I am, however, no audiophile. I don’t have the proverbial golden ears. So to assemble a more discerning jury, I sought out some audiophiles by announcing my quest on Twitter. They included Paul MacDougall, a video engineer with serious audio chops; Jason Jacoby, an audio engineer and musician; and Tom Gallagher, a hard-core music lover with “12 speakers in my car.” They joined Mr. Fagan in an “American Idol”-style panel.
We pounded on this thing. We played every style of music. We watched every kind of DVD and movie, especially those with gunfire, explosions and timpani. We cranked the volume until passing airliners complained.
Mr. MacDougall and Mr. Jacoby even brought professional equipment (sound-pressure level meters) so we could test the speakers’ frequency response, which, I gather, you want to be flat. It was remarkably flat, at least for mid-fi speakers of this type.
Over all, the panel was impressed and intrigued. Mr. Fagan noted that the Aperions never distorted or “clipped out,” even at full volume. These higher-end audio nuts weren’t as impressed as I was with the auto-configuration business; one even called it a gimmick.
They were, however, unanimous on one surprising point: the Aperions sound the same or better than wired speaker systems in the same price range — for example, from Sony, Yamaha, Boston Acoustics or Bose.
In other words, you’re getting the wireless part free. And that’s not even counting what you would spend on a receiver and someone to do the setup.
Furthermore, eliminating speaker cables means that the signal remains digital throughout its path to the woofers and tweeters. It never gets converted to analog for a ride down the wires, which bodes even better for the sound.
Now, my panel said that these don’t sound like $10,000 speakers. “The imaging is nice,” said Mr. MacDougall, “but the detail isn’t quite there.”
Furthermore, Mr. Jacoby pointed out that audio aficionados don’t like closed systems like this. You can’t swap in a different receiver in a few years when technology changes, as you could with a traditional component system. (On the other hand, this system is already current: it can play audio soundtracks in the latest formats like DTSTM and Dolby TrueHD, and its HDMI 1.4 jack can already handle 3-D television.)
The transmitter has no analog video inputs, so viewing the Nintendo Wii or a VCR involves switching inputs on the TV and the transmitter. And once, after 15 minutes at ear-splitting full volume, the subwoofer shut itself off, apparently having overheated. It was fine five minutes later, and the problem didn’t recur.
The Aperion Intimus 4T Summit Wireless 5.1 Home Theater Speaker System may have the longest name in the business, but it deserves to. The speakers look great, sound fantastic, eliminate wires, do away with calibration, obviate the need for a receiver and keep the sound balanced when you change seating positions.
