Stand Loudspeaker Reviews

I miss the High End Shows. Not the annual Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas—no thanks. I can do without the overpriced hotels, the 45-minute taxi lines, the frantic racing from venue to venue. No, it's the Stereophile shows I miss, with the centralized location, the rubbing shoulders with readers ("Hey, you're the cheap-speaker guy! Check out room 206!"), the listening to live music, and maybe even playing a little of it.

In the March 2010 issue I reviewed Dynaudio's Excite X12 bookshelf speaker ($1200/pair), then the least expensive speaker in Dynaudio's line. It mightily impressed me, and I wrote that it had "become my new benchmark for speakers costing under $2000/pair." Despite the many newer, competing bookshelf speakers costing somewhere between $1000 and $2000/pair that have visited my listening room since then, my enthusiasm for the Excite X12 has not waned—I've used it as a reference against which to compare all of those of those models. So when Dynaudio USA's Michael Manousselis contacted Stereophile to tell us that the entire Excite line had been redesigned, and offered review samples of the Excite X12's successor, the Excite X14 ($1500/pair), I jumped at the opportunity.

Almost five years after I submitted my review of Dynaudio's Focus 200 XD class-D active bookshelf loudspeaker—my first product review for Stereophile—word of its imminent successor, the digital Focus 10 class-D active bookshelf loudspeaker ($5500/pair), and its two larger siblings arrived via Mike Manousselis, Dynaudio North America's president, Americas. Then came the near-ubiquitous parts shortages and COVID-related slowdowns that have plagued high-end manufacturers worldwide.

These are great times for hi-fi gear, especially loudspeakers.

I latched on pretty fast to Dynaudio's Excite X12, but I wasn't the first at Stereophile to discover that loudspeaker. That was Bob Reina.

Drat!

The second I encountered Dynaudio's Focus 200 XD powered loudspeaker at the High End 2015 show in Munich, Germany, it called to me. I wasn't so much drawn to its unique functions—which I describe below—as by the fact that it could help fill the black hole left by the dismantling of my reference system for my move from big, badass Oakland, California to the small, magical town of Port Townsend, Washington.

Not every interesting audio component gets a full review in Stereophile. Many more products are covered in Sam Tellig's, Art">http://www.stereophile.com/artdudleylistening">Art Dudley's, Michael Fremer's, Kal">http://www.stereophile.com/musicintheround">Kal Rubinson's, and John">http://www.stereophile.com/thefifthelement">John Marks' regular columns than I have the space to publish measurements for. However, I do ask for samples of products that I feel deserve to be measured, particularly when our original coverage raised more questions than it answered.

When I unpacked the review samples of Earthworks' Sigma 6.2 loudspeaker, I was reminded of a Pop Art exhibition I'd visited 30 years before, in London. Along with a stuffed drum kit and other of Claes Oldenburg's exaggerated-scale floppy sculptures, hanging from the Tate Gallery's ceiling was an enormous three-pronged, US-style AC plug made entirely of hardwood (footnote 1). Although the Sigma 6.2 is available in plain-Jane black MDF for $3500/pair, the optional solid-cherry cabinet, with its polished grain-streaked panels, has the same carved-from-solid, feel of the Oldenburg plug. I found myself wanting to stroke the speaker.