1 00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:05,000 Eggie, eggie. Today I've got something straight out of Aperture Science. 2 00:00:05,000 --> 00:00:11,500 The loud-muse egg. These egg-shaped speakers are straight out of Austria, 3 00:00:11,500 --> 00:00:14,500 and they just arrived in this really nice packaging. 4 00:00:14,500 --> 00:00:17,000 Got a nice big old zipper. 5 00:00:19,000 --> 00:00:22,500 Oh, look at that. May eggs. Look at this thing. 6 00:00:22,500 --> 00:00:25,000 It's a giant egg. Oh, my God, it's big. 7 00:00:26,000 --> 00:00:30,300 It's a big, heavy thing. Gently set that down here, I guess. 8 00:00:34,300 --> 00:00:38,800 Comes with a European plug. They haven't quite made it over here to North America yet. 9 00:00:38,800 --> 00:00:41,800 We've got the feets and our little bag of bolts. 10 00:00:41,800 --> 00:00:46,800 Now, these have been opened before. Logistics checked them out, and we all made sure that they were okay. 11 00:00:46,800 --> 00:00:49,800 So yours might appear a bit differently than this, 12 00:00:49,800 --> 00:00:54,800 and it just kind of pulls away like this, and that's the whole amplifier unit here. 13 00:00:54,800 --> 00:00:58,300 This is going to be our left speaker, so it just has the one Ethernet port. 14 00:00:58,300 --> 00:01:00,800 The two speakers connect to each other with Ethernet. 15 00:01:02,300 --> 00:01:05,800 Go ahead, eggy, eggy. Oh, I'm going to drop it. 16 00:01:05,800 --> 00:01:06,800 There we go. 17 00:01:08,800 --> 00:01:12,300 Heavy. And screws. So here's our other amplifier. 18 00:01:12,300 --> 00:01:14,800 There's a little piece that you pull down here, maybe. 19 00:01:15,800 --> 00:01:20,300 There we go. There's a little piece we pull right there, and then this amp should just pop out. 20 00:01:20,300 --> 00:01:25,300 It's held on with these little strips of double-sided tape just to keep it from vibrating around, you know? 21 00:01:25,300 --> 00:01:30,800 And here's our other amplifier. So we have Toslink Ethernet to connect to the other speaker, 22 00:01:30,800 --> 00:01:35,800 and then we have Ethernet in if you want to do that. We also have an HDMI input for ARC or whatever, 23 00:01:35,800 --> 00:01:38,800 and then this guy over here is actually a little mini XLR. 24 00:01:38,800 --> 00:01:42,800 We've got a few interconnects here that connect into the back of the speaker right there. 25 00:01:42,800 --> 00:01:48,300 I want to touch on the amps a bit later and some of the modularity, but let's get the feet on this first and get them standing up. 26 00:01:48,300 --> 00:01:53,300 Okay, I found a screwdriver, unfortunately, due to short-circuit budget cuts, I only get a small one. 27 00:01:53,300 --> 00:01:56,300 And people have been getting their grubby fingers all over this. 28 00:01:56,300 --> 00:02:00,300 That feels nice and sturdy. They come in both white and also, apparently, 29 00:02:00,300 --> 00:02:07,300 a really nice, what they're calling, anthracite. This one is also pretty matte, but it's also very white. 30 00:02:07,300 --> 00:02:12,300 I can see cleaning this would be a bit of a problem. I appreciate that they're not using piano black. 31 00:02:12,300 --> 00:02:17,300 That is the worst material on the planet. Now that we've got the legs on, there's a small extra little piece here 32 00:02:17,300 --> 00:02:21,300 that kind of holds them together at the back, and that just keeps them aligned properly. 33 00:02:21,300 --> 00:02:24,800 Egg-y. Now I understand why they have fingerprints all over them. 34 00:02:24,800 --> 00:02:28,800 They're just like, they're so touchable. I don't know why that is. 35 00:02:28,800 --> 00:02:34,300 They just want to be, like, looked at and played with. I guess everybody likes playing with their eggs. 36 00:02:34,300 --> 00:02:37,800 Wonk. So up front here, we've got our three speakers. 37 00:02:37,800 --> 00:02:42,800 In the middle here, we've got our tweeter. It's a one-inch with aluminum ceramic domed little guy. 38 00:02:42,800 --> 00:02:47,800 We've got two mid-drivers outside of it. They're five inches, also ceramic aluminum. 39 00:02:47,800 --> 00:02:53,300 And on the outside here, we have our low driver, which is about an 11 and a half inch paper cone type big driver. 40 00:02:53,300 --> 00:02:56,800 I'm not entirely sure how we get this cover off, but probably got a speaker in it. 41 00:02:56,800 --> 00:02:59,800 I'm sure it looks the same. And that's vented out of these two ports at the front. 42 00:02:59,800 --> 00:03:03,800 So that's kind of cool. She stands about 45 inches high, which is pretty nice, 43 00:03:03,800 --> 00:03:06,800 and a very spelt just 16 inches slim, 44 00:03:06,800 --> 00:03:09,800 so these can tuck in, you know, behind a bookshelf or something. 45 00:03:09,800 --> 00:03:12,800 And about 25 inches deep. So yeah, egg-shaped. 46 00:03:12,800 --> 00:03:16,300 Although maybe if you sat on your egg a bit. I got to talk about the elephant in the room. 47 00:03:16,300 --> 00:03:19,300 They're not egg-shaped. They're portal turrets. It's sick. 48 00:03:19,300 --> 00:03:22,800 I mean, is it? I can't decide if that's awesome or not. 49 00:03:22,800 --> 00:03:27,300 These things should get pretty loud as well. They're claiming a max output of 108 decibels, 50 00:03:27,300 --> 00:03:30,300 which is like far and above reasonable listening volume. 51 00:03:30,300 --> 00:03:33,300 So we'll see if we can destroy all of your eardrums a bit later. 52 00:03:33,300 --> 00:03:36,300 And of course, we have this detachable amplifier 53 00:03:36,300 --> 00:03:39,300 and connectivity board thing on the back. 54 00:03:39,300 --> 00:03:42,300 This thing's capable of outputting about 350 watts, 55 00:03:42,300 --> 00:03:45,300 which is pretty good. Again, you kind of got a variety of inputs, 56 00:03:45,300 --> 00:03:50,300 but these are more like a Wi-Fi speaker or a Bluetooth speaker, 57 00:03:50,300 --> 00:03:54,300 if you want to think about it that way. The problem with that that we've seen with other brands, 58 00:03:54,300 --> 00:03:57,300 we get a new kind of Wi-Fi every year or two, 59 00:03:57,300 --> 00:04:00,300 or a new HDMI standard. What would you have to do? 60 00:04:00,300 --> 00:04:03,300 You'd have to throw these out and buy a whole new set of speakers. 61 00:04:03,300 --> 00:04:06,300 What Loud is doing, which nobody else seems to be doing, 62 00:04:06,300 --> 00:04:09,300 is these modular backplains. 63 00:04:09,300 --> 00:04:14,300 So you get to keep the speaker and you send this back to them, and they send you a new one with all the updated specifications. 64 00:04:14,300 --> 00:04:19,300 It's like less e-waste, it's pretty great. This whole speaker assembly is also pretty modular. 65 00:04:19,300 --> 00:04:22,300 You can just take the speakers out, send them back the case, 66 00:04:22,300 --> 00:04:27,300 get a new case, or you blow up a speaker. Your kid pulls off the front and stabs their finger in there, 67 00:04:27,300 --> 00:04:30,300 or I do that, whoops, you just get a new speaker, right? 68 00:04:30,300 --> 00:04:36,300 So there's this kind of air of sustainability and upgradeability 69 00:04:36,300 --> 00:04:39,300 and modularity, and I think that's really awesome. 70 00:04:39,300 --> 00:04:42,300 So this is going to be our right speaker. 71 00:04:42,300 --> 00:04:45,300 So this is going to be our main amp, so we'll just clip that back in there, 72 00:04:45,300 --> 00:04:51,300 and then we push. Yeah, done, easy. 73 00:04:51,300 --> 00:04:54,300 Who got this all scratched up? What the hell? 74 00:04:54,300 --> 00:04:58,300 Unfortunately, these are Europe only at the moment, 75 00:04:58,300 --> 00:05:01,300 but they will be coming to America eventually. 76 00:05:01,300 --> 00:05:06,300 The power supplies in them are automatic switching. And yeah, these are Ethernet connected, which I think is fine. 77 00:05:06,300 --> 00:05:12,300 Are they Bluetooth speakers? Are they web speakers, or are they like audio file speakers? 78 00:05:12,300 --> 00:05:16,300 I'm not entirely sure. I know that they can take pretty much insane, lossless kind of files, 79 00:05:16,300 --> 00:05:23,300 but, you know, we'll have a listen. Okay, let's get them switched on, and I guess we'll see how they sound. 80 00:05:23,300 --> 00:05:26,300 Unfortunately, it has an app. It's not too bad. 81 00:05:26,300 --> 00:05:29,300 The problem is that it's probably kind of necessary, 82 00:05:29,300 --> 00:05:33,300 because you're not necessarily always using this as a home theater. 83 00:05:33,300 --> 00:05:38,300 You're going to be playing music from your phone, and it's going to, you know, hook into it and play the lossless stuff, right? 84 00:05:38,300 --> 00:05:43,300 It finds them automatically over Bluetooth. It looks like Bell has called them the Craig Twins. 85 00:05:43,300 --> 00:05:46,300 Sure. It comes with this mini DSP microphone. 86 00:05:46,300 --> 00:05:49,300 We have a look at this, and it's USB-C. 87 00:05:49,300 --> 00:05:53,300 So what we're supposed to do, and we've got a little cover here. 88 00:05:53,300 --> 00:05:56,300 What we're supposed to do is plug this into the phone. 89 00:05:56,300 --> 00:05:59,300 An engineer from their team will go through with you 90 00:05:59,300 --> 00:06:03,300 and make sure that it's tuned to your room perfectly. They offer a service-level approach, 91 00:06:03,300 --> 00:06:07,300 where they make sure that your room and the speakers are tuned perfectly, 92 00:06:07,300 --> 00:06:14,300 and also tuned to your liking. All of those settings are kind of stored in the cloud on your loud account. 93 00:06:14,300 --> 00:06:20,300 And if you're noticing there's issues with them, then you can talk to the engineers and make sure that they're retuned 94 00:06:20,300 --> 00:06:26,300 or set up correctly for you. They'll also notify you if a new amp or other component is updated. 95 00:06:26,300 --> 00:06:32,300 So in our audio settings for this app, we can do our own tunes ourselves, which is kind of neat. 96 00:06:32,300 --> 00:06:36,300 We don't have any measurements. There's a whole setup process. 97 00:06:36,300 --> 00:06:40,300 You've got to make sure you place them in the right place. 98 00:06:40,300 --> 00:06:43,300 And where the microphone goes, it would go where I'm sitting here. 99 00:06:43,300 --> 00:06:47,300 And then you can plug it into your phone with this little adapter board thing. 100 00:06:47,300 --> 00:06:52,300 And then it'll guide you through and play tones and do all of the measurement. 101 00:06:52,300 --> 00:06:55,300 And then you can see if you like it and adjust from there. It's really kind of cool. 102 00:06:55,300 --> 00:07:00,300 Is there any way to adjust it without having to do a full tune? 103 00:07:00,300 --> 00:07:04,300 Yeah, it looks like we've got audio settings, so we can adjust the bass and the treble. 104 00:07:04,300 --> 00:07:09,300 I was not expecting kind of something to be this basic, 105 00:07:09,300 --> 00:07:12,300 but I guess you kind of get the more advanced stuff 106 00:07:12,300 --> 00:07:15,300 by actually having the reference microphone. 107 00:07:15,300 --> 00:07:20,300 And then, as I said, you know, you'll have an engineer from the company 108 00:07:20,300 --> 00:07:23,300 be able to set up a tune exactly how you want. 109 00:07:23,300 --> 00:07:26,300 Hello! Future Dan here. How you been? 110 00:07:26,300 --> 00:07:30,300 I know we said we weren't going to do this test, but we did end up scheduling one anyway. 111 00:07:30,300 --> 00:07:33,300 Going through the remote fitting with the team did go well, 112 00:07:33,300 --> 00:07:36,300 but I don't think we got the results we were expecting. 113 00:07:36,300 --> 00:07:40,300 The team was great, and they did solve every little issue that we had. 114 00:07:40,300 --> 00:07:45,300 Unfortunately, I don't think the software is quite ready as it stands right now. 115 00:07:45,300 --> 00:07:49,300 Starting the first half of next year, the units are going to go out to the rest of Europe. 116 00:07:49,300 --> 00:07:52,300 And I would expect things to be a little bit more together by then. 117 00:07:52,300 --> 00:07:57,300 North America is slated for the second half, mid half of 2024. 118 00:07:57,300 --> 00:08:01,300 But I'm still of the mind that this is just another product that's kind of hampered by software. 119 00:08:01,300 --> 00:08:04,300 It seems to be a really big trend in current year anyway. 120 00:08:04,300 --> 00:08:09,300 The remote fitting is going to be offered for free for about the first six months after release. 121 00:08:09,300 --> 00:08:14,300 After that, it's going to be about $200, but that does include about two or three individual sessions. 122 00:08:14,300 --> 00:08:17,300 The speakers still perform well even without room correction, 123 00:08:17,300 --> 00:08:20,300 but I still feel that some more tuning would make them even better. 124 00:08:20,300 --> 00:08:25,300 The sound of each speaker is still subjective though, and that's kind of why having these remote fittings is really nice, 125 00:08:25,300 --> 00:08:30,300 because you can get them tuned exactly how you want for your own room and for your own sound profile. 126 00:08:30,300 --> 00:08:36,300 Keep in mind though, even after the remote fitting, everything else I say in the video is still applicable. 127 00:08:36,300 --> 00:08:39,300 Bye! It almost feels like a bit of a crime with these speakers, 128 00:08:39,300 --> 00:08:42,300 but I am required by law to play Grab Brave now. 129 00:08:51,300 --> 00:08:54,300 Jesus! F***ing Christ! I mean, they're like perfect. 130 00:08:54,300 --> 00:08:59,300 There's nothing more to say. I can hear that there's some issues with the room. 131 00:08:59,300 --> 00:09:02,300 There's some reflections that are not happening on this side, 132 00:09:02,300 --> 00:09:05,300 and if I turn my head to face this speaker, 133 00:09:05,300 --> 00:09:08,300 then I can hear them properly, because we've got all this stuff here, 134 00:09:08,300 --> 00:09:11,300 and then there's not a lot of stuff there, 135 00:09:11,300 --> 00:09:14,300 and just that's really interesting. 136 00:09:14,300 --> 00:09:19,300 You know, that kind of thing can be kind of tuned because if I'm losing frequencies from this side, 137 00:09:19,300 --> 00:09:22,300 then they can be boosted out of that side of the speaker. 138 00:09:22,300 --> 00:09:25,300 The bass is so thumping, it's ridiculous, 139 00:09:25,300 --> 00:09:28,300 and even, that wasn't even max volume, 140 00:09:28,300 --> 00:09:32,300 I got a little bit more ways to go, but no distortion anywhere. 141 00:09:32,300 --> 00:09:35,300 No rattling, no movement. 142 00:09:35,300 --> 00:09:39,300 The cones in the front are like jumping. Wow, very, very impressive. 143 00:09:45,300 --> 00:09:49,300 Did you feel that? It was amazing. The whole floor shook. 144 00:09:49,300 --> 00:09:53,300 That was max volume, obviously. Incredibly, incredibly loud. 145 00:09:53,300 --> 00:09:56,300 Yeah, they're moving so much air. If you stand in front of them, 146 00:09:56,300 --> 00:10:00,300 you can feel it pushing out of here. I didn't know portal turrets could sing like that. 147 00:10:00,300 --> 00:10:03,300 Because they're also Bluetooth speakers, 148 00:10:03,300 --> 00:10:06,300 I've got Deezer on my phone here. 149 00:10:06,300 --> 00:10:11,300 I just wanted to listen to a couple of my reference tracks. Unfortunately, this will have to be muted, 150 00:10:11,300 --> 00:10:15,300 so I'm sorry, goodbye. How about Coldplay? You heard a Coldplay bell? 151 00:10:15,300 --> 00:10:20,300 Yeah. The underground band. Belle, this is other band that this guy told me about. 152 00:10:20,300 --> 00:10:23,300 They're called Radiohead. Have you heard about them? No. 153 00:10:23,300 --> 00:10:24,300 They're pretty underground. 154 00:10:30,300 --> 00:10:34,300 Sound impressions. I don't know if I can say anything. 155 00:10:34,300 --> 00:10:37,300 There's nothing to attack. 156 00:10:37,300 --> 00:10:42,300 These would actually warrant investment into like proper lossless inputs. 157 00:10:42,300 --> 00:10:45,300 I think these also are the type of speaker 158 00:10:45,300 --> 00:10:50,300 that are moving into that scary word territory audio file 159 00:10:50,300 --> 00:10:53,300 where now you can't listen to all of the music 160 00:10:53,300 --> 00:10:57,300 because some music sounds bad. I know that there are some people in that community 161 00:10:57,300 --> 00:11:01,300 and they'll only listen to like one song on repeat 162 00:11:01,300 --> 00:11:05,300 because that's how they use their benchmark to test things 163 00:11:05,300 --> 00:11:11,300 and you kind of just stop listening to music and you become a kind of person that complains about stuff. 164 00:11:11,300 --> 00:11:14,300 These are, I think, of that level of quality. 165 00:11:14,300 --> 00:11:18,300 We don't often get to listen to speakers that sound like this 166 00:11:18,300 --> 00:11:23,300 that I'm actually kind of into. They're self-contained and they're modular 167 00:11:23,300 --> 00:11:26,300 and they're not super big and they're not super gaudy 168 00:11:26,300 --> 00:11:30,300 and they're not piano black. Yeah, these aren't exactly cheap, 169 00:11:30,300 --> 00:11:33,300 but they're kind of in a high-fi level price bracket. 170 00:11:33,300 --> 00:11:37,300 For a pair, they're looking around 6,300 US dollars, 171 00:11:37,300 --> 00:11:41,300 which is probably a little bit steep. You can get one, I don't know why you would, 172 00:11:41,300 --> 00:11:45,300 but you can get one for 3,500 US dollars. They also offer a kind of trial. 173 00:11:45,300 --> 00:11:50,300 As we'll probably get in North America here soon, what they'll do is they'll deliver the speakers. 174 00:11:50,300 --> 00:11:53,300 Somebody will set them up, they'll go through the whole tuning for you 175 00:11:53,300 --> 00:11:56,300 and they'll let you use them for like two weeks 176 00:11:56,300 --> 00:12:02,300 to see if you like the sound of them, to see if they fit in your decor, in your house, anything like that. 177 00:12:02,300 --> 00:12:07,300 I think that's kind of neat. Their approach has been more of service rather than selling 178 00:12:07,300 --> 00:12:10,300 something that they'll make money on for a long time, 179 00:12:10,300 --> 00:12:15,300 if you know what I mean. These are kind of designed to be more of an eternal product. 180 00:12:15,300 --> 00:12:18,300 The entire system here is made out of recyclable materials. 181 00:12:18,300 --> 00:12:21,300 The units themselves can be recycled after the fact. 182 00:12:21,300 --> 00:12:24,300 They're focusing on sustainability from the modularity, 183 00:12:24,300 --> 00:12:28,300 from the upgrade ability. You're not going to be throwing these out for a long time. 184 00:12:28,300 --> 00:12:31,300 In my opinion, they perform at the price point, 185 00:12:31,300 --> 00:12:35,300 which is a difficult thing to do at that price point. 186 00:12:35,300 --> 00:12:38,300 They are in the upper echelon of speakers. 187 00:12:38,300 --> 00:12:41,300 Considering I've listened to speakers and seen systems 188 00:12:41,300 --> 00:12:45,300 that are on the order of like 50 to $100,000, 189 00:12:45,300 --> 00:12:50,300 they're stacks up to the ceiling and they're just so demanding of a room. 190 00:12:50,300 --> 00:12:53,300 You walk into a room and it is the speakers 191 00:12:53,300 --> 00:12:56,300 and you also lived there. But these are not quite as assuming. 192 00:12:56,300 --> 00:13:00,300 And they sound damn good and they're very loud. 193 00:13:00,300 --> 00:13:06,300 And I think these are kind of in that weird hi-fi space of like, 194 00:13:06,300 --> 00:13:10,300 I'd put these in my house, but I'm not like an aficionado. 195 00:13:10,300 --> 00:13:13,300 I just kind of like the sound to sound good. 196 00:13:13,300 --> 00:13:17,300 They're like art. Everybody who's walked past the set here has been like, 197 00:13:17,300 --> 00:13:20,300 oh, what are those? And then they come up with their grubby little hands all over them. 198 00:13:20,300 --> 00:13:25,300 Get the black ones. Yeah, the amps are quite powerful, 350 watt amps. 199 00:13:25,300 --> 00:13:28,300 They run an ARM quad core in them, which is kind of interesting. 200 00:13:28,300 --> 00:13:32,300 And the other interesting thing is that they actually list 201 00:13:32,300 --> 00:13:36,300 the digital analog converter on the spec page. 202 00:13:36,300 --> 00:13:42,300 I don't think I've seen that before, at least not in a long time. It runs an ESS Sabre DAC and they even give the exact model number. 203 00:13:42,300 --> 00:13:46,300 You can look it up and get the exact data sheets and check all the specifications for yourself. 204 00:13:46,300 --> 00:13:51,300 And that's just one daughter board. There's also an amplifier board and then also the control unit board 205 00:13:51,300 --> 00:13:54,300 and they're all sort of just modular. They connect into each other. 206 00:13:54,300 --> 00:13:59,300 What do I think? I don't exactly know. Speakers are kind of a hard thing to recommend, 207 00:13:59,300 --> 00:14:04,300 especially when they have looks like this. I think there are a lot less unobtrusive than gigantic speakers, 208 00:14:04,300 --> 00:14:07,300 but they are also a bit more of a statement. 209 00:14:07,300 --> 00:14:10,300 I think the price is right for the performance. The loud is good. 210 00:14:10,300 --> 00:14:13,300 I mean, that's probably why they named their company that. 211 00:14:13,300 --> 00:14:16,300 I can't get around that they look like portal speakers. 212 00:14:16,300 --> 00:14:20,300 Honestly, that's pretty f***ing sick. But they stick out. 213 00:14:20,300 --> 00:14:23,300 They will be a focal point in your room. 214 00:14:23,300 --> 00:14:26,300 At that kind of price point, it's really down to you. 215 00:14:26,300 --> 00:14:29,300 The nice thing is that when they start moving into North America, 216 00:14:29,300 --> 00:14:33,300 you'll probably be able to try them if you're in the market for them. 217 00:14:33,300 --> 00:14:38,300 And if you're in Europe, then I think these are some of the guys to watch. 218 00:14:38,300 --> 00:14:42,300 They're really neat. Eggie. Eggie. 219 00:14:42,300 --> 00:14:45,300 Oh, look at that. May eggs. 220 00:14:48,300 --> 00:14:49,300 Okay.