Loudspeakers: Is smaller better?

Honey, somebody shrunk the Abbys
On the other hand, maybe you have a pair of great speakers for your front channels.  Maybe they’re a pair of great sounding Cain & Cain Abbys. And maybe you’d like something to match for your back channels. Maybe you want to know about Terry Cain’s latest — the Noogi.

Terry is a woodworker/artist by trade and a music lover/speaker tweaker/manufacturer.  His designs are all based on creating great looking, great-sounding one-driver speaker systems with beautiful cabinets.

The Abbys were his lowest priced music machines. At $1,500 a pair they were and are a bargain. But Terry realized that even $1,500 was too much money for some people who wanted small speakers for rear channels in their home theater set-ups.

So Terry shrunk the Abby. Not really, but he took the basic design and made it a lot smaller — so that he could get the most from Fostex’s new 3-inch “full-range” FE87E driver.

Cain & Cain A rare glimpse into a mad scientist's lab. The big ones in the foreground are Abbys. The small, lighter ones on the rear shelf are the new Noogis.

Each speaker is nearly 29-inches high and about 6-inches wide and deep tapering toward the top.  They weigh about 5 pounds each. My test pair was impeccably finished in a light wood stain.

Noogis retail for $475 a pair crated and delivered (FedEx Ground) to your door. And when I say crate — I mean heavy wooden crate. Wait until you try to open it!

As for the sound, I was pretty sure that even a man of Terry Cain’s knowledge and skills couldn’t get much deep bass from a very small driver in a very small enclosure. I was right. Forget about super-deep bass. It’s a physical impossibility.  Terry says they’re good from 100Hz to 30KHz.

But everything else sounds amazingly good. These speakers excel at midrange sounds (human voices and most instruments) and above. Their treble reproducing qualities are especially amazing — extending way past audibility. That helps with recreating ambience in your listening room.

Noogis are of average sensitivity (88db) and sound good with a maximum of 10 watts of very expensive electronics. Most people won’t be spending tens of thousands on equipment to go with inexpensive speakers. But Terry designed them to sound terrific with today’s multi-channel, home theater receivers. The first time I heard them was on an inexpensive receiver — and they sounded pretty incredible.

That’s why I think Noogis are the perfect surround sound design. They don’t look like the proverbial box speaker. They are little works of art. Plus, they reproduce sound in a manner perfect for side and rear speakers.

I’m hoping that Terry will make good on his threat to create an affordable, matching subwoofer to go with the Noogis. Four Noogis, a sub and a center channel would be the perfect match for many home theater systems. Highly recommended.

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