I wrote up last week’s announcement of the Emergence 2.1 Speaker system, but a release can say anything. Accoustic3D is making some big claims, and it was time for them to prove their mettle.
Accoustic3D’s Joe Hayes bought a set of the 2.1 Emergence speakers — there are apparently only two hand-tooled sets in existence right now — into the Gizmodo offices for a bit of hands on listening time.
The look of the Emergence speakers is quite eye catching; the design is through Brisbane’s Infinity Designs; they also design furniture for Freedom Furniture. The idea is that they’re meant to be lifestyle speakers aimed pretty much squarely at the market that currently buys soundbars.
While these are the hand-tooled prototypes, the finished product is pretty much set in stone; it’s just a matter of firing up the factories to do so. One thing that did come up in the original story is that Accoustic3D are still seeking funding, but according to Hayes, that’s a matter of funding for international expansion; all the necessary funds for R&D and manufacturing are already in place.
The sound output from the Emergence set is certainly loud — not that loud always equals good automatically — filling the room no matter where I stood or sat. Going through a range of music, from classic blues to 80s electronica showed plenty of dynamic range and ability to reproduce music faithfully… to an extent.
So far, so good, but I can’t truly say that I was blown away by the sound, if only because it’s exceptionally hard to properly assess speakers with unfamiliar music; I didn’t know what I was getting that I wouldn’t otherwise get, in other words.
So we set up a quick Skype call to show the speaker’s ability to acoustically match the original tone of the original audio — in this case a skype call wandering through office rooms, bathrooms and corridors — and there I was truly impressed. Even in what is a truly awful listening room, the echoes of the bathrooom came through with actual depth and resonance, no matter where I placed myself. Impressive stuff, although I’d need to test them for a longer time to come to a definite conclusion. Still, at $999 they’re price competitive with many soundbar systems, and could provide a solid challenge when they go on the market in May.
Brendan
Wednesday, February 8, 2012 at 11:00 AMI was waiting to hear about these and that review is somewhat underwhelming.
jackatron
Wednesday, February 8, 2012 at 11:14 AMAgreed. I don’t really see what the difference is with these speakers to normal ones. Why are they called Accoustic3D?
Mikey
Wednesday, February 8, 2012 at 11:49 AMWhy do they look like knife blocks? Is it so they can hold knives? How many knives?
jeremy
Wednesday, February 8, 2012 at 12:00 PMThey are supposed to cancel out room effects so that the “3d” in the original recording can be heard, as I understand it. This model seems to try to do this by eliminating room “spot” effects at higher frequencies by diffusing the sound via passive quadratic residue reflectors (the bit that sticks up) – a technique many recording studios use to kill room effects (usually via a baffle that covers one wall). The “active array” versions on thier web site do this via active “phased array” tech, which they state makes this dispersion effect work at lower frequencies (seem possible based on the math). Nothing too earth shaking here in my view – a number of high-end speakers use “acoustic lens” tech – I think thier claim to fame is that their implementation requires less presision to manufacture and this thus available more cheaply.
Corteks
Wednesday, February 8, 2012 at 12:05 PMAgreeing with the last 2 comments, why are these speakers interesting besides their odd shape?
Oh and surely you had some music you were familiar with to test them with? I mean chucking some tunes on a USB stick and playing them aint that hard.
Alex Kidman
Wednesday, February 8, 2012 at 12:09 PMTo clarify; if I list something as “hands-on”, it means I’ve only had a limited amount of testing/hands-on time; it’s not intended to be taken as a full review, which is why I’ve left a conclusion open; I’d need far more testing time to come to a full conclusion. Hence “hands-on” and not “review”.
Corteks
Wednesday, February 8, 2012 at 1:26 PMFair enough eh, didn’t take note of that part of the title