“Right out of the box the Audioengine 5 powered speaker system has a huge and very simple advantage over almost all the iPod “dock” type systems breeding like a shiny white fungus out there in the audio mainstream. It has two independent speakers. Real speakers. And, like any mini-monitor, they can be placed in such a way as to generate an actual stereo image…”

“These three powered monitors were measured in our standard fashion, and all performed reasonably well, with good dispersion to 30 degrees off axis, and the required slight reticence in the midrange you need for a speaker you listen to at close quarters. I can see why Aaron was less enthusiastic about the Edifier, with its rolled-off treble and upper midrange. Though very flat through the range from 70 to 1000 Hz, it was about 7 dB down by 4 kHz, with little life above, and zilch sheen at the top…”

“The new subwoofers from this company are relatively small, though the S12.3 is larger than the new Paradigm Seismic 12 with a similarly-sized driver (The Paradigm Seismic 12 is also reviewed in the Fall 2004 issue). The S12.3 comes in a black ash finish with a black grille cover, a volume control with a bright blue LED below it at the top of the front panel showing through the grille cover…”

“As maligned as it is by many audiophiles, the compact disc made the idea of having a serious audio system at work truly practical. Audiophiles lucky enough to have a work environment which could accommodate a pair of bookshelf speakers and a little integrated amp or receiver (or, for some CEO/corner office types, much more elaborate setups) could increase quality of life on the job significantly with some well reproduced music to help the day fly by…”

“At only $99.00 the Edifier R1900 is designed to compete at what is perhaps best described at the upper low end of the multimedia speaker world. It’s certainly a large step above the trashy plastic stuff, and styled to look like a semi-serious bookshelf speaker. From afar it may even look like one, but a close look reveals fit and finish befitting a bargain priced product, especially the vinyl “wood” covering the sides…”

“If the T200A is aimed at the professional/studio market it sure doesn’t look it. In contrast to the non-descript looking black boxes one often finds in studio environments, the T200A is a rather bold looking speaker. It features a triangular front baffle faced with a silver coloured aluminum plate. Two more triangular sections finished in shiny black piano lacquer slope back from the baffle and then stop about a third of the way into the speaker’s 27 cm depth. The rear section of the speaker consists of a more traditionally shaped box which is ported at rear…”

“The HT 208 is a two-way design featuring an 8″ mid/woofer (which, although the material is not specified, seems to be made of polypropylene) and a 1″ metal dome tweeter. The tweeter is mounted in what Genelec calls a Directivity Control Waveguide�. It’s basically metal plate which sets the tweeter a little deeper into the cabinet, creating a slight horn-loading effect. This not only squeezes more efficiency from the tweeter, the Genelec website notes that “the improved directivity control reduces the reflected sound at the listening position…”

“More than just a headphone jack (the Indigo actually has two 1/8″ gold plated mini jacks) the Echo Audio card is a D to A converter as well as a high quality analog output stage. It supports up to 24 bit, 96 kHz signals, uses a 100 Mhz Motorola DSP chip and has a nice, chunky analog volume control knob right on top. For those looking to use their notebook as a recorder, Echo also makes an Indigo with an analog input as well as a model aimed at DJs, featuring two independent stereo outputs.”

“Every speaker maker is excited to introduce a new flagship model, and PSB’s Paul Barton is certainly no exception, since all he and his engineering staff know about speaker design has gone into this project. The M2 is the bookshelf model in the Platinum series, which now rests above the Stratus line in the PSB pantheon. The new S10 subwoofer is the biggest and most powerful low frequency reproducer that PSB makes…”

“The C5 is a slim tower with outrigger spiked feet to support its slim profile, with a very handsome silver front baffle containing 3 custom designed and integrated drivers and a flared port at bottom. “The silver front baffle is also the woofer’s basket section, and integral part of the speaker enclosure and the speaker system. Comprised of Energy’s proprietary Spherex®, the baffle is computer designed to enhance dispersion and strengthen the cabinet structure…”

“Even with a new sleek box shape, the Signature S4 looks unmistakably Paradigm. I guess it’s the drivers, designed and made in house. The tweeter is, like all the other drivers, a totally new design especially for this top-of-the-line series. It’s a 1″ “G-PAL gold-anodized pure aluminum dome” with “dual super neodymium ring magnets. Ferro-fluid damped/cooled”, its rear wave feeds into a chamber with finned heat sinks, and the die-cast basket is shock-mounted to eliminate any vibration beyond that of the dome itself…”

“A company best known for its pro monitors, PMC (short for Professional Monitor Company) has been more recently seriously addressing the consumer market. The OB1 is the latest model in this evolution, a 3-way floorstanding design using a transmission line for bass loading with an effective length of 3.3 metres (11 feet). The drivers, according to the literature, are a low-frequency driver that is “doped [paper] with cast alloy chassis”, a “doped, 75mm fabric soft dome” midrange, and a “27mm, silk soft dome, ferrofluid cooled” tweeter…”

“I first heard this system, Totem’s first dedicated home theater system, at a CEDIA show a couple of years ago. And it wasn’t just that designer Vince Bruzzese was playing Ray Montford’s music through it that impressed me so much. The sound was clean, dynamic, spacious, and very involving musically. I don’t know whether it was a case of demand, but it wasn’t until this spring that I could coerce a review sample out of Totem…”

“When Anthem sent me their AVM-20 and PVA-7 home theater separates for review awhile back, Paradigm, Anthem’s parent company, followed up by sending a set of home theater speakers to go with them. And what did they send to complement over $6,000 worth of home theater front end? Paradigm’s entry level Cinema series, as it turned out; the five speakers and sub costing a small fraction of the gear driving them…”

“This new model from Canada’s ribbon specialist, combines an 8″ ribbon driver with a pair of 5″ Vifa mid/woofers in a moderately sized sealed box. The ribbon, which could be called a “quasi-ribbon”, is a unipolar mylar diaphragm with voice coil imprinted on it, large magnets on either side, and absorptive material behind. It provides, wide, even dispersion, something I’ll expand on in discussing the measurements, and crosses over to the lower-frequency drivers at 1000 Hz…”

“The Monitor Audio Silver 6S has its work cut out for it. Any slim, floor standing speaker with a price hovering in the sweet spot of the mid-market (around US $1000) does. While not as cluttered as the home theatre in a box segment, this is a very crowded part of the market and a speaker had better do more than look pretty if it expects a ride home from the shop…”

“So much for entry level. With a combined price approaching seven grand, not to mention 7.1 surround channels on tap, “small” was no longer part of the equation. Now I needed speakers. Lots of speakers, as it turned out. Ever since hearing that Edge Audio was one of the first adopters of the Diaural crossover developed by Kimber Kable I’d wanted to review their speakers. A trip to their website revealed two things: First, that they had changed their name to Aperion Audio, and second that they had packaged systems ranging up to 7.1 channels: Just what the doctor ordered…”

“Amphion is a speaker line from Finland that has now entered the Canadian market, with some stylish models that claim to be “phase linear throughout the whole hearing range”, with “perfectly aligned voice coils”. They also are designed for “controlled directivity for minimizing room reflections. The Athene is a D’Appolito-configured 2-way system in a tall slim cabinet using a 4″ polypropylene woofer/midrange driver pair and a titanium tweeter, which is contained within a circular lens in the front baffle which helps even and control dispersion…”

“North Carolina based Soliloquy, which has been gaining attention for impressive sound and luxurious build quality over the past several years, has recently capped off the top of their range with a new speaker. A heavyweight in the literal sense, clocking in at 130 lbs per channel, the new 6.5 is Soliloquy’s attempt at taking their high value approach significantly up-market, creating a speaker they hope will duke it out successfully with established contenders costing far more. Glancing across the spec sheet quickly reveals that the folks at Soliloquy, most notably designer Phil Jones (formerly of Acoustic Energy, Boston Acoustics and Platinum Audio), are taking their assault on high-end speakerdom most seriously indeed…”

“Klipsch has a new baby in the RB-3, their newest and smallest model in the Reference range. It’s a two-way, with their “Titanium dome compression driver tweeter with a 5″ (12.7cm) square 90 x 60 degree Tractrix Horn and one 6.5″ (16.5cm) magnetically shielded, aluminum cone woofer” (this comes from their excellent, if slow loading, website, with its socko animated GIF graphics). The woofer has a “Cerametallic” cone and cast polymer frame…”