certain frequency point upward, with the possible exception of dynamic range." When I read those words, they rang true. If you put to one side the need to reproduce low bass frequencies and can accept less-than-live playback levels, a small speaker can be as good as the best, and allow its owner to enjoy the benefits of its size—visual appeal, ease of placement in the room, and the often excellent imaging afforded by the use of a small front baffle.
Continue Reading »
Stand Loudspeaker ReviewsBudget Component Reviews
Cambridge SoundWorks Ambiance loudspeaker
John Atkinson  |  Feb 29, 2008  |  First Published: Mar 29, 1990  |  0 comments
According to the conventional wisdom, companies selling consumer products fall into two categories: those whose sales are "marketing-led" and those whose sales are "product-led." Marketing-led companies tend to sell mature products into a mature market where there are no real differences between competing products—soap powder, mass-market beer, or cigarettes, for example—whereas product-led companies tend to sell new technologies, such as personal computers and high-end hi-fi components. In the audio separates market, conventional wisdom would have a hard time categorizing any individual company: no matter which you choose, it would be simplistic to say that it is either product- or marketing-led. No matter how good the product, without good marketing the manufacturer stands little chance of success; a poor product superbly marketed may make a company successful overnight, but that success will have hit the end stops by the following night.
Continue Reading »

Pages

X