Status Acoustics Granite Bookshelf Speakers Preview

We got a chance to listen to Status Acoustics' new bookshelf speaker (formerly known as the "Element"—apparently that name is taken and must be replaced). We suggest Stonehenge as these babies would sound spectacular cranked all the way to volume 11 ;)

The Status Acoustics cabinets are made out of actual granite and are the most dense, inert speaker enclosure we've ever seen or even heard of. We've seen speakers made form glass, plexi, composite materials and carbon fiber, but we've never seen anything like this. Surprisingly, granite, like everything else, actually rings. To kill that and make it completely inert, Status Acoustics (or, the good folks at RBH Sound) employed a layer of dampening material, then a layer of aluminum, and then another layer of dampening material. The idea was to make this the most inert box you could get. 

Mission accomplished. There is absolutely nothing inside this box contributing back to the sound, it's all the information coming off the driver. The bookshelf speakers also feature these stainless steel ports as well as a stainless steel plate for the speaker connectors. It's a very high-end, sharp-looking speaker. Obviously, (to us at least) these speakers are based off the Status Acoustics Decimos, one of our all-time favorite speaker. Those speakers were already amazing, but these are an upgrade. The first upgrade, really, and it took this much engineering to beat those fine speakers.

These speakers play comfortably down to 50Hz, and they went with a ScanSpeak 9500 tweeter, telling us that it simply sounded better in the system than even some of the more modern tweeters. That's one of the things we love about this company. It's far easier to go with the highest model number and claim it's better, but they recognize they are building a system and they use their ears as the final arbiter of which tweeter is going to end up in the box. 

RBH Sound's home theater demo surprised us in that it just didn't sound, initially at least, as clean and pure as we're used to...then we realized that the Decimo-busting granite speakers had truly spoiled us in the first part of the listening test. They rendered everything after them "flat"—for a time. After our ears acclimated back to the cold, harsh reality of "you-can't afford-these-speakers-so-suck-it-up land", we actually realized the surround demo was pretty excellent as well.

Unless otherwise indicated, this is a preview article for the featured product. A formal review may or may not follow in the future.