Last week we had one of our headphone distributers walk into our speaker demo room. His response? ‘Wow! That’s a lot of speakers!’. And we do. It’s something we’ve been working on. When we upgraded our demo room, we wanted to offer our customers the opportunity to really check out options.

Especially the budget bookshelf market lately has really stepped it up, with several options from different brands that all receive 5 star reviews as well as the ‘speaker of the year’ badge. So how do you make sense out of all that raving pick-me information?

Lately, we’ve been chatting about a lot of things, but we’ve been a bit quiet on the home theatre projector front. It’s easy enough to think that nothing much is happening  when it comes to projectors, but frankly, you couldn’t be further off the ball. Things are moving; and they are moving fast. In the last year, projectors have become cheaper and technology is getting more and more sophisticated. What used to be reserved for the fat wallets of the elite, is now accessible for most people who are passionate enough to forego some of the other perks of life.So what is our crystal ball saying about the near future of home theatre projectors? 

Recently, we’ve added the Yamaha Aventage Series to our offering and we’re really stoked about that. Why’s that, you may ask? Isn’t Yamaha just Yamaha? And you’re right. We’ve been recommending the Yamaha RX-V series to our customers for a long time and for good reason. It’s just good, reliable ‘stuff’ that doesn’t tend to ‘play up on you’. And in the odd occasion where it does, the support you get from Yamaha and the importer is excellent. So what’s the difference between the RX-V Series and the Aventage Series? The answer to that tends to be a little obscure. You definitely are not going to get a straight answer from the Yamaha website. So here’s a bit of an explanation of why it’s a big deal. 

ng of subwoofers SVS claims that whereas choosing a full-range speaker is a highly personal and subjective decision, choosing the best subwoofer for you is a complete objective process. Whether you agree with that or not, fact is that it’s fairly easy to break down a great subwoofer’s performance in five highly objective and easily understood ways. So what are these 5 things to listen for?

Remember the assemblies, plays, performances, …. In your primary school hall? Whether the memories are fond ones or not, fact is that the traditional kiwi school hall is a place that takes a special place in the heart of many, many kids. And traditionally, you would not link a school hall with an impressive audio experience. Guess, what? We’ve just changed that!The Rapallo installations team has been quite busy in the last few weeks and months. One of the projects we are particularly proud of, is one of our latest school projects. And it is all about the sound in the school hall….

Digital versus analogue….or Bart vs DeanoAt Rapallo, Deano and Bart represent 2 different (very subjective) views of the audiophile spectrum: Deano is all about vinyl, analogue, vintage, and stereo. Bart, on the other hand, is a firm believer in digital, CD, SACD, DSD, Dolby surround and DTS:X neural. The rest of the Rapallo team is amused by their passionate discussions about the subject. It seemed like a good topic to investigate and research a bit further, and here are our findings. Some are quite revolutionary, even Bart had to admit….

One of the products that flies out of the Rapallo doors on a daily basis is the wireless remote control extender. 

It means you can enjoy your music AND change the volume without running back into the lounge and while you’re listening to music in the room next door. Even better: you don’t have to install a wall-plate volume control. 

We regularly get emails and phone calls from customers who are not quite sure how to install the product or even think it is faulty. While we are more than happy to help you out, we thought it might be much better to save you the time and simply show you what to do.

Rapallo’s Ben is on a budget… still. He may be no longer a student, but a full-fledged Rapallo employee… but until further notice, he remains on a budget when it comes to the purchase of his AV gear. And like so many audiophiles that have to work with limited funds, he is a big fan of Topping DACs and amplifiers.  

Topping released their new DX7 DAC and balanced headphone amplifier at the end of last year,  and as soon as it landed in the Rapallo quarters, it went on a trip home with Ben for some vigorous testing. 

When it comes to  wireless speakers, there’s a pretty simple way of looking at it, we think: wired speakers offer better sound, and wireless speakers tend to be more convenient.Of course, that’s a very broad statement and there are exceptions to that rule. And yes, wireless speakers are getting better. But there’s no going around that wires are better at transmitting sound than Wi-Fi (or Bluetooth for that matter).

But there is the convenience factor…

Here’s a story: some friends of Rapallo’s were building a new home. It was to tick some bucket list things; like a dedicated home theatre room and an awesome view. But when they were telling us about their plans, they weren’t really allowing for multi-room speakers for background music. They were thinking it didn’t really matter and that a pair of cheap wireless speakers would do the trick just as well. 

We went on a mission to convince them that some well placed in-ceiling speakers in their kitchen, living area, office, bedroom and bathroom would do so much better. We drew them a plan and they reluctantly agreed. 

Fast forward two years  and our Rapallo friends have been swinging through the day with their in ceiling speakers: ‘It’s the best advice we received, we use these in-ceiling speakers all the time. I don’t know how we put up with bad sound for so long.’