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

Getting The Orb Audio Speakers Into Place
There are several options for getting the Orb Audio speakers into place. Actually, "several" is a gross understatement - the gang at Orb Audio have come up with pretty much every type of speaker mount you could ever need. I've already gone over the HOSS floor stands, but they also have BOSS Stainless Steel Mod1/Mod2/Mod4 Desk Stands (for one, two, and four speakers respectively), BOSS Wall Mounts (Mod2 & Mod4/Vertical & Horizontal), the Stud Zero Wall Mounts, the Stud Thirty Wall Mounts, the MultiMount Adjustable Wall/Ceiling/Side/Rear Mount, and the MultiPlate Adjustable Wall/Ceiling/Side/Rear Mounts. No matter how or where you want to put your Orb Audio speakers, there are mounts available for your particular goal.


Figure 22: A BOSS Stainless Steel Mod2 Desk Stand.


Figure 23: I actually couldn't figure out what these were - there's no listing for them on the Orb Audio product pages. Given the fact that they have those Orb Audio stickers on them, I suspect they're showroom demo stands of some type.


Figure 24: This is a HOSS Carpet Adaptor - sold for only $19 per pair, these heavy steel plates come with a user-applied rubber pad that the HOSS stand sits atop.


Figure 25: The HOSS Carpet Adaptor was the final piece on my Orb Audio setup - it added the stability that the HOSS Stands lacked on my carpet previously.

What It All Comes Down To
The modularity of the Orb Audio system is impressive - they link together so easily that you can go all the way up to their Mod4 system, which is a $2000+ package that has four Orb speakers at each of the five channel points. The two-speaker channels have a great deal of volume; I can't imagine how much punch a four-channel system would have.

When it's all said and done, the bottom line is that the Orb Audio speakers impressed me so much that I'm going to purchase my own set of these speakers. There's no higher recommendation I can give than to say that this is the product I personally want to use. The Orb Audio speakers are not only smaller than the Harman Kardon speakers I had before, they sound better, look better, and made me never want to set up the old system again. While the overall package can get a bit pricey if you need two pairs of their HOSS stands, if you're looking for a quality system - or an upgrade from that horrendously bad Home Theatre In-A-Box system you might have - Orb Audio has a range of solutions at every price point that will allow you to enjoy movies, music, games in ways you never have before. And because their system is so modular, you can start with a minimal Mod1 system and as long as you get the right kind of stands or mounts, you can add more speakers to your system over time. That's a powerful advantage that I haven't seen in any retail speaker solution, and is the cherry on top of what is already a luscious mix of tasty audio.

Jason Dunn owns and operates Thoughts Media Inc., a company dedicated to creating the best in online communities. He enjoys mobile devices, digital media content creation/editing, and pretty much all technology. He lives in Calgary, Alberta, Canada with his lovely wife, and his sometimes obedient dog. He wishes the Dell XPS M1330 he typed up this review on didn't get so damn hot.