Bookshelf Speaker Reviews

From People Who Do It Right

Whenever the depravity of the human race plunges me into despair, I think of Paris. Then I feel better.

Performance
Value
Build Quality

HT Roots Matter

To Atlantic Technology, home theater is not a necessary evil. This is not a loudspeaker company that specializes in two-channel audio and tosses out a few centers and subs as an afterthought. The brand has been firmly rooted in home theater from day one. The company cares about dialogue clarity, panning, surround effects, and bass dynamics. The first two alone are worth a thousand-word essay: You want to catch every word, but you also want pans to be seamless across the three front channels. How do you go about reconciling those two requirements? You do a lot of listening and experimenting. After about a third of a century, Atlantic Tech has gotten pretty good at it.

Performance
Value
Build Quality

Lord of the Ring

Sometimes a single moment of greatness defines a person or a company, even if other moments of greatness follow. For Judy Garland, it was “Over the Rainbow” in The Wizard of Oz. For Acoustic Energy, a British loudspeaker brand, it was the AE1. The monitor took recording studios by storm when it made its debut in 1988, and it soon became a favorite among consumer-level audiophiles as well.

In a Reflective Mood

It is rare for a carton to put a smile on my face. A lot of cartons trample through my modest living and working space. They are a necessary evil in my work as a reviewer that’s redeemed only by their contents. But the carton that housed the Mirage MX satellite/subwoofer set made me grin when I picked it up in my doorway. It weighed all of 20 pounds, portending a review process without physical rigors. I deposited it in my bedroom along with the other treasures that live there—my books, my LPs, my bags of speaker cable, my collection of styrofoam popcorn and plastic bubble packing, not to mention my bed—and forgot about it until the time came for its debut in the listening room.

Stars and Bars and L-C-R

Two bars walk into a guy. Sorry to be so gender-specific, but that’s generally how these jokes begin. One bar says, “I’ve got 5.1 channels, including fake surround, to add to the grandeur of your studio apartment.” The other bar says, “I’ve got the front three channels of good, honest sound to accompany the luster of your flat-panel TV.” What does the guy say? Frankly, I haven’t got the slightest idea. The interesting thing is that he has a choice.

Ringin’ the Bell Curve

The Vision and Sound speakers from Boston Acoustics were in my listening room when a friend visited. He works for a competing manufacturer and has spent time on the retail floor. He said, candidly and emphatically, “Boston Acoustics has never made a bad speaker.”

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.