Contrary to what my ears are telling me, a full fleet of 18-wheelers has not convened suddenly in the driveway. “All my clients really care about is bass,” the popular Los Angeles home-theater designer explains, offering an apology for the overwhelming, boomy sound of the home theater equipment he is showing me.

Truth be told, most consumers judge the quality of sound by the level of bass. That may be why rock-shaped speakers suffer such a meager reputation. Big bass usually requires large woofers housed in voluminous speaker cabinets, and few rock speakers are endowed with either. As a result, they fail to get your toes tapping, so they often fail to impress.

---

DaVinci's tweeter swivels to direct sound at your favorite lawn chair.  (Click image to enlarge)

---

StereoStone, one of the principal progenitors of rock-shaped speakers, is polishing the outdoor speaker’s tarnished rep with the new DaVinci. These speakers achieve better bass output by joining a robust, 8-inch woofer and a ported cabinet, which provides a deeper bass response than the sealed cabinets of other rock speakers. Ported cabinets are fairly common in home systems, but this is, to my knowledge, their first appearance in a rock-shaped speaker.

Click here to see the lab measurements.

---

Why do other manufacturers avoid this design in their rock speakers? Because water and insects could find their way into the port and thus inside the speaker enclosure. (Even the most devout Buddhist might take a dim view of beetles warming themselves on his speaker magnets.)

StereoStone’s engineers claim that by employing an L-shaped port tube with a 304 stainless-steel grille and two nylon filters, they can effectively eliminate any possibility of invasion by moisture or mite. DaVinci’s designers did not stop there. They have also mounted the speaker drivers from the front in-stead of from the rear, as in most rock-shaped speakers. Thus, the drivers breathe freely without being surrounded by cabinet edges that can reflect sound and impair performance. The cabinet itself is made from an extremely dense, nonresonant material.

Most rock-shaped speakers protect their drivers with a slotted faux-stone grille that can interfere with the sound. DaVinci, instead, shields its drivers with conventional, perforated grilles of stainless steel that have little effect on performance. Although the steel grilles sport a flecked, faux-rock finish, they are somewhat more visible than most rock-speaker grilles. But despite their prominent appearance, I find DaVinci’s grilles more attractive than slotted rock-speaker grilles, but I suppose that is simply a matter of taste.

The designers chose a titanium-dome tweeter (the speaker part that reproduces the upper range). Accord-ing to StereoStone, this tweeter offers both outstanding performance and weather resistance. The driver also swivels, allowing the installer to point it directly at you for optimum sound.

I note DaVinci’s greatest strength almost as soon as I hit the play button on my CD changer. Even when the rock speakers are playing outdoors, I can tell from my living room that DaVinci would handily outshake most other rock speakers. Every bass note it produces sounds precise and natural. And each note stops when it is supposed to, rather than lingering to harmonize with the next.

Much of this bass performance surely results from the ported cabinet design, but StereoStone President Ken Rottner also attributes it to the speaker’s design simplicity. DaVinci does not use electrical crossover components—such as coils or capacitors—to filter the treble (high) frequencies from the woofer. (It does have a capacitor that filters bass out of the tweeter.) Rottner says omitting the electrical crossover components helps the amplifier maintain control of the woofer, and thus improves the precision of DaVinci’s bass response.

There is a trade-off to this approach, though. With no electrical crossover components to filter high frequencies from DaVinci’s woofer, the woofer must reproduce almost the entire range of the human voice, and voices do not sound as natural coming from an 8-inch woofer as they do when emanating from smaller speaker drivers. But remembering my earlier sentiments about what most consumers value in a speaker, I feel that 90 percent of DaVinci’s potential buyers would consider StereoStone’s design decisions a wise trade-off.

DaVinci positively blooms when one of my Wes Montgomery CDs comes up in the changer. The speaker’s excellent tweeter throws a startling soundstage across my backyard, as if an entire jazz group is floating above the flowerbed. I find this effect addictive. And I hear the same effect as I spin Hawaiian slack-key guitar CDs, orchestral discs and bluegrass instrumentals. This speaker performs best at exactly the task to which I most commonly put an outdoor speaker: belting out hours of jazz CDs as I relax in my backyard.

From the comfort of my outdoor recliner, with cigar in hand and a healthy supply of bourbon, I enjoy many an afternoon with DaVinci. It is the closest I have come to achieving indoor sound quality outdoors. And I am not alone. Rottner says that a major recording industry figure recently discarded all 50 rock speakers on his estate and replaced them with DaVincis. I thought that was a conspicuous frivolity at first, but now I can sympathize.

DESCRIPTION
Rock-shaped speaker for outdoor or indoor use.

DIMENSIONS
15 x 19.1 x 11.5 inches (hwd).

CONNECTIONS
Five-way speaker-cable binding posts with weatherproof cover.

COMPONENTS
Eight-inch polypropylene-cone woofer, one-inch titanium-dome tweeter.

PRICE
$1,400 per pair

CONTACT
(800) 350-7866
www.stereostone.com