Loudspeakers

Quadral is not a UK household name. The German brand has been in business for nearly 40 years, but has only ever intermittently appeared in this country. Now the manufacturer is making a serious attempt on the UK market with its full range of products, of which the Chromium range is the second most pricey in the sizeable lineup. Tested here is a package comprising the £1,160 Chromium 50 floorstanders, £650 Chromium 30 standmounts, £410 Chromium 10 centre and £475 88DV sub. All parts are available separately.

Compact bookshelf speakers are all well and good if you don’t have much space, but for bigger, bolder home cinema thrills you’ve no choice but to make room for a decent set of floorstanders.

The 800 Series from Bowers & Wilkins has for a long time been the weapon of utter perfection and choice for some of the world’s most demanding sound engineers – because monitoring what exactly you are making in a recording studio is crucial. You want utter fidelity, not a brash and boastful presentation that makes everything sound fabulous in the studio, but then leaves it all a bit damp and frayed around the edges when not heard on such flattering speakers.

German loudspeaker brand Canton was one heck of a startup, having hit the deck running back in 1972, with 35 folks all busily making what they knew to be terribly posh speakers. Meanwhile, Acoustic Energy, as I recall, started with just three blokes.

I was once lucky enough to go to Sweden to make a TV show about tractor pulling. Blokes go along, eat smoked eels, get drunk with true determination, then hoot and holler while mad tractors fling mud around, and some announcer shouts: ‘Fuuuull Puuuull!'

US brand EMP Tek was founded as recently as 2007, but was set up by audio boffins with over 30 years’ experience, designing speakers for esteemed names such as ParaSound, McIntosh and JBL. They’ve been brought to the UK by distributor Aldous Systems, which has set the ball rolling with the Impression series. Although this range includes four off-the-peg packages, this 7.1-channel system has been pieced together from the individual components. The tower speakers used for the front and rear channels are the E55Ti, a slightly taller version of the E5Ti towers, but offering greater power handling than their shorter siblings.

The popularity of this type of compact speaker package has mostly been driven by the switch from CRTs to flatscreen TVs.