Technobabble

American-Made Speakers

Posted by on Aug 8, 2006 | 2 Comments

All I can say is WOW. I’m absolutely floored by the fantastic response from the Gnomiverse regarding last week’s post on home theater speakers. Thank you kindly, my friends. Without having listened to a single system, I’m leaning towards an American-made setup. The biggest question isn’t Klipsch or Orb at the moment. It’s “when will I afford it?”

Please don’t mistake me for a protectionist. After all, we love Hondas around these parts. One half of the Rancho Indebto fleet was built in North America. (That’s one out of two, not counting the moribund Civic.)

What happens with all of the excess shipping containers that remain in the states because of the trade imbalance? They stack up and block the sunlight around California suburbs (video).

Then again, the shipping container skyscrapers might just migrate eastward with the deal between Mexico and Kansas City, Missouri for a new “smartport” that will perform an end-run around expensive California docks. Maybe all of those shipping containers will continue their migration and end up in Mexico. With the rest of our manufacturing jobs.

I’m not channeling Lou Dobbs, but it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see that our country’s balance of trade is way out of whack. The purchase of one set of home theater speakers is but a tiny speck of dust in the grand scheme of things.

On an energy-saving note, my P3 Kill A Watt landed in the mailbox yesterday. I’m looking forward to putting the little watt hour meter to work this week. The critter ought to provide a good bit of enlightenment, all for a mere twenty-odd buck investment on eBay.

Upon checking the packaging, I noticed that Kill A Watts are, not surprisingly, manufactured in China.

  • http://uneedawebsite.com Mark Oberg

    I agree that the US made speakers are among the best in the world, but I would have to question the choice of Klipsch as an option. Klipsch (along with Bose, JBL, Cerwin Vega and some others) speakers are good for a PA system or a frat house, because they project a lot of sound and are hard to blow up, but the quality of sound is very colored and not that accurate to what was originally recorded.

    In a showroom, compared with other brands, they can appear to have a ‘better’ sound just because they are louder at a given setting and, psychoacoustically, when comparing two speakers the mind is tricked.

    For home theater, you would be a lot better off with speakers by an audiophile company such as Definitive Technology or Polk Audio. They have a much more accurate and less harsh sound, as well as deeper true-bass in most models (not to be confused with mid-bass thump).

    In the long term you will find them not only more accurate but also easier to listen to.

    It’s worth finding a local audio/video specialty store to audition them. You may even find that a smaller model will have better sound than a larger model of something like the Klipsch.

    Even though I am no longer in that industry, my recommendation comes from over 15 years in the consumer electronics business and perhaps thousands of hours of listening.

    Good luck with your home theater!

  • Sowndman

    While a little late on this, Polk are not an American made speaker, they moved manufacturing to Tijuana in 1995. They are now a low end, bargain basement product with a colored upper mid range to make them SOUND like fine European speakers, they have NEVER modelled Polk after the classic American sound and only produced them in America for a few years.