Robert Deutsch

I have to admit that what first attracted me to the SSP-300 was not the fact that it's made by Classé, one of the top names in high-end audio, nor its sleek, elegant appearance, wide range of features, or even its THX Ultra II certification. No, it was that most superficial of features: the front panel LCD display!

Location, location, location. What's important in real estate is just as important in subwoofer perfor-mance. (And speaker performance in general, but that's a story for another day.) While agreement on recommendations for subwoofer placement is less than complete—some say "in the corner," some say "anywhere but the corner"—everyone agrees that the location of a subwoofer and its relation to the listening area can have a major influence on how the sub sounds.

As faithful readers with good memories will recall, I reported that after checking out various DLP and LCD projectors, I settled on the Marantz VP-12S2 as providing the best overall performance, and bought one to serve as a reference in my home theater system. (See my "Take 2" of the VP-12S2 in the November 2003 issue, and the sidebar in my review of the Primare SP31.7 and A30.5 Mk.II in January 2004; see also Peter Putman's original review of the VP-12S2 in May 2003.) For the past year I've been enjoying the VP-12S2 a great deal, and whenever I saw demos of DLP or LCD projectors at shows and dealers, I felt ever so slightly smug that the picture quality I was getting at home was better.

For a country with a population of fewer than 6 million, Denmark has an amazingly high profile when it comes to manufacturers of audio and home theater products. Bang & Olufsen, Dynaudio, Vifa, Peerless, Jamo, Gryphon, Ortofon, Thule, Dali, TacT—the list goes on and on. According to the folks at US importer Sumiko, Primare (pronounced "prime-AIR") has been around since the 1980s, and their products combine outstanding industrial design with an emphasis on sound quality. In the late '90s, the Primare team was joined by Michael Bladelius, well-known for his analog and digital design work for Threshold, Classé, and Pass Labs. Primare products are now manufactured in Sweden, while the head office and design center remain in Denmark.