tower speakers

It comes up again and again: "Steve, please recommend a great speaker." Good question, but there are a lot of factors to consider before coming up with a definitive answer. A lot depends on what you're looking for and how you define "great." Nailing down the price is the first step, but if there's one thing I've learned about audiophiles, it's that taste always plays a big part in evaluating sound quality. That's why, in my reviews, I describe how a speaker sounds with different kinds of music.

There's no … Read more

Wharfedale is an 80-year-old speaker company, not to mention one of the oldest names in British audio. They make high-end and affordable speakers with prices starting at around $300 a pair. I recently checked out the Wharfedale Diamond 10.5 towers; their curvy cabinets cut a nice figure in the sound room at the In Living Stereo store in NYC. I listened to a few LPs on the stunning new Rega RP8 turntable. The tower speakers sell for $950 a pair.

The Diamond 10.5 is a three-way design with a 6.5-inch woofer, a 2-inch dome midrange, and a … Read more

I don't know how I missed Kudos Audio before, but the company has been in business for more than 20 years. When I heard Kudos' little X2 speaker at Sound by Singer in NYC I knew it was a serious high-end contender, but one that can easily fit in the most cramped apartments. Andrew Singer knows his market, and even fairly wealthy New Yorkers live in small spaces. The X2 is a mere 31 inches high, unusually petite for a tower speaker.

Though the speakers are made in England, the X2's 6-inch woofer and 1-inch tweeter are manufactured … Read more

Live concerts are louder than ever, but home audio systems that sound great turned up loud are increasingly rare. If you're into loud music and lucky enough to live in a place where maximum volume won't get you evicted or arrested, or earn the wrath of neighbors, treat yourself to a set of big speakers.

Sure, small satellite speakers with a powerful subwoofer can sound great, but not in the same league as large speakers. Big systems really do have huge performance advantages over even the best small ones. If you've got the space to accommodate a pair of Klipsch Reference RF-7 II speakers, they deserve an audition. The only downside to listening to the RF-7 IIs is you'll never be satisfied with a Bluetooth speaker ever again.… Read more

This one's for the kiddies, tweens, or anybody who wants to go clubbing at home.

Yes, iHome's upcoming iP76 LED Color Changing Speaker Tower with Bluetooth has 16 multicolor LED clusters that do all kinds of fun stuff. That's right, this pedestal-style iPhone/iPod speaker dock can be customized to feature your favorite color and includes such options as color fade, pulse to music, and strobe effect for the "ultimate light show."

Time to fire up Pink Floyd. I mean Bieber.

Oh, and the tower also charges your iPod or iPhone and has a component … Read more

Definitive Technology's BP-8060ST ($999 each) is a big, but not too big tower speaker. A little more than 44 inches tall and just slightly over 5 inches wide, it doesn't dominate a room, until you listen. The BP-8060ST's gravitas and poise, even when cranked up loud, are truly impressive.

The market trend to smaller and smaller speakers gets me down. Yes, little speakers can sound fine--as long as you don't compare them to something more substantial, like the BP-8060ST. If you've never heard what a big speaker can do, you'll never notice how little speakers miniaturize the scale of the music or home theater experience. Right, size still matters.

The BP-8060ST is a bipolar design, meaning it projects sound forward and off the wall behind the speaker. The rear midrange and tweeter's output is exactly the same timbre (tonal balance) as the front's dual 4.5-inch midrange/1-inch tweeter speaker array (check out the picture to get a better idea of what this looks like). The bipolar radiation pattern produces a bigger, more spacious sound field than a conventional front-firing speaker would.

The built-in 300-watt power amplifier drives a 10-inch subwoofer, and the woofer's bass output is augmented with a pair of 10-inch bass radiators. No wonder this svelte speaker sounds so well endowed.

So the BP-8060ST eliminates the need for a separate subwoofer, and the advantages of using two subwoofers in the room instead of just one go beyond more bass output: the two speakers' bass is more evenly distributed throughout the room than a single sub's would be. Of course, the blend between the BP-8060ST's sub and its midrange drivers are part of the design, but it's easy to tweak the bass balance to taste with the subwoofer volume control on the speaker's rear panel. … Read more

Back in the days before home theater, only the most devoted bass fanatics used subwoofers. It's not that people didn't like bass, just that they bought speakers large enough to satisfy their bass cravings. Then again, the bass response required to play music isn't as demanding as movie soundtracks, so even fairly small speakers with 4- or 5-inch woofers could produce satisfying bass.

The best of today's small- to medium-size speakers produce much better-sounding bass than speakers did 10 years ago, so if you're primarily interested in listening to music and your speakers have 4-inch … Read more

As we continue this week's summertime outdoor entertainment theme, today we turn our attention to the ever-popular waterproof MP3 speaker. Yes, we've featured poolside models before, but for some reason they've often resembled ice buckets.

Net Japan's waterproof "Juke Tower MP3 Speaker," however, is as sleek and small as a shampoo bottle (see photo) at just over 7 inches tall--which GeekSugar says makes it perfectly manageable for the shower as well as the patio. The $129 wireless speaker, which stores up to 2GB of tunes on a detachable USB drive, runs on three AA … Read more