Digital Trends

Orb Audio Classic Two

February 3rd, 2005 | by Ian Bell

Features and Design

Orb Audio offers four speaker systems to choose from. The Classic One system from Orb audio comes with two single satellite speakers and the company’s Super Eight Subwoofer for $519 USD. Stepping up to their Classic Two speaker system will give you two more satellite speakers which stack on top of the originals in a stereo setup, for $629 dollars. Both the Classic One and Classic Two systems are designed with a stereo setup in mind.

If you are looking for a surround sound system for your home theater, Orb Audio has two solutions that are ideal. The company’s Mod1 Home Theater System features five satellite speakers and 1 Super Eight Subwoofer. And their Mod 2 Home Theater System adds four more satellite speakers which stack on the existing front and rear speakers. The Mod 1 system sells for $699 while the Mod2 sells for $1099 respectively.

There are three color finishes available to choose from: Metallic Black Gloss, Pearl White Gloss and Hand Polished Steel. Choosing the Hand Polished Steel finish costs an extra $80 dollars, most likely due to its complexity and the extra steps taken to create its finish. The satellites go through a powder coating process after which they are carefully inspected for defects in the manufacturing process.

The satellite speakers used in all of the Orb Audio speaker systems are about the same size as your average grapefruit with a diameter measuring close to 4-inches. Gold-plated binding posts are attached to the rear of each speaker and use a soft plastic bumper to prevent the binding post from scratching the satellites finish. You can definitely tell the craftsmanship is top-notch just by looking at the detail.

The subwoofer that comes with each of their systems consists of a 12” x12” x 12” enclosure, an 8” sub woofer and a 150 watt class A/B amplifier which the company claims is conservatively rated with a peak of over 400 watts. Their Super Eight Subwoofer also has a max SPL of 111db. The Super Eight subwoofer looks very nice with a textured black paint finish and a silver front grill. We would have preferred a solid metal or a black grill however. The silver cloth grill doesn’t seem to match the upper-end feel that the rest of the system has. Overall the Super Eight subwoofer looks very similar to what we have seen from Sonance and Sunfire. Both of those mentioned brands sell their small sub woofers for a considerable amount of money, so Orb Audio certainly is challenged with coming up with a lower-priced subwoofer that puts out similar performance.

The back of the Super Eight subwoofer

On the back of the Super Eight, you will find the Hi Level in and outputs, the low pass crossover dial, phase switch, subwoofer volume controls and the power switch. The power switch has three settings, On, Off and Auto. The phase control selects 0 through 180 degrees phase shift of the subwoofer output relative to the other speakers. When the power switch is left On the Super Eight automatically detects the presence of a signal on the line input and will power up from standby mode.