Loudspeakers

The man behind the brand (and more than a few others, it must be said) is arguably best known for his two-way designs. These would include the partnering ES-14N [HFN Jul ’23] and ES-7N [HFN Nov ’24] as well as the FinkTeam KIM [HFN Feb ’21] and Q Acoustics Concept 500 [HFN Jul ’17], to name but a few. For this larger enclosure, designer Karl-Heinz Fink discounted a two-and-a-half-way configuration – here there would be two bass units, but with only the upper driver working in the midband, directivity is skewed downwards. A D’Appolito configuration was also considered, but with two sizeable bass/mid drivers sitting above and below the tweeter, and the latter raised up to a typical seating listening height, ‘the speaker’, says Karl-Heinz, ‘would end up as a huge tower’.

Better, he concluded, to trade the added complexity of a three-way crossover, and cost of three (four) different drive units, for the optimisation of each driver’s passband and better control over directivity at crossover. For the ES-28N the two woofers operate in unison below 330Hz and are placed together, in a separate lower cabinet space, to optimise floor boundary reinforcement. PM