CEDIA 2009

Audio Plus’s John Bevier totally brown-bagged me. He grinned unabashedly and led me to a darkened demo room. To see what? To hear what? Soon, I was watching a 2.35:1 image on a really big screen. Universal’s Wanted on Blu-ray, an absolute guilty pleasure, roared into its dynamically brutal train crash sequence. The sound was spacious, articulate, and punchy. You figured it out before I did, but the cute little Dome system pictured above, with speakers the size of grapefruits, is where all that sound was coming from. Walking among Focal’s impressive (and sometimes imposing) line of speakers had been a setup from the start. The Dome costs $2,500 for a 5.1 channel system, and in addition to the splashy colors, they can be mounted on stands, on wall, or plopped onto a piece of furniture. They can be swiveled any which way for optimal sound. This is a design solution that rocks!