BOOKSHELF SPEAKER REVIEWS

Excite X14 Speaker System
Performance
Build Qaulity
Value

Sub 250 II Subwoofer
Performance
Features
Build Quality
Value

AT A GLANCE
Plus
Generous soundfield
Surprisingly strong bass
Gorgeous veneers
Minus
Expensive for small speakers

THE VERDICT
Dynaudio’s X14, part of the revised Excite line, earns its high-end price tag with sweet build quality and high performance, including a bottom end that is amazingly substantial for a small speaker.

The high end exists in the eye of the beholder. To some folks, a pair of mini-monitors selling for $1,500—or a 5.1-channel system at $5,100—may seem steeply priced. In fact, if you want lower-priced alternatives, you’ll find plenty among our Top Picks. But there always will be another kind of consumer who is fussy about what he or she brings into the living room. Vinyl-wrapped boxes won’t cut it; they want furniture-grade wood veneer. In the same discriminating spirit, the Danish manufacturer Dynaudio is equally fussy about materials, including drivers that the company designs and makes itself. In the recently overhauled Excite line, the result is a speaker that exceeds already high expectations in both appearance and sound. The X14 monitor and X24 center are my favorite kind of small speaker: the kind that sounds bigger than it looks.

As consumer electronics technologies continue to morph into ever more complex forms, convergence is key. Elan Home Systems was founded in 1989 in Lexington, Kentucky, and convergence is their raison d'tre. In the past, they have brought together wholehouse automation and touchpanel control of music, phones, lighting, intercoms, and TV functions. More recently, they acquired a high-end home theater electronics company, Sunfire. Four years ago, Elan jumped into the speaker business with a line of highly regarded in-walls. This brings us to Elan's new line of converging speakers, the aptly named TheaterPoint series.

Performance
Build Quality
Value

Are you one of those people who can’t resist a supermarket circular? Do you trawl the Internet looking for coupon codes that can be pasted into online purchases? Loudspeaker pricing doesn’t often indulge us with the same feeling of satisfaction that we get from buying a jumbo jar of marinara sauce or a cashmere scarf at an extremely low price. But while researching this review last December, I couldn’t help noting that Emotiva’s factory-direct speakers offered some wiggle room to the timely shopper. The XRC-5.2 LCR speaker normally sold for $299/each—not a bad price to begin with—but was momentarily going for an introductory price of $239/each.

Building a Better Satellite

Energy has always taken satellite/subwoofer sets seriously. The Canadian speaker brand, recently acquired by American-owned Klipsch, got into the sat/sub game early with the now legendary Take Five package. As successive Take products became steady bestsellers and proceeded through multiple generations, Energy established itself as a major name in sats and subs. It also helped turn the sat/sub set into a respectable product category. This especially applies to décor-conscious households that like to have surround sound but balk at the prospect of five to seven bulky speakers hogging a room.

At about the same time the Spice Girls hit number three on the Billboard charts with "Say You'll Be There" in 1997, Energy Speaker Systems was striking gold of their own with a set of tiny home theater speakers called Take 5.

In these pages, you’ll see small speakers referred to as monitors, stand-mounts, or—if they’re small enough—satellites. But rarely as bookshelf speakers. As I’ve often said, a bookshelf is a terrible place for a speaker. Unless it’s designed specifically for in- or on-wall use, a speaker belongs a few feet out from the wall to minimize undesirable acoustic interaction with the wall. So don’t refer to the Epos M12i as a bookshelf speaker. They’d never forgive you for it. They have an artistic sensibility, and that extends to the M8i center-channel speaker and M SUB subwoofer.

Slowly but surely (and sadly, in many ways), we've become an overly centric society. Think about it for a minute: Companies (and entire industries, for that matter) are more centralized now than they've been since the days of the robber barons. And our government—let's not kid ourselves, friends: This ain't exactly Cold War Soviet Union, but it's not the sprawling, decentralized (and power-limited) federal structure that the Founding Fathers envisioned, either. Apparently, states' rights went out of fashion with the stagecoach and the stovepipe hat. Even from a cultural standpoint, our focus seems to have shifted dramatically toward the glorification of the individual over the good of the whole. But centralization certainly has its good points, as well (sure, it's an odd segue, but hopefully I got your attention). One need look no further than one's home theater system—that bountiful refuge from the madness of unchecked bureaucracies, hostile corporate takeovers, and me-me-me self-indulgence—to realize that a little centralization can go a long way in enhancing your movie-watching experience.