Living with the Orbitsound T12
When moving into my new apartment, the one thing I stupidly didn’t think about was my surround sound needs. Though you won’t hear me complaining about living in a huge open lounge & kitchen…the one thing that slipped my mind was ‘where are my rear 5.1 speakers going to go?’. As you can see from the images, it’s not the ideal scenario to have wires & speakers dragged around the room.
After trying various TV & sofa combinations, I decided that maybe a good quality sound-bar could suffice as the room is pretty square & ideal for acoustics. Now as many of my friends know, I am very much the world biggest tech fiend & frankly not heard good things about sound-bars. That is until I came across the Orbitsound T12 (which at the time was a pretty unknown brand to me).
After acting like an ever impatient kid, my parcel arrived & I was pleasantly surprised. The size of the bar was not as large as I expected, which I preferred. The sub-woofer box how ever is pretty big, but again something I prefer (though others might not) & fits perfectly into a my living room window space. It houses a 6.5inch tuned reflex woofer. Please ignore my position of the bar stacked on Vogue magazines, we are still in the process of getting our media center built lol.
It has a good arrangement of inputs, including my beloved optical in. It also comes with a phono to jack lead too which helps link up any external sources such as laptops, PC’s, tablets etc. Then there’s the built in iPod/iPhone dock, which again I was very impressed by. One thing that really stood out was the removable coloured grill, it’s actually metal! That’s right, it’s metal! Allot of audio visual hardware companies (even a few high end ones) opt for the typical ‘fantastic plastic’ which is very played out.
Now comes the important stuff, how does it sound? Well simply put…amazing. I was expecting a really flat sound but was completely blown away by the impact this tiny little box has. Jehrome & I really put it to the test when the PS3 was summoned, throwing an onslaught of games at it. The clarity is insane & because of the space we have it works wonders throwing the sound around the room. The low end is really punchy & not for the feint hearted. I am officially converted.
For many a sound-bar will never replace the now standard 5.1 set up, but that’s not what I was trying to do here. I wanted a sound system that can handle HD movies, my gaming & of course the epic amount of bass that lives in my home, being a DJ & all that. It does all the above & just a bit more.
Of course not everything was as impressive as the sound, I was really, really disappointed by the remote control it comes with. It’s very flimsy & within a month or so the buttons are already starting to fade. A good universal remote control is next on my list so hopefully I can make the change.
Overall I can only recommend you grab one, especially at a price point of only £300. I have already sold it to a few friends & with the new T9 coming out this month, I might just find myself pumping the same bass in my bedroom. Oh & if the next model should happen to include wifi & cloud streaming I have a funny feeling I will be reaching for my wallet.
For all the tech info and to grab one from their store, hit their website below.
http://www.orbitsound.com/