Audioholics 6T-DB Hybrid XD Review and Consumer Excellence Award!

We just got a great review from the folks over at Audioholics for our 6T-DB Hybrid XD system that we are pretty excited about.  Here's a quote from their conclusion:

"The bottom line is that the Aperion Audio Intimus 6T-DB Hybrid XD system is one of those systems you'll get hooked on quickly. There's simply no way to miss how well they mesh together into a cohesive system and how well they handle lots of output without compressing the top end or losing control over the bottom frequencies."

Read the whole review here.

Not only that, but the 6T has won their Consumer Excellence Award for Best Floorstanding Speaker of 2008, wow!

Check out all the winners here.

6T's Win Playback Recommended Award

By: John Wanderscheid

The June issue of Playback is out and we are proud to announce that the 6T's won a recommended award over the likes of Dynaudio, Paradigm & PSB. Here is an excerpt from the review...

"The 6T sounds big; there's a confidence to the sound that was apparent from the get-go. The low end is clear in ways few speakers in this price class can match. It's not so much that the 6T goes deeper, but its control and definition are exceptional. Imaging is another strength-the 6T can unfurl vast holographic recreations of the original recording venue."

- Playback Magazine, June 2008

Read the complete review here.

A great 633-T review from Audio Video Revolution

by John Wanderscheid

Audio Video Revolution recently published a great review on our 633 towers. Check out what Andrew Robinson had to say about these amazing speakers...

"The 633-T Tower Loudspeakers from Aperion Audio are amazing overachievers when it comes to both music and movies, and they become all the more impressive when you consider that they can be had for less than a grand for the pair. Don’t believe me: Aperion will let you try them out in your own home for 30 days, risk-free. Don’t like ‘em, then send ‘em back, but I doubt you will. While not the most technical of speakers, in that they won’t go through your music collection with a microscope, they are a blast to listen to. They are fairly forgiving of source material and components, always allowing for the essence of the music or film to come through, and where they falter, they try to do so politely so as not to ruin your overall experience. The 633-Ts are also amongst the easiest speakers I’ve ever lived with day to day, as they don’t need to be coddled a quarter of an inch at a time in order to sound their best. They are, for lack of a better word, complete. If someone were to ask me, and I do get asked a lot, “Hey, I’m looking for speakers that sound good, no, better than good, that aren’t going to cost me a paycheck and a half that I can just listen to and enjoy. What should I buy?” My answer: try Aperion." -- Andrew Robinson, AVREV.com, September 2007

Click here to read the entire review.

632's Win Enjoy the Music Blue Note Award

by John Wanderscheid

he Aperion 632's have just recently received the highest honor from enjoythemusic.com.  They won the Blue Note Award as one of the best audiophile products of 2007.

Here's an explanation about the award from the enjoythemusic.com Web site. "Our Best Of 2007 Blue Note Award recipients have been carefully chosen after much debate and consideration. It is a very rare occurrence that we bestow such accolades towards a products. While there are many great pieces of equipment now available in the marketplace, this list is compiled from products we reviewed within the past 12 months of what we found to merit extra special attention." — enjoythemusic.com

Scott Faller said it best in his summary of the 632's... "These are just fun little speakers. If you are an audiophile on a budget, you owe it to yourself to give the Aperion line of loudspeakers a try. They are very solid performers with a deep, clean presentation. They give you that down front presentation without having that 'in your face' character and fatiguing sound that so many inexpensive monitors do. The Aperion's perform equally well on aggressive music or something more laid back. Toss in a 30-day in home, risk free audition and these are a no brainer." — Scott Faller

Want more? Check out the complete review.

Sound & Vision Certified & Recommended

by John Wanderscheid

We are excited to announce that Sound and Vision Magazine recently put our 633 Cinema XD System through a cinematic and musical obstacle-course and it came out shining by winning the coveted "Certified & Recommended" Award.

Here's a note about the award from the publisher: Sound & Vision’s reviews and test reports are the most authoritative in the industry. Occasionally products are designated to be “Certified & Recommended” when they receive glowing reviews based these stringent tests. Ultimately, the Sound & Vision Certified and Recommended logo tells consumers that a product has stood out among the many our editors test all year, and that they can purchase the product with confidence.

Here's a review summary:

"Aperion makes buying online about as attractive as anyone could make it, down to a 30-day money-back guarantee. But in the end, it's the sound that counts. For movie playback, I give this Aperion Intimus 6 Series home theater speaker system a big thumbs-up: These speakers can really sizzle, kick, and punch on demanding soundtracks. And I was quite pleased with the system's prowess with music, though the towers' somewhat pulled-back, relaxed midrange prevented me from falling completely in love. Still, quibbles aside, Aperion can't be faulted here for delivering very good sound and truly excellent value."

Read the entire review online!

Feel the Stereophile Love

by Alex Pasco

The April issue of Stereophile magazine features a great review of our new 533-T tower speaker. The review itself contains enough information to satisfy a wide audience, yet also has enough technical specifications to give the audiophiles out there some serious details to chew on. They put our little 533 through the paces and compared it to some respected names in the speaker universe -- and it came out shining. We're seriously proud and humbled -- a review in Stereophile is a big deal for any player in our industry, big or small. So let me take this moment to send out a warm 'Thank You' to the great folks at Stereophile.

For some choice quotes from their review on the 533-T, check out this thread in the Aperion Forum.

Also, on the electronic publishing landscape, Wes Phillips devoted a section of stereophile.com's front page to a piece on Aperion University and Steven Mejias, one of the bloggers over at Stereophile has devoted a bit of this week's coverage to Aperion, our unique business model, and some of our processes. Head on over to Stereophile and give them some love, or pick up the April issue on the news stands and see how the 533-T stacked up!

New User Reviews

by John Wanderscheid

Now that the new aperionaudio.com is launched, I wanted to bring your attention to a new site feature. We now give Aperion owners the chance to post user reviews on every Aperion product.

If you are an Aperion owner, please take a few minutes and post your thoughts on your speakers. It's easy. Just go to the product page for the speaker or system you own and click on the rating or not yet rated graphic on the page. This will take you to the login page. Once you login, you will be able write your own review. User reviews are an amazing way to share your thoughts on products and offer great insight to others considering these products for themselves.

Sound & Vision Approved

One part of my job that I really love is sharing good news. Since releasing our new products this summer, we have been working hard to get review systems to the press. The new 5-series speakers are based on the same 2-way design as our award-winning 522 speakers. The new 5-series feature our proprietary HD-X3 crossover which makes them easier to drive and they have a bit smoother frequency response.

The first review of the new 5-series is publishing in the November issue of Sound & Vision which will hit newstands and subscribers in the next few weeks. It is part of spotlight feature called Grand CInema and it features 3 speaker systems in the $1,400 price category. S&V chose us, Atlantic Technology and Wharfedale for the feature.

Pick up the November issue and see how we stack up against the competition. I don't want to let the cat out of the bag, but i will leave you with a quote to tease you a bit... "Aperion's Intimus 532 system with its well balanced and engaging sound should please even demanding listeners, especially if stereo music figures large in your listening. And it delivers great value thanks to its excellent center speaker, powerful sub, and fine finish and build quality."

A Rave Review for the 632’s

by John Wanderscheid

A big part of what I do at Aperion is to handle media relations and reviews. Our PR agency, MacKenzie Marketing helps us manage our review process and does all the leg work setting up press meetings at trade shows. They also do the difficult job of finding editors to review our product. In our industry, this is a bit more challenging than it sounds. There are just a handful of audio and video publications and more than 450 speaker companies. Needless to say there is a lot of competition for editorial space. While nobody readily admits it, a good portion of that editorial space is allocated to advertisers. This leaves just a bit of space for the rest of us.

So, in order to get their attention, you need a product that is unique, in-demand and really speaks to a market. Many times, we get our foot in the door because of our unique business model and the high value of our product. As a result, we have been incredibly fortunate to garner many very positive reviews. This isn’t by accident. When we develop new products, the number one priority is sound quality, because at the end of the day if the speakers don’t sound great, it doesn’t matter if they look cool or have a really low price. The next priority is that the product must live up to our high fit and finish standards. You are going to put a lot of these things in your home so it is important that they look good in your living space. Finally, the speakers must be a tremendous value.

The new 632 bookshelf speakers are a great example of this philosophy. About 18 months ago, we started work on a new 6.5” tower & bookshelf speaker with the goal of providing the best performing speakers in their category. Over a period of about 4 months, we critically listened to all the best bookshelf speakers in the $500 - $2000 price category. After extensive listening, we selected two reference models priced in the $1,500 range. Neither was perfect but they gave us a good jumping off point where we could say, we like the bass response of “speaker A” but would like a bit more midrange. The result of this research culminated in two new speakers – the 632 bookshelf speaker and the 633 tower speaker.

It always brings a smile to my face when I see a product come full circle from concept to completion culminating in the first industry review. The 632’s have made this long journey and the most recent review is in a brand new Audiophile publication called Tone Audio. Tone is a new FREE magazine that is only available online as a PDF download. The book is beautiful and it features a complete range of audiophile products. Jeff Dorgay has been reviewing audio for over 25 years and has written for all the major audiophile magazines. He is well respected in the industry and here is what he has to say about the 632’s…“We are too new to hand out Editor’s Choice awards, but if we were, these would win hands down. I have heard a lot of inexpensive speakers over the last 25 years, but these are the best I’ve run across. I can’t recommend them highly enough if you are a beginning audiophile or want a second system somewhere. If you don’t like them, you can get your money back; there isn’t a better value than this!”

This week we will be taking our new products to the Rocky Mountain Audiofest in Denver. We are expecting a warm welcome along with some slack jaws when we share the prices. If you are in Denver, join us at the show September 30 th – October 2 nd. If not, schedule your own totally risk-free audition and give Aperion speakers the once over in your audio room or home theater. If they aren’t for you, you can always send them back and we will even pay the freight.

A New TV Just in Time for Football Season!

by John Wanderscheid

Since moving to our new house a couple of years ago, our 10 year old 27” Zenith has looked conspicuously small in the 4’x4’ TV niche above the fireplace. I haven’t been too concerned about it for the most part because with HDTV and HD-DVD coming in the near future I have decided to be patient, let the dust from the format wars settle and wait for the price to drop on new products. Well, the HD format wars continue and big HDTV’s are still a little too steep for my budget.

So, upon celebration of my 15th wedding anniversary, my wife suggested that we buy a new TV that the whole family can enjoy. Only a great woman that would suggest a new TV for an anniversary gift – I just love her. And who am I to argue with that kind of logic, although I think part of the motivation is to get our son and his friends out of our bedroom. Right now our second TV is in the master bedroom which also doubles as the gaming system for our kids and their friends. A new TV means that the gaming system can go into the play room resulting in a little less traffic in our bedroom.

Now back to that TV. Being in the business, I know a bit about TV but things are changing pretty rapidly right now. After some research, I quickly realized that what I really wanted was way out of my budget so I would need to settle for something less. Video projectors were interesting as well as RP DLP but those were both out of the budget and hard to justify.

Then I really started to think about it. Do I really want or need HDTV? Sure it’s cool but it would require an additional investment in gear and subscription services to really take advantage. In addition, the content is still really limited so I would be paying a premium for something that isn’t that important to me. What I really needed was a bigger screen with a better picture. With this in mind, I began my research and determined that something in the 35” range would fit the space perfectly and be much easier on the budget. Finally, when I had my choices narrowed down, I received an email from one of our suppliers. They had an open box Toshiba 35AF44 for a smoking deal. So I snapped it up and will be installing it this weekend.

HDTV will have to wait a couple more years but I still have my killer Aperion Audio home theater with Power Towers, 12” Sub, and VACC so the picture will be great, the sound will be fantastic and I am going to have a really great football season.

Go Ducks!