Product Reviews

Eclipse speaker monitors are used in recording studios the world over by the likes of John Williams, Michael Nyman and The Royal Academy of Music. Clarity and accuracy are the Eclipse monitors' watchwords, and the same technology is used in these desktop speakers and amplifier. At £400, they're far from cheap, but if you want the best audio experience from your Mac, whether to listen to music, watch movies or record your own material, it's a price worth paying.

The egg-shape of the speakers is designed to preserve the purity of the audio delivered by the drivers. In box-shaped speakers, sound from the rear of the driver makes the sides of the cabinet resonate, which is reflected back at the speaker cone, colouring the tone and producing out-of-phase sounds.

The best speakers add nothing at all to the audio, and that's what these Eclipses have been designed to do. The egg-shaped case is only part of the story. The speaker driver itself is not attached to the enclosure. Instead,

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it sits on an internal stand, which is directly connected to the external speaker stand, so no energy is transmitted from driver to cabinet. Energy dissipated from the rear of the driver is gathered by the egg-shape and filtered through an exhaust in the rear of the speaker.

The result of all this engineering is a pair of reassuringly weighty speakers and an equally robust, cone-shaped amplifier. The reasoning behind the conical shape is the same as that for the egg-shaped speakers, to reproduce the sound waveform as accurately as possible. The cone's nose is a precise volume control and on-off switch.

Setting up the speakers and amp is easy. Connect the power supply and speakers to the amp, and hook the amp up to your Mac using its 3.5mm headphone jack.

Audio quality is every bit as good as you would expect. The drivers pick out every detail and even without a sub-woofer, bass is sufficiently meaty. Mid-range and treble frequencies are delivered precisely, and yet despite the precision, there's no lack of warmth. These certainly aren't speakers that deliver a cold, sterile sound.

Whether you use them on a desk, or screw the stand to a wall and use them to fill a room, the audio quality is superb.

You may balk at paying £400 for an amplifier and speakers, and if you simply want to listen to your iTunes playlists at decent quality while you work, they are overkill. However, if you're after serious high-fidelity audio for listening to other people's recordings, or monitoring your own, the Eclipse TD307PAII will do the job admirably.