Loudspeakers

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.

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.

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.

At first glance, the Minx looks no more remarkable than the speakers you get with an all-in-one home cinema system made by various Korean or Japanese mass market brands. But we need to look West rather than East in seeking a comparison: think Bose rather than Sony or LG and you get the idea.

Never ever underestimate the ignorance of an AV journalist. We all like to think that we know our stuff, but, truthfully, we’re all running to keep up with the new, all the time. You see, my knowledge of the German speaker market, and how big any one player was within it, has always been pretty minimal. While I knew about the Canton speaker brand, I still find a sardonic chuckle in the fact that it was another German company’s PR firm over here who told me about the sheer size of Canton.

The idea behind Canton’s your_Duo product is simple – the current range of one-box iPod docks just aren’t doing justice to our MP3 collections. By ‘splitting’ the dock into two separate cabinets, you can enjoy real stereo audio.