So my birthday is coming up, well actually as I write this piece, I’m one hour away from turning 26.
I decided it was about time I treated myself to something nice and it was high time that I bought myself new audio equipment because I really needed some Hi-Fi speakers for all my music. After all, I’m an audiophile and music addict and I had a stupid Philips 2.1s – typical computer speakers – which sucked!
Anyway I ordered the Thonet & Vander Hoch 2.0 Hi-Fi Bookshelf speakers online because the reviews were good and it fit my budget. Let me say for 15,000 Rupees or 223$ these are a steal !
I was so excited and cautious about it breaking during transit that I paid 300 bucks extra just for some extra protective packaging.
If you’re looking for monitors then these speakers aren’t for you because these are bookshelf speakers for home audio and not pro audio. The reason I bought home audio speakers instead of pro audio monitors was because I prefer to listen more than produce. Yeah, my production has been minimal off late plus I haven’t really gone for a pro production course so I don’t need monitors as of now.
Let me tell you something -If it’s audio, trust Europeans to make something absolutely mind blowing. Don’t buy American or Canadian because they use different diaphragms for their speaker drivers i.e the material the diaphragm of the speaker is made of – and it’s a different shape so the sound you get wont be as crystal clear as European speakers.
Always trust European brands when it comes to Audio. You have the likes of DynAudio, Pro-Ject, Q Acoustics and of course Cambridge Audio. But all those are way too expensive but those are the best.
Anyway I wanted to start with something relatively cheap so I chose Thonet & Vander Audio – It’s a company with a great history dating back to 1949! That’s right 19 friggin 49!
Founded in Berlin in the middle of last century by Hannes Josef Einrich. A team of German engineers would go on to re-form it as T&V for mass production in the early 90’s. They started with handmade speakers and slowly moved up into factories.
Let me get straight to the speaker ->
The Thonet & Vander – HOCH 2.0
TECHNICAL FEATURES
70W RMS (35W + 35W)
50Hz – 20kHz
Wooden box HDAA
460 x 181 x 230 mm
2 Woofer 5.25″
Aramid Fiber
10 Ω 30W
1″
Silk
6 Ω 24W
yes
volume, treble, bass
White
Power
350W Boom nuff said
Rating – 9/10
Design
The primacy of straight lines with a flat surface of great height. Its angles are marked by organic curves, which give the speaker its versatility and personality.
Look and Feel
The Hoch speakers look fantastic. They’re really tall and elegant and the wooden casing makes it look classy. Very heavy because of the wood. They’re about as tall as my legs upto my knees and I’m 6 feet 1. So you get how tall these are. I chose black because well -All black everything haha – Black is classic.
Rating – 8.5/10
Added features –
DRONE FX™
This technology provides a clear and natural sound. It enhances the detail in the entire frequency range – It’s very detailed you can hear everything! After years of development they have managed to create a sound with greater fidelity, realistic and authentic. Enjoy your favorite songs in the purest way, without losing any detail.
HAMMER BASS™
Perfect for electronic music. This technology allows you to play the bass sounds in a deeper and adjusted way. It enables to magnify the impact of low frequencies, dynamically and deeply perceived, even when playing at a high volume. You can feel the beat of the bass impacting your body.
HDAA™ (HIGH DENSITY ACOUSTIC ABSORBER)
It is a natural polymer of high density that when combined, generates a more rigid and dense material than the MDF manufactured today. These properties prevent vibration and leakage of sound, enabling a more accurate, efficient and sustainable performance.
ANTIMAGNETIC SHIELD®
It is a technology that allows you to isolate the sound of external interference, allowing a pure and crystal clear sound flow without noises’ irruptions.
MESH
This protective cloth works as a shield,protecting the drivers from any damage and from all kinds of harmful agents. This helps to take care of both sound quality and equipment performance.
BASS REFLEX
The Bass Reflex Sound enhances the sound expelled through the rear of the diaphragm. This way the resonance system increases the bass response of the controller and optimizes the efficiency and performance of low frequencies.
INDIVIDUAL COMPONENTS
TWEETER
Its 1 inch tweeter is made entirely in silk**. This type of fiber is known for being very light and responsive, allowing to reproduce treble frequencies in a pure and crystalline way. The suspending ring also contains silk, which optimizes the accuracy by allowing extremely thin beats.
WOOFER
The speaker has two 5.25- inch woofers made entirely of aramid fiber in its characteristic yellow color. This material is extremely rigid and light, enabling a high performance. The upper suspension ring is made of highly elastic rubber, allowing larger displacement sensitivity and resistance to the beats of sound.
SET UP
Easy. Very easy. Just 3 wires just connect them and your good to go!
NOW THE MAIN THING –>
Sound Quality –
Overwhelmingly powerful. The Hoch stands out for its purity and clarity when playing music at high volume. It is really loud so you’ll have to turn it down otherwise be prepared for your neighbors calling the police for “Disturbing the peace”. It achieves an excellent performance, and offers the amazing quality and power. It transformed my room into an auditorium and it allowed an enlarging surround sound. The listening experience is potent and exquisite. The sound is crystal clear, the treble is perfectly balanced, the bass is really loud so you’ll have to turn it down. Vocals sound brilliant. Beats are booming beautiful.
JUST A REMINDER THOUGH – KEEP THE SPEAKER VOLUME AT 100% and AUDIO TRACK VOLUME ON ABOUT 25% FOR OPTIMUM USE. IF BOTH ARE 100% YOU WILL EXPERIENCE DISTORTION AND BREAKING – Which is the case for all speakers for 200$. When I just bought them they weren’t tearing at max volume but now they are, anyway it gets really loud so you have to lower the audio track volume.
But at this price THERE IS NOTHING BETTER
Rating – 9/10
PRICE
223$ !!! Really cheap and really value for money.
SPEAKER TEST
So as soon as I got these bad boys, I made a play-list of tracks to test them and they passed with flying colours. These tracks are a warm up and then a full on work out for your speakers. Hit play and test yours out now!
Verdict –
I am extremely happy and I couldn’t have asked for a better gift for myself on my 26th birthday! I love listening to music like this!! It’s bloody brilliant! All in all – one hell of a set of bookshelf speakers – power packed and crystal clear – HQ audio sounds marvellous. BUY IT ! For 15k INR it’s a fucking steal! If you want quality for cheap then just blindly trust these bunch of Germans they know exactly what they’re doing and have managed to engineer a set of mighty bad ass speakers!
BOTTOM LINE – For THIS PRICE i.e 223$ There isn’t anything better – BUY IT !
I really wanted the Pro-Ject Speakerbox but those are more expensive and have limited dealers in India. Anyway these will do for now…
All I need is an amp now which I’m going to buy soon from Chinese website http://www.fastech.com where it’s dirt cheap and I’m super set.
Loving it!
Cheers all.
Goodnight 🙂
Words For Reveries 
Hi Gaurav, thanks for the review. You still good with these speakers? I’m planning on these in a couple of days.
Any luck with the Chinese website with the amp? Would you be planning to use it with these speakers? If so, why?
Let me know please.
Thanks.
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Hey Amit, so far so good with the speakers. I’ve had them for about a month and they’re doing great. They are performing pretty well thus far.
In fact playing the playlist I made for them, they sound really sharp. They aren’t the best in the world of course but for the price I don’t think you could get better. 15k is a steal for these. I haven’t ordered the amp as yet but will soon. The reason you need an amp is because most of the music online has weak audio signals which need to be amplified to be heard well. So yes will purchase an amp soon. But these speakers get really loud so an amp is not a must. Also you do need to operate them by either lowering the input volume from your computer or turning the volume down on the speaker itself. That’s your choice. I personally like to keep the speaker on 100% and input volume on 20%. Bottom line – I’m happy with them.
I had really shitty speakers before these so these are a real treat.
They don’t blow your mind with the sound (the Pro-ject Speakerbox did that for me)but they’re good. I’m waiting to get the amp and test these actually. So yes the set up is still incomplete. It takes about a month for the amp to get here from China. The fuck up is that amps cost much more in India. The price difference is about 5x of the cost from China. So yeah I’m looking at the Lepai lp-2020a+ or the Line 5 a910 which are cheap but good amps. Will let u know when I do order them. Cheers!
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Thanks for the reply. Basically I’m looking to buy powered home audio speakers rather than monitors etc. So these caught my eye.
I’ve decided not to go in for a stereo receiver etc. I’m no audiophile but know enough about quality sound, which is of course relative to the money spent. At this time this is what I can afford.
Further, all my music is lossless compression. Mainly listen to Hindustani/western classical, jazz, blues and classic rock. Most of this is on hdds or in my laptop. I have plans to stream this via Google Chromecast Audio: https://www.google.co.in/chromecast/speakers/
Any views on this?
Thanks. Really appreciate your inputs.
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One more thing, this is available on ebay India. It’s manufactured in China.
What do you think?
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Buy from bajaao they have the original german make
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Hey Amit, no problem man. I’m glad to help. Well lossless audio sounds really good on these. Whatever HQ lossless audio I have on my laptop sound great on these speakers, not the best I’ve heard of course but especially Radiohead’s discog which I have in FLAC – It effortlessly plays the complex tracks, especially the ones on OK Computer and In Rainbows which have a lot of distortion effects, without tearing or breaking sound. If this is your budget then I don’t think there are many speakers out there which are better at this price. I don’t know much about Chromecast so I can’t help you there, but it sounds interesting. It should make the sound better, they’re google after all. But I really don’t know much about it. I suggest you check out legit reviews about Chromecast before you spend 4k on it. These are good and the German engineering definitely makes them durable and great to listen to. The bass might get too loud if you don’t turn it down but there are controls for it on the speaker itself so it’s fine. If you’re ordering from Bajaao then I suggest to pay 300 bucks extra for the extra protection they offer so that these are shipped without any issues. It takes more time to unpack but makes sure that the speakers don’t move around too much during transit. Once you buy it make sure you play the playlist I have made in this post to test them, they really exercise the speaker and are a good workout for them because they have various ranges and sounds. Once again I’m really happy with these so yeah buy them and enjoy ! 😀
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Thanks very much for replying again. Unfortunately they are out of stock at Bajaao. At a loss for what can be done now. Overclockers has it, but they informed me they have Chinese version.
Ideas? I’m in Hyderabad.
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Oh damn that’s a bummer. Try calling Bajaao and asking them when they’ll be back in stock and wait if you can. Otherwise if you need them in a hurry then buy the Chinese make from Amazon or wtv. It should be fine because I’ve read on T&Vs website that it’s their own factory in China and not contracted to someone else. It’s their own so it should be alright.
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Got the Chinese ones last week, bought in a shop in Holland.
The build quality is excellent and the sound is great.
T&V obviously got things in control.
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Your review was everything I needed to know. Thanks for the detailed one. Now, @ Amazon these speakers are for sale for the price you bought. Since you mentioned Chinese and German make I’m a bit confused. Can I go ahead with Amazon or visit a show room where they sell these speakers?
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Hey Albert, no problem. Well honestly, it doesn’t matter really because it’s T&V’s factory in China as well. I’ve had them for 3 months now and they’re performing great. Go ahead with amazon unless you want to hear them first. But they’re really good for the price. I listen to them everyday and they’re performing amazingly.
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Thanks buddy for the swift reply. Let me go ahead with the online order. I may come back to you with a word of appreciation sooner or later.
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I were looking around for review for these speakers and stumbled on your excellent review.
I am hunting for set of speakers. Purpose is for movies, music and to substitute my TV speakers. I read a little bit about what to look for in speakers. Can I ask you about the frequency response. Most of the 2.1 speakers have 50Hz – 20Khz. And so does many 2.0 speakers, including this one. Does that mean that these speakers will give out same amount of bass and other ranges?
Also what is your opine about “Mitashi Multimedia Tower Speaker TWR 90FUR”. It costs 9500 INR and have frequency response 40Hz – 20Khz, woofer is of 8″. I seriously dont know how significant is the numbers apart from what I read from another website couple of mins earlier
In same lines saw MonoPrice M200 which has frequency response of 35-20. I am badly confused… Would be really great if you could guide me.
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Hey hanim, These speakers are really awesome. The frequency response is
50Hz – 20kHz. You don’t really need a woofer for quality sound, in fact the woofer makes extra bass for no reason which makes the sound quality worse. These speakers have special bass, treble and master volume controls. So you can adjust it if you like more bass. I keep the bass on 60% and treble on 40% and it sounds really good. The wooden casing also helps in a better sound. It has a specific in built feature called hammer bass also which makes the bass sound perfect. I use them mainly for music and these get really loud. I would recommend buying these speakers because they have great all round sound. I don’t know about the Mitashi or MonoPrice but honestly I’ve had these speakers for 5 months now and I’m really happy, these are really brilliant and I would highly recommend buying them.
Cheers!
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