User Experience & Interaction Design

Craftel - Amplifiers and Speakers
I came across Craftel in a forum post. They are one of the local manufacturers of quality speakers and amplifiers in Chennai. Craftel's products include Speakers in Bookshelf and Floorstanding versions, matching amplifiers from Stereo to multi-channel amps. Also they custom manufacture amps and speakers to client's needs.

I visited Craftel showroom cum production place today. It is located in the Pudupet Aathithanar Road. Mr.Murugesan, the proprietor welcomed me and showed the variety of amps and speakers they sell.

Amplifiers:
All Craftel sound amplifiers are built by them and their basic stereo amplifier drives some 30w + 30w RMS. The box has decent matt black finish with 3 input selectors, two pair of speaker terminals, standard Bass and Treble rotary controls. The same pattern is followed in almost all of their amps. A 100w + 100w amp was also in the display.

Speakers
Craftel offers all sorts of speakers. In their showroom I saw the Tiny satellites, the wall-mounted bookshelf speakers, maple finish HTIB speakers, standard size Book-shelf speakers, Twin-woofer drived floor standers, and subwoofers of various sizes.

The Performance - Amp
Their basic stereo amp pumps out some 30w+30w RMS. This amp was hooked to a pair of bookshelf speakers. They did not have any audiophile quality CDs with them. And even I didnt take any such CDs with me. So I tried playing some tamil numbers and english numbers which they had. From the listening experience, I am very pleased by the performance of the amp. The amp has got so much power that it could drive a pair of floorstanders easily. The amp produces enough BASS and TREBLE to listen all kinds of music. Once you find and fix the sweet spot positions of the rotary dials according to the music genre you will ususally listen, you can start relaxing and enjoy the music. Altogether, a capable amp that costs only Rs.2700/- For that price, the performance is on par and one won't regret after buying this amp.

The Performance - Speakers
Craftel builds the speakers themselves. Looks like the drivers are imported, except the High frequency tweeter from Philips India. This Philips tweeter has a long lasting market presence and popularity due to its pleasing-everyone performance.

Judging the performance of a speaker is a tough job, given that the music tracks are tamil numbers. The reason is most of the movie music are composed on a reference level, in other words, they are flat. Such tracks will not help to judge the performance of speakers.

Now, coming back to the Craftel's book-shelf speaker's performance. The track from "Manmathan" movie sounded really good.Apart from the richie-street style looks, the performance was damn good. Equipped with a 4" woofer driver, a mid-range and a philips tweeter, Craftel's Bookshelf speaker was able to produce the music in a warm and richer note. The mids and low frequencies were good, but the highs were little high. Adjusting the amp proved that philips tweeter is somewhat over-killing the high frequencies. Apart from this one minor issue, the speaker was damn good. The bass was clear and good and more tight.

The Craftel floor standers are another surprise. Switching on the hi-bass button in the amp, produces more bass and you will never think of buying a sub-woofer! The bass was so good and powerful. Craftel has 3 models in floor-standing design and one book-shelf design. They have one more book-shelf model, but it fits more to be rear-speaker in the home theater configuration.

Conclusion
Considering the price and performance, I would say Craftel speakers and amplifiers are bang-for-the-buck. If you are not a serious audiophile, but want a audiophile-quality music setup at economical price range, then Craftel is one choice that you should consider.

To be more precise, Craftel's quality is way better than Richie street products, and comes close to the Audiophile quality. If craftel could tune their amp's performance such that the high frequencies sound more natural, it will match the real audiophile quality.

For those who are interested, here is the contact details.
Audio Craft
No.37 Harris Road (Aathithanar Salai)
3rd floor, Pudupet,
Chennai 600002
Phone : 28521243
au_craftel (at) yahoo (dot) com

Landmark : 50 feet from Cafe Green hotel.

UPDATE : Mr.Murugesan, the owner passed away on 5th may. Status of Craftel's future business is relatively unknown now. His son has taken over the business and he is an audio enthusiast specializing in Automobile sound setup. Craftel is continuing their business as usual.



- Rajesh Sundaram

Layout
Logitech's new Ultra Flat keyboard (USB+PS/2) resembles the style and dimensions of a laptop keyboard. Comparatively it is 20% smaller in the width than the regular keyboards. The fit and finish mimics the piano finish. HTPC users and those who are looking for some keyboard to complement their desk will fall in love. The layout of the keys did not change for the small form factor, but certain less used keys were moved to top. The navigational keys moves to the edge for the character keys and the numeric keypad remains unchanged. The USB keyboard comes with a USB-PS2 adapter to use with standard PS2 connectors.



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- Rajesh Sundaram