Price: $23,247 (updated 3/16/15) At A Glance: Highs to die for, uncolored midrange, tight bass • Cinematic soundstage • Flawless build quality
Going for the Beryllium
Focal first became a household audio name in the 1980s. Located in Saint-Etienne, France, the company furnished driver units for a number of well-known speaker manufacturers, among them Wilson Audio Specialties. Wilson continues to use an exclusive version of a Focal inverted titanium-dome tweeter. With that exception, Focal has long since kept all of its driver production in-house for its own complete lineup of loudspeakers for the consumer, professional, automotive, and multimedia markets.
Price: $58,390 At A Glance: Huge dynamics • Enormous, transparent soundstage • Foundation shaking, boom-free, tuneful bass • Exquisite musical delicacy
Painting Pictures With Sound
To produce room-filling sound, a speaker has to move a lot of air—even in a relatively small room. Moving a lot of air, particularly in a big room, necessitates a large woofer placed in an even larger box. Refrigerator-sized speakers were commonplace in audiophiles’ living rooms back in the 1950s. When stereo arrived and required two large expanses of wood-framed grille cloth, significant others objected. Downsizing began, aided in part by Edgar Villchur’s invention of the sealed-box acoustic-suspension woofer.
If Porsche made a front-engine, water-cooled delivery van, would it still be a "real" Porsche? Car nuts could argue such a question 'til doomsday — and indeed have, beginning in 1978 when Porsche debuted its muchdebated water-cooled, front-engine Model 928. Audio buffs no doubt are ready to do likewise regarding the new Motion speaker range from MartinLogan.
Price: $4,400 At A Glance: Clean, open, natural detail • Enveloping soundstage • Outstanding fit and finish
Bringing Home the Silver
One benefit that comes from the development of flagship products like Monitor Audio’s Platinum PL300-based speaker system (HT, October 2009) is that the technology often filters down into less expensive models in the manufacturer’s line. Of course, it won’t surprise you to hear that the ribbon tweeters, sculpted cabinets, and leather trim found in that $25,000-plus Platinum set haven’t made it into the $4,400 Silver RX8 system under review here. But refinement, elegance, and most importantly, high value and superb performance are still very much part of the package.
I've seen plenty of loudspeaker "breakthroughs" in my half-a-lifetime around the audio sideshow, including speakers shaped like ears, tubas, and croquet balls.
Price: $18,790 At A Glance: Unique design with proprietary components • Seamless topto-bottom coherence • Wide dynamic contrast • See-through transparency and clarity
Defining the Possibilities
Speakers sometimes remind me of cars. The marketing campaigns are built around uniqueness, but in a larger sense, most are far more similar than different. Most cars have combustion engines, four wheels that go around, and options that are more distinguished by the jargon that describes them than by their functionality. These days, many speakers are assembled from materials that are purchased from a handful of well-known source component companies. They often have much more in common with each other than people are led to believe.
Earthquake Sound's origins are deep in the world of 12-volt (that's car stereo to you and me), where they take their bass, and their SPLs, very seriously. So while I was a bit dismayed by the size of the carefully shrink-wrapped pallet that its Titan Telesto-based speaker system arrived on - it could easily have contained a whole-house stand-by-generator - I was not particularly surprised.
Price: $2,625 At A Glance: Sweet sounding yet detailed • Wide dynamic range • Big soundstage • Limited subwoofer extension
More for Less
The new Image line of speakers from Canadian manufacturer PSB follows on the heels of two other PSB ranges: Synchrony and Imagine. While they aren’t exactly blue-light specials, the Images provide an intangible quality that today’s speaker buyer demands: value. And with the increasing costs of domestic manufacturing, value most often means overseas production. All of PSB’s new models, including the Imagines, are engineered in Canada but made in China. This is an increasingly common practice in the speaker industry.
Price: $7,250 At A Glance: Clean highs, neutral mids • Mid- and upper-bass prominent • Small but potent subwoofer
Well Centered
These days, most major speaker manufacturers know how to produce a good speaker. But only a few manage to hit all the marks simultaneously: great engineering, great sound, and fair pricing. British speaker manufacturer Bowers & Wilkins has long been a leader in that hunt.
Price: $10,095 At A Glance: Bodacious, well-controlled bass • Clean, effervescent high frequencies • Room-filling, three-dimensional spaciousness even in two-channel mode
German Brew, U.S. Bottle
Many home theater enthusiasts may be unfamiliar with the name, but among audiophiles during the 1990s, veteran German audio designer Joachim Gerhard achieved near-legend status throughout the world for his extensive and remarkably varied line of high-performance loudspeakers marketed under the Audio Physic brand.
Price: $26,000 (excluding stands, updated 3/11/15) At A Glance: Pristine highs, uncolored mids, tight bass • Great dynamic range • Subwoofer lacks wallop in the deepest, loudest bass
Better Than Golden
Founded in 1972, U.K.-based Monitor Audio has long produced speakers that offer good value. Until recently, it topped out at $4,500 per pair for the Gold Signature model. So when I heard about the new Platinum range, priced at $10,000 per pair for just the front left and right flagship PL300, it came as a surprise.
Ever since its launch in 1996, Revel has pursued a no-compromise approach to speaker design and manufacturing. Of course, it doesn't hurt that the brand is part of megaconglomerate Harman International, which boasts some of the best speaker-development facilities in the world. For example, Revel engineers have access to multiple anechoic chambers and Harman's Multichannel Listening Lab that allows blind-listening tests, shuffling several speakers around for each test run so the effect of their positions in the room is randomized and thus prevented from affecting the results.
Price: $45,993 (reviewed with B15a subwoofer, which has been discontinued)
At A Glance: Seductively powerful bass, with or without the sub • Complex midrange timbre • Depth and imaging maestro • What movie theaters should sound like
The Finest Money Can Build
I first heard Revel speakers many years ago at CES when they burst on the scene. The curiously modest-looking original Gem speakers were sitting behind their designer Kevin Voecks as he introduced them. Then he fired up an exquisitely calibrated 9-inch CRT projector. I remember this as the exact moment when I decided, by hook or by crook, there would be a front projector in my house someday. Such is the influence of great sound accompanying good video. All of this introduction is my way of saying that the Revel system here is once again best of show in my book.
Price: $5,690 (with SubSeries 300 subwoofer substituted for discontinued SubSeries 6i, updated 3/10/15) At A Glance: Open, clean, and detailed • Expansive, cinematic sound • High value
Imagine: Airy Soundscapes
When deciding whether or not to set product priority for evaluation, every reviewer (consciously or unconsciously) applies a filter based on his or her previous experience with that manufacturer. Of course, there are always breakthrough products that demand to be covered and new companies that deserve to be discovered. But given the options available in the speaker world—including the new and the fascinating but rarely the revolutionary—you look first to those that have proved that they can make a great product.
Price: $6,044 At A Glance: Elegant, understated styling • Sweet yet detailed sound • Excellent dialogue intelligibility • Coherent three-dimensional picture • High SPLs without strain
Leather-Clad Pleasure Toy
What’s in a name? If a 1960s-era General Motors marketing consultant had suggested a car brand-named Toyota, he’d have been laughed out of the room and probably lost his job. “Are you crazy, man? No one’s gonna buy a car with toy in the name!” No one at GM is laughing at Toyota today. The car brand was named for its founder, Kiichiro Toyoda, so the company had a reason to toy around with the designation.