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Introduction Earthquake Sound is well known in the home audio as well as car audio arena for their incredibly high powered subwoofers. They added power amplifiers a while back, and I mean big ones - in physical size as well as output. In the last few years, they added speakers to their line, including some $20,000/pair behemoths. Recently, Earthquake has begun marketing speakers that are aimed at home theater. Their Platine Noireé (PN) line includes floor-standers for the front, and smaller ones for the center and sides. The PN-2515 is the latest addition to the Platine line. It is what's called an LCR speaker, meaning that you can use the same speaker for the front left, center, and front right. Of course, you can also use them for the sides and rear. The advantages of the LCR speaker are that it is bookshelf size, so it is easily placed, and secondly, since it is the same identical speaker all the way around, it is very well matched in terms of the sound. Of course, the center speaker is usually placed on its side, but it is still the same speaker, and has the same output character, although the dispersion will be different horizontally compared to the ones standing straight up on the left and right. For this review, I received five PN-2515s, and also their new MiniMe P8 subwoofer. This sub is a very small package, with an 8" active driver, an 8" passive radiator, and 160 watt amplifier. It only weighs 10 pounds, so it is very easy to handle. The Design The PN-2515 is a two-way ported design, with a 1.5" silk dome tweeter (this is 0.25" to 0.5" larger than most tweeters), and two 5.25" polymer-cone mid/woofers. The tweeter is between the woofers, but offset to one side, so it is not a true MTM design, but close to it. This slight offset aids in the dispersion when it is situated horizontally for the center channel. The flared port is on the front, next to the tweeter, and the front edges of the enclosure are beveled. The subwoofer has the drivers on the side, with respect to the amplifier on the rear. Four 0.25" tall rubber feet are on the bottom. Both products are finished in gloss black and have removable grilles. Notice the reflection of the flower vase and picture frame in the finish, in the photos shown below. These things are beautiful and very spouse-friendly!
Here is a close-up of the tweeter, showing its doped silk material.
There are two mounting brackets on the rear of the 2515, one on each end. This lets you mount it horizontally on the wall if you like. The speaker binding posts are solid metal. They are not bi-ampable.
The MiniMe amplifier panel is shown below. You can see that it has all the requisite controls. For the SUB/LFE slider switch, setting it to LFE takes the variable crossover out of the circuit, for use with SSPs or receivers that have their own crossovers.
For the review, I placed the five PN-2515s in a surround sound configuration, with each speaker on a stand so the tweeter was about ear height, and the MiniMe P8 subwoofer near one front corner. I set the SSP (Lexicon MC-12B) crossover at 50 Hz and the MiniMe sub in the LFE setting.
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