If you’re torn between the sheer impact of speakers in boxes and openness possible from panels, then your (hi-fi) life has inevitably been a series of compromises. If you own pairs of each, you probably swing between them, never quite satisfied – like owning solid-state and valve amps. You know your Quad 57s lack the bass of, say, big B&Ws or Tannoys. Conversely, you can’t get the openness of the Quads or Maggies out of your head.
Whether it’s bravery, a weak grasp of colloquial English or a misguided belief that some wag won’t abuse the name, Sonus faber has anointed its smallest-ever two-way with the moniker ‘Toy Speaker’. Undoubtedly, as its literature proclaims, it chose that tag because it suggests joy: ‘Toys have always been synonymous with happiness and surprise. ’ And – cynical rotters aside – the first reaction you’ll have when you see the new baby is not that the name contains an intrinsic insult, but that the product is, well, adorable.
Although deeper than an LS3/5a, it is narrower and shorter at 265x185x270mm (hwd).
Blown away by MartinLogan’s Spire earlier this year [see HFN, Apr ’09], I assumed that it would replace the Summit. Before the ink was dry, the Summit X was announced, and at a higher price point to ensure that the gap would prevent customer confusion. But in order to justify the cost difference, for a speaker not that much larger, its performance would have to be instantly, audibly superior. Luckily for ML, the Summit X may be the best hybrid the company has delivered to date.
Not having had a Tannoy sub for review before, I was surprised to learn that the new, inexpensive TS range – of which this is the top model – is the first from this famous marque to include high-level inputs, which allow connection to the speaker terminals of a power amplifier. Of course, line-level inputs are also provided for direct connection to processors or multichannel disc players.
What this means is that Tannoy’s latest trouser flappers – the 801 with an 8in driver, 1001 with a 10in driver and, you guessed it, 1201 with a 12in driver – are easier to dovetail into a wide variety of audio systems. In a home theatre context you will generally use the LFE output from the AV amplifier or processor, whereas in a conventional music replay system, where line-level outputs downstream of the volume control are often not available, the speaker-level inputs will be a boon.
Not many audio companies, to my recollection, have made the transition from manufacturing speaker stands to making the boxes atop them, but that’s the journey undergone by Kudos Audio. Its stands are still winning awards but today the marque is as well known for the five-model range of Cardea loudspeakers, ranging from the compact C1 – joint winner of our group test last year (HFN Nov ’08) – to the recently introduced, top-of-the-range C30.
Slotted beneath the latter and previous alpha male is the C20, a two-way floorstander that uses the same cabinet and bass-mid driver as the lesser C2 but is equipped with a superior SEAS Crescendo tweeter and higher-grade crossover components. Included in the latter are the bespoke silver-wired capacitors that also feature in the C10 – the cut-above version of the C1.
When Scott Walker famously sang ‘My Ship Is Coming In’ he could have been describing taking delivery of a pair of Focal’s £110,000 Grande Utopia EMs, surely one of the finest dynamic loudspeakers known to humankind. Standing over 2m tall and weighing 260kg (each!), the four-way ‘Grande EM’ with its electromagnetic 16in woofer and user-adjustable ‘Focus Time’ cabinet construction is a statement product that challenges the envelope of speaker performance. Privileged indeed are the audiophiles with adequately large listening rooms in which to accommodate them and deep enough pockets to afford them.
Focal is France’s largest and most successful speaker manufacturer, producing several series of hi-fi models ranging from affordable to, well, the price of a Bentley in the case of the aforementioned flagship.
Oh to live in a trendy warehouse conversion overlooking the Thames. Imagine the acres of glass, the polished floors and the designer furniture with the Habitat labels peeled off. One’s loudspeakers would need to offer equally stunning visual splendour, exude an air of bespoke affluence and leave your friends (probably called Tarquin and Jemima) green with envy. Clearly you would need Jamo’s sumptuous R 909s or if your City bonus has been a little credit crunched this year, perhaps the smaller but equally lush R 907s reviewed here.
These new Mission 792s certainly have kerb appeal, or maybe that should be curve appeal. With their contoured sides, wrap-around grilles and sculpted front, no one could accuse them of not standing out from the crowd – even if their looks are sure to divide opinion sharply. The shiny black finish is actually genuine piano lacquer, with seven coats applied to create a truly deep and lustrous gloss. This approach is both labour and time intensive, as each coating must be dried for 24 hours before it is rubbed down by hand and re-sprayed.
Perhaps because Audioplan is more than just a loudspeaker manufacturer – it makes cables, Sicomin isolation and damping products, and mains conditioners as well – the German company offers just three models of speaker. Each is a two-way design, although the costliest Konzert III incorporates three drivers: two forward-facing and a second bass-mid driver firing rearwards from the back of the cabinet.
The bottom of the range Kontrapunkt IV B, on review here, has no such elaboration but still sports some unusual features. First of these to catch the eye is its – for want of a better term – cabinet stand.
Gamut by name, gamut by nature. Danish audio company Gamut (it writes it GamuT), not content with offering eight models of loudspeaker, of which the Phi7 is top of the four-model Phi range, also manufactures a CD player, preamplifier, two integrated amps and four power amps plus interconnect and speaker cables. So it can supply you with an entire hi-fi system, wires included.
Phi in the context of this Gamut speaker and its siblings is the golden ratio, 1:1.
The LS80 speakers by JBL are no shrinking violets, standing tall in the room at just over a metre high and weighing over 35kg each. The veneered sides are gently curved, as is the front. The wood finish for the side panels looks a bit dark for my taste and, as Henry Ford offered, there are lots of colours – provided you choose Dark Ebony, which is polished to a high gloss finish. The front, top and back are all in dark grey to black, so these speakers are quite sober in appearance.
Since 2004, PMC’s entry level DB1+ has been one of my reference speakers. Put another way: since reviewing it for the November 2007 issue of Hi-Fi News that year, I’ve regarded the DB1+ as one of the best speakers available for under £1000 per pair. How far under? Enough to allow that figure to include decent stands and cables.
Part of this love goes back to my unshakeable admiration for transmission line speakers, since I first heard IMFs.
Like Audio Physic’s Sitara model recently reviewed in these pages [see HFN June ’09], the latest incarnation of the Audio Physic Tempo – the sixth, no less – catches the eye by being notably slim, deep and tilted back at 7º to provide time alignment of its small midrange driver and soft-dome tweeter.
As the grilles on either side of the cabinet hint, a pair of opposed bass drivers handle the low frequencies, an arrangement which facilitates the narrow front baffle and reduces vibration through cancellation of their magnet reaction forces. The only puzzle is why Audio Physic didn’t take the opportunity to mount the two bass units at the bottom of the cabinet, a disposition pioneered by Roy Allison to help reduce low frequency power output variations caused by interaction with the room boundaries.
Its narrow footprint makes the Tempo cabinet relatively unstable, so Audio Physic provides aluminium outriggers which screw to the bottom of the cabinet to carry spikes outboard of the base at either side.
I admit to double-checking the price of the CM9 because it appears to offer such a lot of hardware for the money. As well as being one of the largest speakers here, it has four drivers including B&W’s highly regarded FST midrange unit whose woven Kevlar cone, rather than having a conventional roll surround, is swaged at the edge and rests on a ring of foamed plastic which operates in compression. This novel arrangement improves the dissipation of cone vibrations but limits the available cone excursion, making the FST unit unsuitable for reproducing bass frequencies.
So here the CM9 hands over to twin 165mm bass drivers (effective diameter about 132mm) which are reflex loaded via B&W’s familiar dimpled Flowport.
Along with the Spendor A6, Dynaudio’s Focus 220 – now in Mk II guise – is the most conservative looking speaker here. Whether you consider that a merit or demerit will depend on both your taste and your décor. Also like the Spendor it is a two-way, although in this case the soft dome tweeter is accompanied by twin bass-mid units operating in parallel. In common with all the other speakers here the 220 II is reflex loaded in the bass, with a port venting on the cabinet’s rear panel.
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