Gear Patrol | Spirit of Adventure, Passion for Gear

Roombox

The Arcam rCube is another high-end iPhone dock to hit the home audio market along the lines of the Bowers & Wilkins Zeppelin Air. What sets Arcam’s offering apart from the rest is the Sonos-like ability to wirelessly network up to four rCubes throughout the house, using an included USB dongle, for a complete home [...]

Home sweet home theater

As rabid movie, music fans and gamers, we’re always on the hunt for gear that can push our home entertainment experience to 11 (much to our better half’s chagrin). This roundup includes some of our favorite home theater products out today that we’d love to host in our living room. Continues after the jump.

Can-do attitude

We credit the Rams’-like looks of the new hidden radio & Bluetooth Speaker on Kickstarter for catching our eye this morning — despite our luke warm feelings about most Bluetooth audio. The monolithic can avoids spoiling its clean lines with external buttons by incorporating a simple but effective twist top design. The first twist turns [...]

Tower Records

Shrouded in gleaming aluminium and molded rubber, the Revo K2 ($470) tower not only out-looks other, plebeian docks, but also offers access to virtually every radio signal under the sun including old-fashioned over-the-air and internet streaming stations including last.fm. Perfect for your morning dose of NPR. Besides a dearth of plastics, the K2 also features [...]

Boom Stick

Most TV speakers have the acoustical chops of a cowbell orchestra. We put up with them simply because alternatives are pricey, bulky, and a pain in the ass to install in a clean and proper manner. The Yamaha YAS-101BL Front Surround System improves on these common drawbacks in several ways. It’s relatively easy on the [...]

Slow Speaker Movement

The result of four years of R&D, the handmade all-wood Blumenstein Ultra Fi Orca Speakers ($550) are designed with a singular purpose: deliver bone-tingling sonics from a bookshelf speaker without a wallet annihilating price. Hi-Fi buffs (and common sense) will tell you that one of the best ways to make this happen is to reduce [...]

Fine Noise Makers

Etsy isn’t the first destination that comes to mind for audio gear, but stumbling across these jaw-dropping Mt. Man Speakers ($900) from Philadelphia-based maker Jesse Gerard, aka Carrot Grant, is a welcome surprise. Designed and made by hand from solid cherry, each speaker features twin copper-clad woofers, gold-plated binding posts for banana plugs or 12 [...]

Bringing Boom to Any Room

Okay, we’ll come clean. Technically these speakers are marketed for portable gaming. They’ll actually work with any device with a 3.5mm jack to deliver decent room-filling sound, though, thanks to their 360-degree omnidirectional speakers. More importantly, each speaker can pump out beats for 12 hours straight from the built-in rechargeable batteries. Combined with their included [...]

As men, we’ll always be suckers for shiny things. There’s no point in fighting it. Particularly when they can help do things like battle our inbox(s), catch up on missed episodes of the shows we’re too busy to watch, or single-handedly sway the tide of battles using just our thumbs. This gift list is a [...]

Aperion's Take On Wireless* Surround Sound

Probably the biggest issue most people have with installing a surround sound setup is dealing with wiring. Hiding the wires for the center channel, sub, and left/right surrounds is typically easy since they often tuck behind the entertainment console. It’s really the rear surrounds that pose the biggest risk of decor destruction. Aperion Audio’s new [...]

Loud Pipes

Our tech lust knows no bounds. The same goes for our desire to own custom and unique products that distinguish our possessions from the average catalog trawler. Unfortunately gadget manufacturers typically think in quantities of millions, not hundreds, which makes owning distinctive electronics a difficult feat. These Audio Speakers ($199) from Chicago based Etsy seller [...]

Speakers You Won't Have to Send to ColorWare

As much as you want to imagine someone handing one of those gleaming rainbow tubes off to Usain Bolt, they’re really 2-inch magnetically sealed subwoofers that come as part of the Edifier Aurora 2.1 Speaker System ($76). Now sold in nine different color patterns with comic book names like Liquid Silver, Luminous Yellow, and Stormy [...]

Aperion's First Move Into Space Conscious Audio

Gear Patrol’s editors have always been fans of Aperion home theater systems mainly because they offer outstanding audio quality relative to their price. Recently the company has made significant strides though to expand their line of products outside of your typical 5.1+ speaker packages. Released today, the Aperion SLIMstage30 sound bar is the Portland Oregon [...]

Cut the Bulk, Keep the Sound

Some folks hate fat people and others hate fat speakers, particularly when they happen to get cozy to über-slim televisions like the Samsung 9000 series. That’s why Definitive Technology (affectionately known as Dev Tech by home theater nerds) felt it was critical to develop the Mythos XTR-50 high performance home theater speaker. Measuring just 1.5″thick, [...]

We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again: your laptop’s puny speakers simply won’t cut it. They’re not even good enough to aptly project the beeps and boops of your NES emulator, much less to accompany your iTunes library. That said, the venerable accessory players at Logitech offer several options to suit your auditory [...]