Summary: audiophile speakers at audiophile prices. Hard to set up. The effort is rewarded.
My house is tiny; a typical 300-year old British cottage. The front room is not only small with low ceilings but is odd shaped and has a huge fireplace jutting out. In short, it's a terrible house for someone who likes audio. There's no room for bookshelf speakers let alone floorstanders. That means getting creative and doing lots of research. And I needed a Christmas present for myself. The end result was a 5.1.2 set up based around Gallo Strada 2s on wall mounts for LCR with A'Diva SE speakers doing the surround/Atmos and a TR3D sub.
galloacoustics.com
That choice started out as a nightmare. No matter what I did, they sounded great from everywhere in the house until you were in the same room as them. After a huge amount of effort, that nightmare turned into a dream. The odd-shaped room meant the speakers were slightly out of phase. Putting accurate measurements from the seating position to the speakers into the amp helped but not enough. Eventually, through weeks of trial and error, the distances that worked were in the amp.
What these speakers give is a genuine audiophile experience. Now that they're correctly set up, the sound stage is wider than the room they're in. Despite being wall mounted, there's depth to the stage. You can point at the location of instruments. The Strada 2s don't have a crossover so everything is incredibly natural. Voices sound like voices.
The very musical sub makes itself known below 20Hz and finds its rhythm by 23Hz.
Christopher Tin's Waloyo Yamoni orchestral and choral music sounds like the concert is happening in front of my house. Peter Gabriel's Growing Up swirls sounds around the room despite only being stereo -- I had to check the amp hadn't sneakily switched on the surround. Daft Punk's Get Lucky caused an unstoppable butt wiggle. In stereo, the Stada 2s seem to be genuinely audiophile speakers.
Then the centre, surround and Atmos get involved. In movies. I've never heard better. From the jazz club opening music of Man From UNCLE to the thumping soundtrack of Tron: Legacy.
In all, getting them to perform was incredibly frustrating. All through this, Gallo gave me support well above and beyond. They do a 30 day money back guarantee and I almost took them up on it. On day 29, it sounded wrong, wrong, wrong. But I'm stubborn. Other reviewers had said great things so I figured the problem was me or my room. The stubbornness started to pay off about ten days later. A week after that, I -- and everyone else who has heard my setup -- joined the people saying great things about the Strada 2s.
My house is tiny; a typical 300-year old British cottage. The front room is not only small with low ceilings but is odd shaped and has a huge fireplace jutting out. In short, it's a terrible house for someone who likes audio. There's no room for bookshelf speakers let alone floorstanders. That means getting creative and doing lots of research. And I needed a Christmas present for myself. The end result was a 5.1.2 set up based around Gallo Strada 2s on wall mounts for LCR with A'Diva SE speakers doing the surround/Atmos and a TR3D sub.
Strada 2 | Gallo Acoustics
galloacoustics.com
That choice started out as a nightmare. No matter what I did, they sounded great from everywhere in the house until you were in the same room as them. After a huge amount of effort, that nightmare turned into a dream. The odd-shaped room meant the speakers were slightly out of phase. Putting accurate measurements from the seating position to the speakers into the amp helped but not enough. Eventually, through weeks of trial and error, the distances that worked were in the amp.
What these speakers give is a genuine audiophile experience. Now that they're correctly set up, the sound stage is wider than the room they're in. Despite being wall mounted, there's depth to the stage. You can point at the location of instruments. The Strada 2s don't have a crossover so everything is incredibly natural. Voices sound like voices.
The very musical sub makes itself known below 20Hz and finds its rhythm by 23Hz.
Christopher Tin's Waloyo Yamoni orchestral and choral music sounds like the concert is happening in front of my house. Peter Gabriel's Growing Up swirls sounds around the room despite only being stereo -- I had to check the amp hadn't sneakily switched on the surround. Daft Punk's Get Lucky caused an unstoppable butt wiggle. In stereo, the Stada 2s seem to be genuinely audiophile speakers.
Then the centre, surround and Atmos get involved. In movies. I've never heard better. From the jazz club opening music of Man From UNCLE to the thumping soundtrack of Tron: Legacy.
In all, getting them to perform was incredibly frustrating. All through this, Gallo gave me support well above and beyond. They do a 30 day money back guarantee and I almost took them up on it. On day 29, it sounded wrong, wrong, wrong. But I'm stubborn. Other reviewers had said great things so I figured the problem was me or my room. The stubbornness started to pay off about ten days later. A week after that, I -- and everyone else who has heard my setup -- joined the people saying great things about the Strada 2s.
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