Introduction The Due is the latest creation from Gallo Acoustics, a company famous for making physically round AV speakers. The $599 Due’s name is derived from the fact that the speaker contains two spherical units, rather than the single sphere of past Gallo designs. The two spheres are joined in the middle by a cylindrical tweeter assembly that is unique to Gallo, resulting in a very stylish “un-speakerlike” speaker. Gallo paired the Due with their $750 MPS-150 woofer for low frequency reinforcement. This woofer is also very unconventional in design. The design features two short cylinders, one housing the 10-inch driver, the other containing a 240-watt amplifier and related electronics. The Dues are refreshingly small, measuring 11 inches tall, five inches wide and five inches deep. The Dues come with modernistic perforated steel grilles that can easily be removed. Removing the grilles leaves the speakers almost an inch thinner and reveals their unique dual spherical shape, ...

Introduction The Due is the latest creation from Gallo Acoustics, a company famous for making physically round AV speakers. The $599 Due’s name is derived from the fact that the speaker contains two spherical units, rather than the single sphere of past Gallo designs. The two spheres are joined in the middle by a cylindrical tweeter assembly that is unique to Gallo, resulting in a very stylish “un-speakerlike” speaker. Gallo paired the Due with their $750 MPS-150 woofer for low frequency reinforcement. This woofer is also very unconventional in design. The design features two short cylinders, one housing the 10-inch driver, the other containing a 240-watt amplifier and related electronics. The Dues are refreshingly small, measuring 11 inches tall, five inches wide and five inches deep. The Dues come with modernistic perforated steel grilles that can easily be removed. Removing the grilles leaves the speakers almost an inch thinner and reveals their unique dual spherical shape, ...

Introduction It was only a few years ago that Revel embarked on its journey to design and develop some of the world's most accurate and musically satisfying loudspeakers. The company was established in 1996 through a collaboration consisting of Harman Kardon founder Dr. Sidney Harman, Sandy Berlin of Madrigal, and well-regarded speaker designer Kevin Voecks. From the outset, the design philosophy of the Revel team was to incorporate the highest level of engineering knowledge, fused with sound scientific principles in conjunction with real-world listening evaluations. Using these objectives, Revel created the founding benchmarks for developing their products. Though Revel itself is a relatively small company, its ability to exploit the enormous resources of Harman International gives them unparalleled ability to achieve their design goals. Their debut product, the Ultima Gem, drew critical acclaim for both its musical attributes and unique styling. Following the Gem’s release, Revel continued with various new loudspeakers under the Ultima series banner, all ...

Introduction Sonance, long known as a dominant figure in the world of in-wall speakers, is the newest player in market of small and affordable subwoofers. The Sonance Son of Sub (SOS) is the smallest subwoofer in the Sonance line. It’s a self-powered sub with a 75-watt RMS amplifier and a 10-inch video shielded driver. This free-standing subwoofer measures 14 inches wide, 14 inches high, 13.5 inches deep and weighs 45 pounds. The Son of a Sub’s frequency response is listed as 35 Hz to 250 Hz. It has most of the standard features that you might expect from a powered subwoofer, such as speaker and line level inputs, speaker level outputs, crossover controls, a phase switch and an auto-on feature built into the amplifier. A neat auto-on feature automatically turns the amp on when a signal is present, and turns the amplifier off when no signal has been present for an extended period of ...

Introduction Many home theater enthusiasts, myself included, often find themselves daydreaming about flagship processors, gargantuan amplifiers (the types that are capable of arc welding), cost-no-object speaker systems, and subwoofers that can register on the Richter scale. Unfortunately, many of these products can have prices in the stratosphere, at times approaching five digits or more for each component. The same enthusiast may not see the appeal in the necessity of taking out a second home mortgage in order to acquire the components for assembling such a “state of the art” system. Fortunately, there are many manufacturers on the market today whose business philosophy is to provide a high degree of performance without the soaring prices that these mega-systems often command. In terms of speakers, several Canadian companies have made great use of the National Research Council (NRC) laboratories to design great-performing speakers at very reasonable cost. For those who are unaware of the NRC, it is the ...