Premiere Design

I wonder why so many unique speaker designs come from eastern Europe? Not long ago, I profiled some wild-looking speakers from Hungarian Art & Voice, shortly after which I found Everything But The Box based in Bulgaria.

None of EBTB's speakers are large, including the flagship Terra II, which stands only 15 inches tall. This 2-way design employs a 1-inch silk-dome tweeter and 4-inch, front-ported midbass driver to achieve a frequency response from 69Hz to 25kHz (±3dB) for a list price of $1949 each.

The ovoid Venus is designed to be suspended from the ceiling, and several can be stacked together. Its 1-inch silk-dome tweeter is mounted in a coincident configuration with a 5-inch Kevlar midbass driver, resulting in a frequency response from 50Hz to 22kHz (±3dB). And the list price? $1049 each.

Next in the EBTB firmament is the Pluto, which claims the same frequency response and sports the same driver complement as the Venus, though not in a coincident configuration, for $899 each. The Pluto is also available in a stand-mounted version with the tweeter below the midbass driver for $1499 each.

As you've probably noticed, none of the EBTB speakers extends far into the bass frequencies, so the company offers two subwoofer models. The SubTerranean utilizes a 12-inch driver in a spherical, cast-aluminum, ported enclosure nearly 20 inches in diameter, and it reach all the way down to 18Hz. One version provides a 200W internal class-D power amp for $4799, while a second version adds two additional 180W class-D amps for satellite speakers in a 2.1 system at a cost of $5249 (not including the satellites).

The Sputnik subwoofer can hang from the ceiling like the Venus or sit on the floor. Either way, it uses a 12-inch driver to reach as low as 20Hz with an internal 1000W class-D amp, all for $3299.

EBTB claims that its rigid spherical enclosures eliminate standing waves and prevent the enclosure from influencing the sound. The company's website includes many accolades from a variety of press outlets, so I imagine its speakers probably sound pretty good, especially when combined into a 2.1 or 5.1 system. And such a system would certainly draw as much attention to its appearance as to its sound, making it a win-win for the design-conscious audiophile.