Loudspeakers

One glorious Easter some years back, I got a knock at the door and a parcel was delivered. It was a cool bit of packaging, with the shattered remains of what had once been a chocolate Easter egg, in the shape of KEF’s latest ‘egg’ speaker, inside. As a PR stunt, it had failed utterly. Yet I still ate the chocolate, and my interest was tickled enough to make sure I tracked the KEF system down at the next show I went to.

French manufacturer Cabasse has been producing the Eole for some years and this is the latest revision. £1,000 buys you a single large box containing five identical satellites, a Santorin subwoofer and, handily, a pair of floorstands and 40m of speaker cable.

Acoustic Energy is best known for helping start the high-end standmount market with the original AE1, but it's been an equally potent force in multichannel systems over the years as well. The Neo Compact package I reviewed last year was an inspired pairing of three pairs of the Compact bookshelf speaker and a Neo subwoofer. Certainly, it was a bit of a bargain.

In the world of high-end hi-fi, loudspeakers are routinely objects of reverence and desire, no more so than KEF's recent Blade. Styled like a shark's fin and packing exquisite technology, it's the kind of speaker to make grown men weep.

I believe Monitor Audio's Mass system is destined to be a good seller. Sub/sat packages in general are more likely to shift units than larger, costlier arrays, and this has 
a lot going for it. First, it's from a respected brand that, over the years, has rarely put a foot wrong. Secondly, it's got a neat style thing going on. Thirdly, the total £800 ticket is just the right side of £1,000 (where some people start to sweat when buying speakers), but comfortably high enough to entice audio snobs who won't entertain the idea of a £400 or £500 setup. That it offers a delightful multichannel performance is the icing on 
the cake.

Cabasse is one of the elder statesmen of the French audio industry. Since its founding in 1950 it has gone on to become France’s largest speaker manufacturer and produces some extremely impressive speakers. It's perhaps best known for the extraordinary La Sphere flagship, which manages to combine some seriously clever technology with looks that make most science-fiction props appear a little conservative.

From the country that brought us mythical beasts like the Minotaur comes a speaker system that’s something of a titan itself. Athens-based Crystal Acoustics has unleashed the T2-5.2-UL, a THX Ultra2-certified speaker system with floorstanding fronts, dipole rears and not one but two subwoofers. And all for under £2,000.