GoldenEar Technology keeps coming out with new speakers and reviewers keep loving them. I have been waiting for the first review of the ForceField 5 subwoofer (12″ woofer; 1500 watts; 13 x 14″ bass radiator; $999). The first one came as a surprise. For some explainable reason reviewer Mark Fleishman of Home Theater magazine chose to review a surround system composed of five GoldenEar Technology Aon 2 bookshelf speakers and a Forcefield 5 subwoofer. Who does that? Anyway, the short version is that he absolutely loved the system and gave it 5 stars for performance, 5 stars for build quality and 5 stars for value. I’ll cherry-pick some quotes then give you a link to the complete article.
“It’s remarkable to find this kind of design and construction in a speaker selling for just $400 each” followed by,“Few speakers in my experience have gotten through both movie and music demos with such unfaltering grace and power as the Aon 2.”
“It struck me that these speakers were as adept at low level resolution in chamber music as they were with high-decibel rock’n’roll. They were boundary busters…They could play literally anything I threw at them.”“Bass response was so solid that I often ran the Aon 2s without the sub.”“I was dumbfounded by how much bass output the sub could muster…the ForceField 5 sub handled low-frequency barrages with floor-shaking confidence.”And again, commenting on the sub’s more subtle musical capabilities,“Each beat was a series of integrated events with a beginning (attack), middle (dominant bass pitch) and end (damping)…. the system could stand up to high-level blasting, never losing touch with the warmth, smoothness and texture that made me seek out the British vinyl.”
http://library.constantcontact.com/download/get/file/1103589248191-452/HTMP-Aon2_FF5_May_2013.pdf