Loudspeakers

Drop in on Derbyshire-based speaker company Living Voice at any hi-fi show, and it's hard not to be mesmerised by its Vox Olympian flagships. With styling somewhere between the brass section of an orchestra of several centuries ago, and a steam-powered Victorian imagination of a Dalek from Doctor Who, these £200,000+ models – £435,000 with the optional Vox Elysian subwoofers – are a riot of horns, tubes and 'trumpets'. Even in a high-end arena not known for its understated looks, they stand out. Moreover, once experienced, they are never forgotten.

New ideas are being introduced at Celestion to bring its upmarket SL series into the 1990s. The first example, designed by Bob Smith, was the 100 [HFN Nov '91] followed now by the 300 reviewed here. This is a £1000 floorstander that aims to bring improved bass extension, power handling and superior dynamics to the genre, while sensitivity remains below average at 84dB/1W. A remarkable aspect of the 300 is its transmission line loading, a first for Celestion, and developed with an unusually authoritative theoretical approach, by the designer Martin Roberts.

What do you get if you take a venerable British loudspeaker marque, mix with the (from 2007) owners' fabrication facility in China, stir in a highly respected German loudspeaker designer and top the whole creation with British assembly? In this case, it's the Castle Windsor Duke loudspeaker, an elegant £4500 standmount design that's the fruit of a truly worldwide network.

It still surprises me that KEF's R series, which features seven models in total, includes only one standmount/bookshelf option. Surprising because compact speakers are extremely popular, and because the R series is the company's mid-tier proposition, above the entry-level Q and a considerable way below the Reference range. Yet the previous generation, which launched in 2018, featured just one standmount – the R3 – so it's deja vu five years later.

The Amati G5 sits at the top of a four-strong new 'fifth generation' range of the company's Homage speakers, so-called because they pay tribute to the tradition of musical instrument manufacturing in Cremona, Italy. And they do so not just in name, but in the way they're made, with extensive use of selected woods, handcrafting based on the work of traditional luthiers of the past, and even a lute-shaped profile, which first saw the light of day in the previous Homage series [HFN Oct '17].

Even the name sounds like a clarion call: 'O/baby!', straight out of Austin Powers. It resides 'one from the bottom' in DeVore Fidelity's Orangutan range, with only the minuscule, 25x25x25cm micr/O sealed cube below it. But the O/baby is the one that screams 'Buy me!' at this jaded hack. How so? This trickle-down gem from DeVore, smaller than the O/93 [HFN Mar '23], just may be the answer to my bucket list dreams. Or would be, had I the £6298 for a pair. And £1398 more for the stands.

It was a thought-provoking discussion with Avalon president Neil Patel on the virtues of absolute tonal accuracy in a speaker, and how to achieve it, that led to an opportunity to evaluate the Eidolon. It was to prove illuminating to discover just how closely his objectives had been realised in this design.