WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:05.000 Eggie, eggie. Today I've got something straight out of Aperture Science. 00:00:05.000 --> 00:00:11.500 The loud-muse egg. These egg-shaped speakers are straight out of Austria, 00:00:11.500 --> 00:00:14.500 and they just arrived in this really nice packaging. 00:00:14.500 --> 00:00:17.000 Got a nice big old zipper. 00:00:19.000 --> 00:00:22.500 Oh, look at that. May eggs. Look at this thing. 00:00:22.500 --> 00:00:25.000 It's a giant egg. Oh, my God, it's big. 00:00:26.000 --> 00:00:30.300 It's a big, heavy thing. Gently set that down here, I guess. 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. 00:00:38.800 --> 00:00:41.800 We've got the feets and our little bag of bolts. 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. 00:00:46.800 --> 00:00:49.800 So yours might appear a bit differently than this, 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. 00:00:54.800 --> 00:00:58.300 This is going to be our left speaker, so it just has the one Ethernet port. 00:00:58.300 --> 00:01:00.800 The two speakers connect to each other with Ethernet. 00:01:02.300 --> 00:01:05.800 Go ahead, eggy, eggy. Oh, I'm going to drop it. 00:01:05.800 --> 00:01:06.800 There we go. 00:01:08.800 --> 00:01:12.300 Heavy. And screws. So here's our other amplifier. 00:01:12.300 --> 00:01:14.800 There's a little piece that you pull down here, maybe. 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. 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? 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, 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, 00:01:35.800 --> 00:01:38.800 and then this guy over here is actually a little mini XLR. 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. 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. 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. 00:01:53.300 --> 00:01:56.300 And people have been getting their grubby fingers all over this. 00:01:56.300 --> 00:02:00.300 That feels nice and sturdy. They come in both white and also, apparently, 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. 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. 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 00:02:17.300 --> 00:02:21.300 that kind of holds them together at the back, and that just keeps them aligned properly. 00:02:21.300 --> 00:02:24.800 Egg-y. Now I understand why they have fingerprints all over them. 00:02:24.800 --> 00:02:28.800 They're just like, they're so touchable. I don't know why that is. 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. 00:02:34.300 --> 00:02:37.800 Wonk. So up front here, we've got our three speakers. 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. 00:02:42.800 --> 00:02:47.800 We've got two mid-drivers outside of it. They're five inches, also ceramic aluminum. 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. 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. 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. 00:02:59.800 --> 00:03:03.800 So that's kind of cool. She stands about 45 inches high, which is pretty nice, 00:03:03.800 --> 00:03:06.800 and a very spelt just 16 inches slim, 00:03:06.800 --> 00:03:09.800 so these can tuck in, you know, behind a bookshelf or something. 00:03:09.800 --> 00:03:12.800 And about 25 inches deep. So yeah, egg-shaped. 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. 00:03:16.300 --> 00:03:19.300 They're not egg-shaped. They're portal turrets. It's sick. 00:03:19.300 --> 00:03:22.800 I mean, is it? I can't decide if that's awesome or not. 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, 00:03:27.300 --> 00:03:30.300 which is like far and above reasonable listening volume. 00:03:30.300 --> 00:03:33.300 So we'll see if we can destroy all of your eardrums a bit later. 00:03:33.300 --> 00:03:36.300 And of course, we have this detachable amplifier 00:03:36.300 --> 00:03:39.300 and connectivity board thing on the back. 00:03:39.300 --> 00:03:42.300 This thing's capable of outputting about 350 watts, 00:03:42.300 --> 00:03:45.300 which is pretty good. Again, you kind of got a variety of inputs, 00:03:45.300 --> 00:03:50.300 but these are more like a Wi-Fi speaker or a Bluetooth speaker, 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, 00:03:54.300 --> 00:03:57.300 we get a new kind of Wi-Fi every year or two, 00:03:57.300 --> 00:04:00.300 or a new HDMI standard. What would you have to do? 00:04:00.300 --> 00:04:03.300 You'd have to throw these out and buy a whole new set of speakers. 00:04:03.300 --> 00:04:06.300 What Loud is doing, which nobody else seems to be doing, 00:04:06.300 --> 00:04:09.300 is these modular backplains. 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. 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. 00:04:19.300 --> 00:04:22.300 You can just take the speakers out, send them back the case, 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, 00:04:27.300 --> 00:04:30.300 or I do that, whoops, you just get a new speaker, right? 00:04:30.300 --> 00:04:36.300 So there's this kind of air of sustainability and upgradeability 00:04:36.300 --> 00:04:39.300 and modularity, and I think that's really awesome. 00:04:39.300 --> 00:04:42.300 So this is going to be our right speaker. 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, 00:04:45.300 --> 00:04:51.300 and then we push. Yeah, done, easy. 00:04:51.300 --> 00:04:54.300 Who got this all scratched up? What the hell? 00:04:54.300 --> 00:04:58.300 Unfortunately, these are Europe only at the moment, 00:04:58.300 --> 00:05:01.300 but they will be coming to America eventually. 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. 00:05:06.300 --> 00:05:12.300 Are they Bluetooth speakers? Are they web speakers, or are they like audio file speakers? 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, 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. 00:05:23.300 --> 00:05:26.300 Unfortunately, it has an app. It's not too bad. 00:05:26.300 --> 00:05:29.300 The problem is that it's probably kind of necessary, 00:05:29.300 --> 00:05:33.300 because you're not necessarily always using this as a home theater. 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? 00:05:38.300 --> 00:05:43.300 It finds them automatically over Bluetooth. It looks like Bell has called them the Craig Twins. 00:05:43.300 --> 00:05:46.300 Sure. It comes with this mini DSP microphone. 00:05:46.300 --> 00:05:49.300 We have a look at this, and it's USB-C. 00:05:49.300 --> 00:05:53.300 So what we're supposed to do, and we've got a little cover here. 00:05:53.300 --> 00:05:56.300 What we're supposed to do is plug this into the phone. 00:05:56.300 --> 00:05:59.300 An engineer from their team will go through with you 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, 00:06:03.300 --> 00:06:07.300 where they make sure that your room and the speakers are tuned perfectly, 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. 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 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. 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. 00:06:32.300 --> 00:06:36.300 We don't have any measurements. There's a whole setup process. 00:06:36.300 --> 00:06:40.300 You've got to make sure you place them in the right place. 00:06:40.300 --> 00:06:43.300 And where the microphone goes, it would go where I'm sitting here. 00:06:43.300 --> 00:06:47.300 And then you can plug it into your phone with this little adapter board thing. 00:06:47.300 --> 00:06:52.300 And then it'll guide you through and play tones and do all of the measurement. 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. 00:06:55.300 --> 00:07:00.300 Is there any way to adjust it without having to do a full tune? 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. 00:07:04.300 --> 00:07:09.300 I was not expecting kind of something to be this basic, 00:07:09.300 --> 00:07:12.300 but I guess you kind of get the more advanced stuff 00:07:12.300 --> 00:07:15.300 by actually having the reference microphone. 00:07:15.300 --> 00:07:20.300 And then, as I said, you know, you'll have an engineer from the company 00:07:20.300 --> 00:07:23.300 be able to set up a tune exactly how you want. 00:07:23.300 --> 00:07:26.300 Hello! Future Dan here. How you been? 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. 00:07:30.300 --> 00:07:33.300 Going through the remote fitting with the team did go well, 00:07:33.300 --> 00:07:36.300 but I don't think we got the results we were expecting. 00:07:36.300 --> 00:07:40.300 The team was great, and they did solve every little issue that we had. 00:07:40.300 --> 00:07:45.300 Unfortunately, I don't think the software is quite ready as it stands right now. 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. 00:07:49.300 --> 00:07:52.300 And I would expect things to be a little bit more together by then. 00:07:52.300 --> 00:07:57.300 North America is slated for the second half, mid half of 2024. 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. 00:08:01.300 --> 00:08:04.300 It seems to be a really big trend in current year anyway. 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. 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. 00:08:14.300 --> 00:08:17.300 The speakers still perform well even without room correction, 00:08:17.300 --> 00:08:20.300 but I still feel that some more tuning would make them even better. 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, 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. 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. 00:08:36.300 --> 00:08:39.300 Bye! It almost feels like a bit of a crime with these speakers, 00:08:39.300 --> 00:08:42.300 but I am required by law to play Grab Brave now. 00:08:51.300 --> 00:08:54.300 Jesus! F***ing Christ! I mean, they're like perfect. 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. 00:08:59.300 --> 00:09:02.300 There's some reflections that are not happening on this side, 00:09:02.300 --> 00:09:05.300 and if I turn my head to face this speaker, 00:09:05.300 --> 00:09:08.300 then I can hear them properly, because we've got all this stuff here, 00:09:08.300 --> 00:09:11.300 and then there's not a lot of stuff there, 00:09:11.300 --> 00:09:14.300 and just that's really interesting. 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, 00:09:19.300 --> 00:09:22.300 then they can be boosted out of that side of the speaker. 00:09:22.300 --> 00:09:25.300 The bass is so thumping, it's ridiculous, 00:09:25.300 --> 00:09:28.300 and even, that wasn't even max volume, 00:09:28.300 --> 00:09:32.300 I got a little bit more ways to go, but no distortion anywhere. 00:09:32.300 --> 00:09:35.300 No rattling, no movement. 00:09:35.300 --> 00:09:39.300 The cones in the front are like jumping. Wow, very, very impressive. 00:09:45.300 --> 00:09:49.300 Did you feel that? It was amazing. The whole floor shook. 00:09:49.300 --> 00:09:53.300 That was max volume, obviously. Incredibly, incredibly loud. 00:09:53.300 --> 00:09:56.300 Yeah, they're moving so much air. If you stand in front of them, 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. 00:10:00.300 --> 00:10:03.300 Because they're also Bluetooth speakers, 00:10:03.300 --> 00:10:06.300 I've got Deezer on my phone here. 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, 00:10:11.300 --> 00:10:15.300 so I'm sorry, goodbye. How about Coldplay? You heard a Coldplay bell? 00:10:15.300 --> 00:10:20.300 Yeah. The underground band. Belle, this is other band that this guy told me about. 00:10:20.300 --> 00:10:23.300 They're called Radiohead. Have you heard about them? No. 00:10:23.300 --> 00:10:24.300 They're pretty underground. 00:10:30.300 --> 00:10:34.300 Sound impressions. I don't know if I can say anything. 00:10:34.300 --> 00:10:37.300 There's nothing to attack. 00:10:37.300 --> 00:10:42.300 These would actually warrant investment into like proper lossless inputs. 00:10:42.300 --> 00:10:45.300 I think these also are the type of speaker 00:10:45.300 --> 00:10:50.300 that are moving into that scary word territory audio file 00:10:50.300 --> 00:10:53.300 where now you can't listen to all of the music 00:10:53.300 --> 00:10:57.300 because some music sounds bad. I know that there are some people in that community 00:10:57.300 --> 00:11:01.300 and they'll only listen to like one song on repeat 00:11:01.300 --> 00:11:05.300 because that's how they use their benchmark to test things 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. 00:11:11.300 --> 00:11:14.300 These are, I think, of that level of quality. 00:11:14.300 --> 00:11:18.300 We don't often get to listen to speakers that sound like this 00:11:18.300 --> 00:11:23.300 that I'm actually kind of into. They're self-contained and they're modular 00:11:23.300 --> 00:11:26.300 and they're not super big and they're not super gaudy 00:11:26.300 --> 00:11:30.300 and they're not piano black. Yeah, these aren't exactly cheap, 00:11:30.300 --> 00:11:33.300 but they're kind of in a high-fi level price bracket. 00:11:33.300 --> 00:11:37.300 For a pair, they're looking around 6,300 US dollars, 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, 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. 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. 00:11:50.300 --> 00:11:53.300 Somebody will set them up, they'll go through the whole tuning for you 00:11:53.300 --> 00:11:56.300 and they'll let you use them for like two weeks 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. 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 00:12:07.300 --> 00:12:10.300 something that they'll make money on for a long time, 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. 00:12:15.300 --> 00:12:18.300 The entire system here is made out of recyclable materials. 00:12:18.300 --> 00:12:21.300 The units themselves can be recycled after the fact. 00:12:21.300 --> 00:12:24.300 They're focusing on sustainability from the modularity, 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. 00:12:28.300 --> 00:12:31.300 In my opinion, they perform at the price point, 00:12:31.300 --> 00:12:35.300 which is a difficult thing to do at that price point. 00:12:35.300 --> 00:12:38.300 They are in the upper echelon of speakers. 00:12:38.300 --> 00:12:41.300 Considering I've listened to speakers and seen systems 00:12:41.300 --> 00:12:45.300 that are on the order of like 50 to $100,000, 00:12:45.300 --> 00:12:50.300 they're stacks up to the ceiling and they're just so demanding of a room. 00:12:50.300 --> 00:12:53.300 You walk into a room and it is the speakers 00:12:53.300 --> 00:12:56.300 and you also lived there. But these are not quite as assuming. 00:12:56.300 --> 00:13:00.300 And they sound damn good and they're very loud. 00:13:00.300 --> 00:13:06.300 And I think these are kind of in that weird hi-fi space of like, 00:13:06.300 --> 00:13:10.300 I'd put these in my house, but I'm not like an aficionado. 00:13:10.300 --> 00:13:13.300 I just kind of like the sound to sound good. 00:13:13.300 --> 00:13:17.300 They're like art. Everybody who's walked past the set here has been like, 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. 00:13:20.300 --> 00:13:25.300 Get the black ones. Yeah, the amps are quite powerful, 350 watt amps. 00:13:25.300 --> 00:13:28.300 They run an ARM quad core in them, which is kind of interesting. 00:13:28.300 --> 00:13:32.300 And the other interesting thing is that they actually list 00:13:32.300 --> 00:13:36.300 the digital analog converter on the spec page. 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. 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. 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 00:13:51.300 --> 00:13:54.300 and they're all sort of just modular. They connect into each other. 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, 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, 00:14:04.300 --> 00:14:07.300 but they are also a bit more of a statement. 00:14:07.300 --> 00:14:10.300 I think the price is right for the performance. The loud is good. 00:14:10.300 --> 00:14:13.300 I mean, that's probably why they named their company that. 00:14:13.300 --> 00:14:16.300 I can't get around that they look like portal speakers. 00:14:16.300 --> 00:14:20.300 Honestly, that's pretty f***ing sick. But they stick out. 00:14:20.300 --> 00:14:23.300 They will be a focal point in your room. 00:14:23.300 --> 00:14:26.300 At that kind of price point, it's really down to you. 00:14:26.300 --> 00:14:29.300 The nice thing is that when they start moving into North America, 00:14:29.300 --> 00:14:33.300 you'll probably be able to try them if you're in the market for them. 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. 00:14:38.300 --> 00:14:42.300 They're really neat. Eggie. Eggie. 00:14:42.300 --> 00:14:45.300 Oh, look at that. May eggs. 00:14:48.300 --> 00:14:49.300 Okay.