Audio Video News

Men need a place to be men — a place where we tinker with mechanical stuff, smoke cigars, drink bourbon, and listen to the manly music of our lost youth really frigging loud. Usually we have to go out to the garage if we want to indulge in these indulgences. Lucky for us, Axiom Audio’s new Garage Speaker makes our exile a little more tolerable.

To create the Garage Speaker, Axiom covered its M3 bookshelf speaker in embossed vinyl that resembles the sheet metal with the stamped tread that manufacturers use to give you a firm footing on greasy surfaces (or whenever they want to make stuff look really rugged). Interior designers will be thrilled to learn that, according to Axiom’s PR blurb, the Garage Speaker “blends seamlessly into the most organized garages.”

Now, we have to ask. How manly are you if you: 1) care about whether or not your speakers blend with your garage “decor,” and 2) keep your garage organized? Regardless of the answers to those rhetorical questions, though, there’s no denying that the Garage Speaker looks very cool.

With a rated power handling of 175 watts and sensitivity of 92 dB, the Garage Speaker should be able to reproduce AC/DC’s Back in Black at levels loud enough to hear even over the whine of an air wrench. No worries if your tastes run more to hip-hop: Axiom Audio’s Alan Lofft says the useful response of the 6.5-inch metal-cone woofer goes down to a Soulja Boy-satisfying 40 hertz. Final specs and pricing have not been released, but Axiom is pegging the price at about $375 per pair and it should be available on axiomaudio.com sometime in early summer.

No word yet on whether or not the Garage Speaker includes a filter that prevents it from playing the works of Celine Dion and Barbra Streisand, but we’re keeping our fingers crossed. —Brent Butterworth