Audiophilepure

More speaker makers are introducing powered speakers and I think that is a great thing. It’s fun to review these products and read up on their design philosophies to see how each one sets out to produce a versatile and sonically superior product. The Totem KIN Play Tower Speakers met my expectations and make me want to explore some of their higher-end speakers, like the Element Metal V2 or Wind. Some of these come in a gloss red or real wood veneers…yeah, baby! If you are in the market for good-sounding towers that are easy to install, easy to move, and don’t call a lot of attention to themselves, place the Totem KIN Play Tower Speakers on your shortlist.

https://www.hifinews.com/content/goldenear-brx-loudspeaker

Its styling might not suit all listening rooms, but the final GoldenEar loudspeaker design from Sandy Gross is a triumph. Low-end power and poise, courtesy of its ABRs, is a standout trait, and the BRX doesn’t overdo it at the expense of instrumental and vocal presence, nor fall short when the volume is set high. When compact speakers can be this good, you might wonder why slender floorstanders even exist!

Bottom line: The LRS+ is a big improvement over the original LRS. It adds enough color, power, detail, and extension in the midbass and smoothness and coherence in the upper mids and lower treble to make it far more of a true full-range contender than its predecessor. Though you can do better in the Maggie line for about three times the money (the MG1.7i), you’re not going to get the same condo-friendly form factor from the 1.7, which is a foot and a half taller and a half foot wider than the Plus. In cone speakers, you can find much smaller boxes at this price point and, for a bit more money, some self-powered models, but not a one of them that I’ve heard comes as close to sounding like the real thing as this baby Maggie. For folks who are new to the high end or have small listening spaces or are working with limited budgets or just want a second high-fidelity system in a different spot for music or TV, I can think of no better choice for the dollar, particularly if you treasure the sound of acoustic instruments. Its limitations notwithstanding, this is a great little loudspeaker and a sure-fire nominee for one of TAS’ 2022 Product of the Year Awards. 

I suspect that these JBLs had not been given much of a run-in prior to delivery because the results they produced improved markedly over the weeks that they were in the system. I played a lot of music through a variety of sources and amplifiers and came to the conclusion that they are really rather good, their high sensitivity is a definite bonus but ultimately the HDI-3800s are a lot more sophisticated than they look. This combined with their competitive pricing makes them look like rather good value if you have the space.

https://www.soundandvision.com/content/kef-lsx-ii-wireless-speaker-system-review

Otherwise, day-to-day operation of the LSX II speaker system was a snap, whether streaming from the KEF Connect app or directly from the “native” Qobuz or Tidal apps on my iPad mini. (Though I confess this can get a bit confusing—which app is this, anyway?) Most users will be perfectly happy using KEF’s app. It has all of the expected music-streaming features—playlists, “favorites,” and the like—and is about as simple and intuitive as one can expect in this decidedly un-simple age. That said, I must observe that there are no physical controls on the LSX II speakers themselves apart from the pairing and reset buttons on the rear of the main speaker. So if the KEF remote—which provides volume, input, and play/pause/skip controls—is lost in the sofa cushions and your phone or tablet was forgotten at the office…

Lastly, the Connect app lacks any tone controls, per se. If you choose the “Expert” setup mode you can effectively adjust treble, midrange, and bass by a few dB each, but you must first dig deep into the 104-page PDF owner’s manual to learn how these correlate to “Desk Mode,” “Wall Mode,” treble Trim, and Bass Extension; this is probably done by design to discourage ham-thumbed users from screwing up the LSX II’s carefully created native balance.

https://www.soundstageultra.com/index.php/equipment-menu/1135-atc-scm50-passive-active-loudspeaker

This pair of ATC SCM50s was quite simply one of the most breathtakingly revealing sets of loudspeakers I have ever heard. According to my definition of what constitutes high-end sound, these loudspeakers utterly excelled across all parameters, and I believe this is no coincidence. The SCM50 was designed from the outset as a recording engineer’s scalpel; its task was to reveal every unwanted creak of a chair or surplus open microphone channel, and to permit forensic analysis of a singer’s performance or technique. In Making Rumours, Caillat describes how they chose which microphone to use for Nicks’s lead vocals on “Dreams.” He set up around eight top-class vocal microphones on a long line of booms in the live room of the Record Plant studio in Sausalito, California, and asked her to sing into each one in turn. It was quickly apparent to both of them that the Sennheiser 441 best suited Nicks’s voice, and it became her microphone of choice. It’s the incredible transparency and openness of studio monitors that allows such differences to be discerned, and I believe it is the combination of ATC’s studio heritage and superlative engineering that makes the SCM50 such an exceptional loudspeaker for the home.