Loudspeakers

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Loudspeakers
Triangle Antal 40th Anniversary Loudspeaker
Review: Mark Craven, Lab: Paul Miller  |  Oct 22, 2021
hfncommendedFrench brand celebrates its Ruby Anniversary with a rose-gold tinted treble and two fabulous cabinet finishes

There's a definite feeling you're getting your money's worth when you encounter Triangle's Antal 40th Anniversary loudspeaker. This French floorstander, reasonably tall at 113cm and surprisingly deep at 35cm, arrives in an oversized box and, once excavated, greets you with 40th Anniversary branding on the front baffle and its quartet of drivers with eye-catching rose-gold anodised aluminium trims. I wouldn't say it looks a million dollars – there are too many right angles for that – but it certainly looks like it should cost more than the £3000 ticket (less still via some online retailers).

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Loudspeakers
Triangle Magellan Cello 40th Anniversary Loudspeaker
Review: Jamie Biesemans, Lab: Paul Miller  |  Feb 23, 2023
hfnoutstandingAnniversary celebrations continue with this four-strong Magellan series and trickle-down from the 'Grand Concert'

Historically, the city of Soissons in the north of France played a major role in the First World War. But for the last 40-plus years, to hi-fi buffs it's been better known as the home base of Triangle, one of France's major loudspeaker brands. It's a company that decidedly loves to celebrate birthdays, as after launching limited Anniversary models of the Antal [HFN Sep '21] and Comète last year, it has yet another festive offering – this time a complete range encompassing four loudspeakers and two dedicated stands. Strictly speaking, Triangle was founded in 1980, which makes it nearly 43 years old. Yet with the last few years being what they were, the brand has had to wait patiently before unpacking all its anniversary cadeaux.

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Loudspeakers
Velodyne Dd 1812 Signature Edition (£13,000)
Richard Stevenson and Keith Howard  |  Jul 25, 2009
I’m a sucker for a bit of extreme hi-fi, so how could I resist the UK’s first review of what is billed as the world’s most powerful domestic subwoofer. Velodyne’s DD-1812 Signature Edition is a 176kg beast with two 1250W Class D amps driving twin drivers in a true two-way configuration. Low frequency duties are split between a 12in carbon-laminate driver at the top and a whopping great 18in version for the really deep-down stuff south of approximately 35Hz. The name 1812 is a rather dull reference to the driver dimensions and not Tchaikovsky’s masterpiece of that year, which would have been so much more appealing given the piece’s famous low frequency thunder.
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Loudspeakers
Vienna Acoustics Beethoven Baby Grand (£2195)
Andy Whittle and Keith Howard  |  Aug 24, 2009
Vienna Acoustics was established in 1989 by Peter Gansterer in, believe it or not, Vienna. The city has some of the finest concert halls in the world, and may be considered as the birth-place of Classical (or Western Art) music. Peter lived in Vienna whilst studying acoustics… So no prizes for guessing how this ends up: a fine range of speakers named after classical composers, most of whom worked in Vienna. At the top of the Grand series is the Mahler, followed by the Beethoven Concert Grand, the Beethoven Baby Grand, the Mozart Grand and, finally, the Bach Grand.
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Loudspeakers
Vivid Audio Giya G1 Spirit loudspeaker
Review: David Price, Review and Lab: Keith Howard  |  Jan 01, 2018
hfnoutstanding.pngIt may not look as outrageous as the iconic B&W Nautilus, but this is its younger, and arguably superior offspring

When B&W introduced the Nautilus in 1993 it created what is surely the most iconic loudspeaker any of us will ever see. Its 'snail on steroids' look projected it on to countless magazine pages around the world and gave B&W the kind of PR boost company CEOs dream of. Only it wasn't a PR man that contrived the Nautilus, it was B&W's then senior design engineer Laurence Dickie. And though it looked like something created by H R Giger for the set of Alien, the Nautilus was actually an exemplar of the Bauhaus diktat that form follows function. It looked that way because it needed to be that way.

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Loudspeakers
Vivid Audio Kaya 90 loudspeaker
Review: David Price, Review and Lab: Keith Howard  |  Sep 01, 2018
hfnoutstanding.pngIf you've admired Vivid Audio's design philosophy but baulked at its styling, the new Kaya range is for you

Audiophiles can be a conservative bunch. Me, I sometimes feel that if I ever see another wood veneered box loudspeaker I'll attack it with a chainsaw but others of you, I know, prefer the old aesthetic, or at least a modern take on it, to curved, organic cabinet forms – especially if painted in primary colours. For a company like Vivid Audio, which appreciates and exploits the benefits of curved cabinets in respect of structural stiffness and clean diffraction behaviour, this is a problem.

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Loudspeakers
Vivid Audio Kaya S12 standmount speaker
Review: Andrew Everard, Lab: Paul Miller  |  Jan 11, 2025  |  First Published: Dec 01, 2024
hfnoutstandingThe baby of Vivid’s five-strong Kaya range weighs just 6kg but employs the same custom tweeter and core technologies that define the flagship, floorstanding Giya G1

Were it not for the enclosure design, it might be tempting to think of the Kaya S12, the smallest speaker from South Africa’s Vivid Audio, as just another standmount. But as those eye-catching looks suggest, there’s something special going on here, and the price – £6000 a pair in a choice of striking finishes, with more available to order – certainly sets expectations high.

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Loudspeakers
Waterfall Audio Iguascu Evo (£2295)
Steve Harris and Keith Howard  |  May 08, 2011
Forming an enclosure from glass is a costly process. So Waterfall’s floorstander represents fine value with style Peceived wisdom generally has it that a loudspeaker’s enclosure should be inert, so that we hear the acoustic output of the speaker’s transducers unsullied by the additional singing along of a cabinet. As ever in our wonderful world of sound reproduction there are designers who refute this given ideal. The late American speaker maestro Peter Snell, for example, whose Snell Type J and Type E models from the 1970s live on in the guise of today’s UK-made Audio Note speakers.
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LoudspeakersNews
Watt'S Up!
Hi-Fi News Staff  |  Oct 09, 2024
Re-Imagined Watt/Puppy Speaker Returns For Brand'S Half Century

To mark its 50th anniversary, Wilson Audio has resurrected its iconic WATT/Puppy for a ninth iteration - and the first since the dual-enclosure loudspeaker was discontinued in 2011. Called, simply, The WATT/Puppy, it sells for £41,998 in standard WilsonGloss colourways, with custom and premium finish options, plus choice of grille colour, available.

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Loudspeakers
Wharfedale Jade 5 (£1650)
Hi-Fi News Staff  |  Jan 30, 2015
Wharfedale describes the Jade range as its ‘new audiophile class speaker designs’, using computer-aided modelling and new material technologies. In the visually striking Jade 5, the tweeter and midrange are embraced in a combination housing that’s common to all the Jade models, raising the axis of the tweeter’s 25mm aluminium dome to peep above the front edge of the curved, sloping cabinet top. While the midrange has a 75mm concave aluminium/pulp diaphragm, the twin 165mm bass units use a new cone material called Acufibre, said to ‘marry the responsiveness of glass and carbon fibre’ in aself-damping woven matrix. They are impressed with a moulded pattern to break up standing waves.
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Loudspeakers
Wharfedale D330 Loudspeaker
Review: Andrew Everard, Lab: Keith Howard  |  Mar 19, 2019
hfnoutstandingWith its D series, Wharfedale yet again aims to redefine the art of the possible in budget loudspeaker design

There's something very special about a bargain hi-fi product able to defy expectations with a surprising level of performance. It stood the original Wharfedale Diamond speakers in good stead in the early 1980s, and continues to be a hallmark of the range to this day, in the Diamond 11 series [HFN Dec '17]. So it's intriguing to see the company launch another budget speaker series to run alongside the Diamond 11s, in the form of the D300 lineup.

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Loudspeakers
Wharfedale Diamond 11.1 loudspeaker
Review: Andrew Everard, Lab: Keith Howard  |  Dec 01, 2017
hfnoutstanding.pngNot the diddiest of the new Diamonds, but can the smart-looking 11.1 live up to its heritage?

The highly competitive British budget speaker market has long been a thing of wonder – or should that be bafflement? – for overseas observers. For many years, all the major players in the industry vied to squeeze maximum sales appeal out of boxes designed to sell for around £100 a pair, with each successful debut instantly setting itself up as the brightly-lit target for its near rivals.

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LoudspeakersVintage
Wharfedale Diamond loudspeaker
Review: David Price, Lab: Keith Howard  |  May 01, 2018
hfnvintage.pngWelcomed with open arms by those seeking a quality speaker for use in a tight space, the Diamond created the market for affordable mini monitors. How will it sound today?

Loudspeakers are surely the most fashion-conscious segment of the hi-fi market. There are Japanese amplifiers on sale today that look little different to their predecessors being sold in the late '70s. Yet the same 'period look' can hardly be said to be popular when it comes to speakers.

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Loudspeakers
Wilson Audio Alexia (£49500)
Hi-Fi News Staff  |  Oct 16, 2014
Customer and retailer reactions have suggested the need for a new Wilson speaker closer in performance to the universally-acclaimed Alexandria XLF [HFN Nov ’12], but one that swallowed no more real estate than a Sasha. With a footprint close to the Sasha’s, the Alexia hosts only a slight increase in height, due mainly to the necessarily larger woofer enclosure. To provide a goodly portion of the XLF’s adaptability, precision and coherence, the smaller Alexia had to offer adjustability of the midrange and tweeter positioning with to-the-millimetre accuracy, according to room specifics and the location of the owner’s ‘hot seat’. That meant a head section with movable segments, but with a volume akin to that of the original WATT.
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Loudspeakers
Wilson Audio Alexia Series 2 loudspeaker
Review: José Victor Henriques, Lab: Keith Howard  |  Mar 01, 2018
hfnoutstanding.pngImproved sensitivity and a deeper bass are just two features of the Master Chronosonic-inspired Alexia S2

During their time, Wilson's famous 'Watt Puppies' were upgraded on as many as seven occasions, until the Sasha W/P was born (now also in its Series 2 iteration). The Sasha was no longer a standalone monitor with a carrying handle and a matching subwoofer but a fully-fledged modular integrated loudspeaker system.

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