Vanatoo Transparent One Encore
Has Serinus been demoted? You might well ask. This month, instead of reviewing a $58,000 stereo amplifier, I’m tackling a $599 powered loudspeaker system. Truth be told, I’m always on the lookout for products that deliver outstanding sound at bargain prices. And since I maintain in my living room a modestly priced system built around powered speakers—this in addition to the far costlier system in my dedicated listening room—it’s an easy fit for me to evaluate low-priced products in a real-world context. Besides, I’ve been impressed by Vanatoo’s achievements ever since my first encounter with the company’s original Transparent One speaker system, at the 2012 Rocky Mountain Audio Fest. A bonus, Vanatoo is located relatively close to my home in Port Townsend, Washington: another easy fit!
They serve up far more of a meal than you might expect at their price point.
Genesis of the Transparent One Encore
Vanatoo was founded in 2007 by mechanical engineer and amateur speaker builder Gary Gesellchen and electrical engineer Rick Kernen. Aware that a sea change was happening in audio, both men decided to quit what Gary described as “well paid jobs” to start working on Vanatoo. As Gesellchen explained when he traveled from the company’s Seattle-area headquarters to set up my review samples, “I thought I knew enough about speaker design to build a small, affordable system that could pole-vault over the standard of ‘doesn’t suck.’ In fact, we decided that it wouldn’t suck by a long shot.
“A lot of things were changing in technology that we thought would disrupt how people were going to get and listen to their music. The iPhone had just
