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Teufel’s Consono series is one of the best value ways to upgrade the audio quality of your home cinema setup. Combining an active subwoofer with five high-quality passive satellite speakers, you just need to connect them to a 5.1 amplifier and you’re good to go. The Consono 35 is the most powerful set in the series, making it perfect for larger rooms that need a substantial subwoofer to produce powerful bass.
The bass driver inside the mammoth 17kg sub measures 250mm – big enough to produce some seriously powerful rumbles. The entire subwoofer is enormous, too, measuring 24x41x49cm (WxDxH), so make sure it will fit in your home. It’s well worth finding room for it, though. Bass notes had serious punch in our film test. The action sequences assaulted our ears at full volume, but the satellites were never eclipsed.
This is partly due to Teufel equipping each satellite with multiple speaker drivers. As well as a high-frequency tweeter, two mid-range drivers provide ample coverage across the frequency spectrum, ensuring both movies and music sound their best. We had no trouble hearing speech over an orchestral backing track, and could pick out details easily.
You’ll have to configure the frequency crossover points manually using your amplifier, as there’s no option to do so on the subwoofer. This rarely caused problems in testing when watching films, but we found that it wasn’t so easy to fine-tune the crossover point to make the most of our music tests. However, after some careful tweaking, quieter songs sounded just as good as bass-heavy rock and electronic ones.
You’ll get a similar audio experience when watching movies from the less expensive Consono 25, but we think the extra cost is worth the upgrade for anyone looking to outfit a larger room with surround sound. The twin-driver satellites and larger subwoofer can produce more powerful and better balanced audio, which is perfect for both films and music. Few 5.1 speaker systems cost less than £300, and none that we’ve tested sound as good as this.
| Specifications | |
|---|---|
| Rating | ***** |
| Award | Best Buy |
| Speaker configuration | 5.1 |
| RMS power output | 400W |
| Power consumption standby | 1W |
| Power consumption on | 158W |
| Analogue inputs | none |
| Digital inputs | none |
| Dock connector | none |
| Headphone output | none |
| Satellite cable lengths | N/A |
| Cable type | replaceable (speaker wire) |
| Controls located | subwoofer |
| Digital processing | none |
| Tone controls | Subwoofer volume, phaze, auto level |
| Price | £259 |
| Supplier | http://www.teufelaudio.co.uk |
| Details | www.teufel.eu |
