Twin aluminum cylinders belt out a huge sound.
(Credit: Steve Guttenberg)The Rocky Mountain Audio Fest 2009, held last week in Denver, showcased the best and brightest in high-end audio gear.
Hundreds of high-end manufacturers, from tiny one-person operations all the way up to industry giants like JBL were on hand. RMAF has a very different vibe than the Consumer Electronics Show held in Las Vegas every January--RMAF is a more grassroots affair.
I never heard of RAAL, a company based in Serbia, but its small (I'm guessing 7-inch-tall) speakers, produced a huge, room-filling sound. The speakers totally disappeared as sound sources.
The speaker uses twin aluminum cylinders, with 4-inch drivers firing up and down and a special "ribbon tweeter" sandwiched between the two cylinders, firing front and rear. Each speaker has its own, separate woofer, housed in another tube with 6-inch woofers at each end.
It's a fully powered system; just hook up a source such as a CD player and you're good to go. Price and availability weren't announced, but the company is hoping the complete system will cost around $4,000.
TAD speakers and Bel Canto electronics sang ever so sweetly together.
(Credit: Steve Guttenberg)TAD (a division of Pioneer Electronics) had the best sound I heard at RMAF. Their newly revised Reference One speaker ($60,000 per pair) was far from the most expensive speaker in Denver, but the 330-pound towers produced the most vivid, clear, and transparent sound. Bass drums were tight, pitch-perfect; stereo imaging was, again, remarkably precise and three-dimensional. Vocalists virtually materialized between the two Reference Ones.
Some of that amazing sound quality has to be attributed to the Bel Canto electronics that TAD was using. The compact e.One Series components use just a tiny fraction of the AC power consumed by their hotter running, bigger and heftier competition. Bel Canto does things differently.
... Read MoreAs a reviewer I get to hear lots of speakers, and I immediately forget most of them.
It's not that they're bad, just unexceptional. Here's a Top 10 list and photo gallery of the very best-sounding speakers I've heard for less than $3,500 per pair. The brands may be unfamiliar, but each speaker is a stand-out winner. I will at some point do a Top 10 without price constraints. For now I want to highlight more affordable speakers that you can buy new.
Anthony Gallo Acoustics never made box speakers.
No, Gallo speakers, from the company's earliest days in 1994, were always designed around spherical cabinets. Yes, others have followed suit, but Gallo was the first to perfect round sound.
At this year's Consumer Electronics Show, which opens Thursday in Las Vegas, Gallo will premiere its latest speaker: the double-balled Strada ($1,000 MSRP each). Measuring a compact 6.5 inches tall by 12.5 inches wide by 5.5 inches deep, the Strada is jam-packed with unique technology.
Round speakers are no cosmetic gimmick; round speakers get around the inherent structural and acoustic problems of boxes, which, to a greater or lesser degree, always adversely affect the speakers' sound. Boxes tend to "sing along" with the drivers, smearing the sound. Gallo's hardened-steel balls are so incredibly rigid that all you hear is the sound of the Stradas' woofer and tweeter.
The Strada: no cosmic gimmick.
(Credit: Anthony Gallo Acoustics)The thing is, small speaker cabinets tend to severely limit bass power and low-frequency oomph. So sure, the Strada would suffer from undernourished bass if it weren't endowed with Gallo's patented S2 Technology. Here's how it works: the balls are packed with polyolefin flakes (they look like snow flakes) that absorb significantly more energy than commonly used wool or synthetic stuffing materials.
The polyolefin flakes' denser-than-air mass also replicates the volume of a much larger enclosure, which allows the Strada's woofers to produce deeper bass, and the flakes minimize performance-degrading reflections within the speaker itself. The Strada makes enough bass on its own that there's no need to add a subwoofer for stereo applications, Gallo claims.
Nestled between the Strada spheres you'll find the latest update of Gallo's proprietary CDT 3 tweeter. Instead of the usual dome tweeter, Gallo's tweeter is a silver-coated cylinder boasting vastly greater radiating area than conventional tweeters. Gallo's tweeter forgoes most of the moving mass elements common to dome tweeters--a voice coil, coil-former, or a suspension--and maybe that's why it produces high-frequency response extending all the way up to 50 kilohertz (dome tweeters barely make it past 20KHz). The tweeter is another reason Gallos sound better than conventional speakers.
The TR-3 subwoofer may be tiny, but it gets the job done in style.
(Credit: Anthony Gallo Acoustics)The company is also introducing a matching subwoofer, the TR-3 ($984 MSRP). It nixes the usual boring cube shape in favor of a cylinder. It's a little thing--just 10.75 inches tall by 12 inches wide by 13.5 inches deep--but since it also uses S2 Technology it delivers deeper and more powerful bass than other minisubs.
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