Loudspeakers

Odd though this might sound, it bothers me when PM gives me a sequence of exceptional loudspeakers to review. Can there really be that many miraculous designs, one after the other – or am I growing soft? Following models from DeVore Fidelity [HFN Aug '23] and Wilson Audio [HFN Sep '23], and reborn LS3/5As, I find myself with a new Franco Serblin speaker that has rocked my world. The Accordo Goldberg could be, overall, the best yet to come out of the fertile brain of the inspirational if, sadly, late designer.

Franco Serblin, who passed away in 2013, first unveiled his flagship Ktêma in 2010. He had left Sonus faber, which he founded in 1983, in 2006, so the Ktêma was in development for nearly five years before he felt it was ready to be sold by the new company bearing his name. I remember the tension during its gestation, and Franco's elation at being able to produce a no-compromise system – not that he was ever restrained at Sonus faber. Think of the phenomenal Extrema, Guarneri and Stradivarius. The wait for the Ktêma proved worth it – as did the anticipation lasting a decade to hear a pair in my own system.

The idea of stacked speakers is nothing new: SME founder Alastair Robertson-Aikman was famed for using double-decker Quad ELS57 electrostatics [HFN Sep '77 & Dec '01] and the idea was even endorsed by the speaker company which provided instructions to achieve the same thing, with the upper speaker mounted in a frame upside down above the lower. Even the late brand ambassador, Ken Ishiwata, was for a while demonstrating his Marantz electronics with stacked pairs of Mordaunt-Short Performance 6 speakers mounted in frames he'd spec'd and had custom-made.

When the Quest Group, known for the ubiquitous AudioQuest brand, acquired GoldenEar in 2020 it raised some eyebrows. Why would a company excelling at manufacturing and selling cables, often co-operating with speaker brands, wish to tackle the challenging loudspeaker market itself? And what would happen to the GoldenEar product range, which next to custom install and subwoofer models mostly consists of curious semi-active loudspeakers? The answer to that second question, at least, is the £6249 T66, the first arrival under GoldenEar's new ownership.

From the sheer performance and value of the flagship Triton Reference [HFN Jun '19], down to the bargain that is the Triton Five [HFN Mar '19], we've been very much taken with the sound of the GoldenEar range. And this despite the 'but it shouldn't work' cost-effective engineering employed by the company, including its liberal use of plastics in the cabinets' construction.

When the entry-level model in a speaker range costs £70,000 a pair, and weighs no less than 80kg – that's each speaker – you'd rightly assume you're in very serious high-end territory. And yes, imposing though the Prana speaker looks, its two aluminium enclosures mounted on a hefty 'Z-frame' and the whole enterprise standing some 99cm tall, this is the baby of this particular range. Above it sit the Satya speakers, 1.23m tall, 140kg apiece and £110,000 a pair, while the flagship is the 1.47m tall, 180kg-a-pop Samadhi, yours for a nice neat £200k a pair...