ELIPSON

What is it about the French? The thing that jumped out at me from the Intermeet stand of French firm Elipson were the two bright red, 150mmdiameter spheres sitting on posts.

They were Planet M speakers, two-way coaxial speakers with 100mm bass/midrange and 20mm silkdome tweeters. I was thinking Cabasse, another French firm, and was wondering if someone might have copied someone else. But if someone did, it wasn’t Elipson, since it has been around since 1938, making spherical speakers for about that long.

In Australia it is focusing on the Planet M and Planet L speakers (the L is pictured right, 290mm diameter, with 165mm/25mm coaxial drivers), a subwoofer, a music centre and some turntables. The Planet Sub is cylindrical and packs a 200mm driver pushed by 200W. It’s available in black, white and, of course, bright red. The Planet M and Planet L add some more colour options.

Elipson actually has quite a range of speakers, including the much larger (a 500mm sphere) BS50 Tribute speaker with its distinctive ‘Acoustic Reflector’ on top, and even some in more conventional speaker shapes.

The stylish 2 × 120W ICEPower-amped Music Center BT is a flat cylinder, 73mm tall and 330mm in diameter. It has DAB+ and FM, a CD player, USB input and, as the name suggests, Bluetooth, which supports the aptX codec for higher quality wireless sound. Normally we’d note that you’ll only get an advantage from that if you use certain premium-model Android phones. Except... turntables.

Elipson also has two lines of turntables, the Alpha (pictured right) and the Omega. The first and last? I imagine that was intentional. The Alpha has an PVC chassis and aluminium tone-arm, while the Omega has a heavier acrylic lacquer chassis and a carbon tone-arm. Both come with an Ortofon OM10 cartridge. Both are preassembled, so it’s just a matter of taking them out of the box and plugging them in. Or perhaps not even plugging them in. Each comes in three versions: the standard model for use with regular phono inputs, the RIAA model with a built-in phono preamplifier and RIAA equalisation, and the RIAA BT model which adds to that Bluetooth with support for the aptX codec, as well as a USB connection (for connecting to a computer for recording).