“At the suggestion of Lenbrook Industries Consumer Product Marketing Manager, Denise Babin, I agreed to do a complete review of this one-company/two-brand home theatre system. Maybe I should have thought about it a little longer; it was a pretty big project, as it turned out: an upper echelon NAD Blu-ray player, a powerful and very versatile HT receiver, and 6 channels of PSB Image reproduction. I brooded about this while I spent the better part of a day or two unboxing and measuring all the speakers…”

“If you want a compact subwoofer, the Fathom f113 looks like a fine choice, if you’ve got a weightlifter friend: it weighs in at 115 pounds. If not self carrying (my limit is my Yamaha 9.9 outboard motor at 85 pounds), it is self calibrating, and comes with a microphone that you put at the listening position. We’ll show before and after measurements for our room below. This process is called Automatic Room Optimization, or A.R.O. More on all this later. The f113 is roughly 16.5 inches high and wide, and 19.25 inches deep…”

“The Niro Spherical Surround System, or SSS for short, is a complete surround system that supports Dolby Digital, DTS, and Dolby Pro logic II. It provides 6 channels of 30 watts rms, and complete surround reproduction from a 3-piece front-mounted minimal speaker/subwoofer array and an amplifier/controller with analog and digital inputs. It’s plug-and-play all the way, and offers a level of convenience that’s hard to resist…”

“Here we have a compact combination of four identical satellites, a centre channel, and a subwoofer, all compact and stylish, the sub remarkably small for its bass extension. According to the manual, “With their versatile design, the satellite speakers can be placed virtually anywhere on shelves or stands, or mounted on a wall using the supplied base…”

“This system from a relatively new Canadian manufacturer combines value and performance in a very special way. Stylish in a contoured cabinet, the four satellites (6 1/2″H x 5″D x 4″W) are very small and attractive in silver or black, and the centre channel is almost identical except for its 10″ width to accommodate an additional 3 1/2″ woofer/midrange. The tweeter is a 3/4″ soft dome that is slightly recessed with an anti-diffraction plate around it to optimize imaging. Mind you, there wouldn’t be all that much diffraction off a baffle this small…”

“The new v2 versions of the Reference Signature flagship models from Paradigm appear to push the limits of enclosure technology and construction, with just about everything die-cast in aluminum. The Seismic subwoofers (a small matching Signature is not yet available) also use this expensive fabrication technique…”

“After a long history of Stratus top-of-the-line loudspeakers, through the Gold and Platinum series, PSB has recently renewed its flagship line with a new name: Synchrony. I think the intention is to bring together all the elements of acoustic design and mechanics in enclosures that employ completely new approaches to the physical and aesthetic aspects of dynamic speaker construction…”

“The 8 inch long throw driver faces downward, with quite large feet setting the optimum distance for effective radiation from a sealed cabinet using floor loading. The fourth side contains the control panel and inputs and outputs. There are a pair of RCA ins, plus a single XLR connector which none of my available males would fit into; it is the combined type that also accepts 1/4″ stereo phone jacks…”

“Canadian loudspeaker manufacturer Axiom is the latest company to wade into the desktop audio fray, joining a few other established, high end audio players in the burgeoning computer audio market (see my recent review of the Dynaudio MC-15 desktop speakers). Like the recently reviewed Audioengine A2’s, the Audiobytes are very, very small (6.5 x 5.5 x 4 inches), appealing to those with limited desk space to cede to speakers…”

“This speaker system from Klipsch puts together several models from their Reference Series with similar or identical drivers, and makes for a floorstanding front pair, with compact surrounds and a matching centre channel, along with a quite compact subwoofer. They’re designed to match the new generation of flat screen video displays, including, plasma, DLP and LCD rear projection, and other variants of compact, less deep monitors…”

“The new Seismic Series of subwoofers from Paradigm is the result of years of research into high excursion driver technology and a host of other related concerns. It used to be that a sub had to be big to go deep, but that’s been less and less the case in recent years, as Sunfire has shown in leading the way in compact models. The Seismic 12 has “tremendous peak-to-peak cone excursion (over 2 inches in our SeismicTM 12)”, producing “incredibly deep bass response with equally incredible speed and power.”

“Once known best for its cabinetry, Monitor Audio has come quite a distance in recent years to become notable for the audio quality and manufacturing consistency of its loudspeakers of all sorts, without losing that leading edge in furniture fashioning. The beefing up of their engineering in recent years has resulted in some speakers that both look and measure very well…”

“Round, organic, egg-styled, baby-like, modern…there are so many things you can call KEF’s current series of home theatre loudspeakers, the main adjective being, of course, small. Available in glossy black and sleek silver, they definitely make a modernist statement. But, unlike other B-system brands affecting style out there which I shall not name for fear of incurring the wrath of the Dreaded “Mark” (that’s a Tronna joke), these actually make nice, high fidelity music and have some very credible and genuine engineering behind them…”

“We have before us two wall-mountable speakers slightly different in size (with a larger Tribe III also newly available), and a subwoofer that combines a front active 8″ driver that also moves a pair of side-mounted passive units. The Storm is quite compact, especially considering its radiating area from three of four vertical sides. Totem has some quite interesting things to say about this HT system in their literature and on the web site: “All Tribe models are designed to match any application or flat panel display…”

“I’m sure designer Paul Barton of PSB has had many visions, not to imply that he is a seer in any religious sense, or is any other way unbalanced, even in his speaker fantasies for home theatre, but here, his VisionSound is a combination of the VS400 largely line-source slim towers, and VS300 compact wall-mount speakers to match, with one of his several subwoofers, the SubSonic 5i to go along and hold up the bottom…”

“In many HT systems there’s a lot to talk about in the satellites and centre, and that’s certainly true with the other systems in this issue. And it’s not that there isn’t that much to say about them here, it’s just that the Klipsch RSW-10D subwoofer has so many talking points in its technology, call it tweak-nology, if you like, but more on this below…”

“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…”

“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…”

“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…”

“A year ago the Mammoth subwoofer dominated the cover of our first A/V Almanac, and now we have son of, a smaller powered version that attempts to put essentially the same performance into a smaller package. The essence of the original design was an 18″ electromagnetic driver in an enclosure designed to fully vent the backwave and really move air…”