Digital Home Thoughts: Orb Audio: Do These Small Speakers Measure Up?

Fit And Finish Options
Orb Audio not only has great-sounding speakers, they look great - I tested out the glossy black speakers, but Orb Audio also sent me samples of their other finishes to check out. The black gloss and white gloss speakers are the default choices, and in the case of the Mod2 kit, the hand-polished steel finish is an extra $200, and either the hand-antiqued copper or bronze will run you $300 over the base price. The hand-antiquing process involves 12 steps of plating, antiquing and polishing - hence the $100 up-charge over the polished steel finish. The hand-polished steel finish looks fantastic, and while the bronze and copper each look great, the copper speaker I was sent doesn't quite match up to the lush richness shown on their product page. There are variations created on each speaker during the antiquing process, but I can't help but think that both the copper and bronze finishes would look even better if they were darker - something that would nicely accent a dark wood cabinet for instance. Myself, I'm more of a black/silver modern kind of guy, but it's great that Orb Audio offers this type of flexibility in their products. They even have some bundles that allow you to combine finishes, having black/copper/steel/bronze front speakers, and white rear channel speakers. Photos of the various finishes are below.


Figure 18: The Hand-Polished Steel finish.


Figure 19: The Hand-Antiqued Bronze finish.


Figure 20: The Hand-Antiqued Copper finish.


Figure 21: The Pearl-White Gloss finish.