There’s a little secret that most electronics reviewers know, but rarely talk about. When we get a product in for review, we pay attention to how many crossed-out labels are affixed to the box. We notice how many times the package has been taped and retaped. Speaking for myself here, I can use this both as a gauge for how popular a product is and of my overall place in the pecking order of reviewers for the applicable category.
What I’m getting from the state of the box for the new Onkyo Creator Series GX-30ARC active speaker system ($349 USD) is that there’s a good bit of interest in these things. Although I can’t count exactly how many labels have been marked up and replaced, I can tell the box has been resealed at least a handful of times. This is actually a good thing. It gives me a bit of a leg up on estimating how durable the speakers are and how well they hold up to repeated abuse—because we reviewers can be a clumsy lot.
Interestingly, even though I’m obviously not the first to open this box, it looks like I received new factory-sealed accessories, which are the first things you encounter when you open the inner carton. In addition to the power brick (with three interchangeable prong types for different global power standards) and the remote, you also get a pack-in HDMI cable, a USB-A-to-USB-C cable, and an odd four-pin DIN cable for connecting the primary speaker to the passive cabinet.
Here, with the speakers removed from the packing and their individual foam-paper wrapping, you can see the port for that connection at the bottom-left on the left speaker. You also get an overall sense of the design of the GX-30ARC—which is quite sharp for the price.
A closer look at the primary speaker cabinet reveals the GX-30ARC’s generous I/O complement, including an HDMI eARC port, an optical digital in, a USB-C DAC input, a 3.5mm stereo in, a subwoofer output, and a pair of RCA inputs that can be toggled between line-level and phono operation. There’s also a volume/source-select knob (which I wish were up front) and a toggle switch to set whether the main speaker is positioned on the left or on the right. What’s not obvious from a glance, of course, is the Bluetooth 5.3 antenna.
With a grille removed, you can see the GX-30ARC’s 0.75″ tweeter and 4″ midrange-woofer, as well as the recessed baffle that accommodates the speaker grille. I’m not loving that lip, but to be honest, it’s shallow enough (at ~3mm) that I’m not super-concerned about audio diffraction. For sure, I’m concerned enough that I’ll keep an ear out for it, but I’ve seen much deeper recesses on much pricier speakers.
While we’re on the subject of dimensions and reasonable concerns, the four-pin cable that connects the two cabinets measures about 80″, or a bit over 200cm. That’s par for the course among connecting cables for active speaker systems, at least ones I’ve reviewed in recent years, but I wouldn’t mind if it were a bit longer.
Also included in the box is a pair of stands to give the speakers a good bit of lean-back if you’re using them in a desktop configuration, although there’s nothing to say you couldn’t flip them and use them for a bit of tilt-forward if you’re installing the speakers above ear level.
Oddly, the speakers sit quite precariously on the included stands. A more ergonomic design, I think, would have been to have the rubber feet affixed to the speaker cabinets sit inside the shells of the stands, so you could set them up by feel alone. Instead, the rubber feet sit on strips of hollow plastic that are precisely the necessary width, which means you need to get your eyes down to the level of the bottom of the speakers to make sure everything is lined up.
The grippiness of the rubber, though, means that once the speakers are on their stands, they’re not overly inclined to move, even with a bit of a nudge.
You can also see here that the lip on the back of each stand keeps the speakers from sliding backwards too far. Again, though, there isn’t a lot of wiggle room. I think if the GX-30ARCs were my own, I might design and 3D-print a pair of stands that have the same shape but a larger opening, such that the feet of the speakers sit within the hollow of the stands, instead of on top of them.
It may be that all of the above is academic, though. I plan on starting my review with the speakers sitting atop my Monoprice 42838 stands, one of which you can see here to give you a better sense of scale. Compare this shot to a similar one from my Kanto Ren unboxing, and you get a sense of just how teensy-weensy these Onkyo speakers are. As such, I don’t know if it’s entirely fair to plop them onto stands in my normal stereo listening room, in my normal speaker positions, and expect them to keep up. But who knows? They might. I intend to find out, though it does seem like a slightly unfair ask.
If my hunch proves true and they don’t have enough output for satisfying stereo listening in-room, I’ll swap out my SVS Prime Wireless speakers and put the Onkyos through their paces as a desktop audio system, which seems a much more likely use case for most people anyway.
But the answers to all of the above will have to wait until my full evaluation is finished. Keep an eye out for that, coming soon to the pages of SoundStage! Access.
. . . Dennis Burger
dennisb@soundstagenetwork.com
