Being bitten by the super-tweeter bug a few months ago I took the opportunity to try a pair of ELAC 4Pi Plus.2 super-tweeters at home. This is an omnidirectional ribbon tweeter that has been on the market for a very long time and has been incorporated into some of ELAC’s best loudspeakers in the past, […]
I imagine that even the youngest readers will have heard of the most famous BBC monitor speaker the LS3/5a, originally developed in 1975 for use in mobile recording vans to monitor speech. It was the successor to the LS3/5, and created because KEF no longer made the necessary drivers. The ‘a’ version made use of […]
I heard a pair of the new Totem Sky monitors on a visit to a dealer, it was only a short listen but long enough to recognise the sheer quality and make me want to hear them at home. A couple of weeks later I picked them up and since then they have been making […]
What's the connection between F1 racing cars and transmission line loudspeakers? Yes, you’ve got it, airflow. In an F1 car you want low wind resistance and equally low turbulence in the car’s wake because that causes drag. In a transmission line (TL) you want the air to be able to flow out of the end […]
Active loudspeakers are hot, once the preserve of studio monitoring, speakers with built in amplifiers can be found across the board from Bluetooth boxes through soundbars to serious hi-fi. A brand that has been nibbling away at the affordable end of the audio market is Audioengine, an American company who’s direct approach at the Munich […]
When Prism Sound launched their first consumer product the Callia DAC they chose Mark Knopfler’s British Grove studios to do it in. The venue has more than its fair share of ATC monitors (they have the big ones of course) but the character of all ATC speakers is much the same, warts-and-all detail resolution of […]
I was well aware of the reputation of the British brand Q Acoustics prior to these products. It wins lots of awards and I’d heard them at several shows, so when I was offered the chance to hear them at home I got greedy and took both Concept 20 monitors and Concept 40 floor standers. […]
This review has taken longer than expected because it’s been so hard to tear myself away from these most enjoyable, highly involving loudspeakers to put pen to paper. There probably isn’t a higher recommendation than that to bestow on this unconventional design from Bob Surgeoner but, as to how this conclusion was reached, read on.Neat […]
Focal introduced the Sopra series in 2015, at the time there were two models, the No.1 bookshelf and N°2 floorstander, which I rather liked. This year Focal followed these with centre and surround speakers and a new floorstander, the Sopra N°3. This is bigger, heavier and has more cone surface on the woofers than the […]
These little Sony speakers came up in a conversation I was having with a Hollywood film editor who’s heavily into hi-fi. He had heard them at a reviewer’s house in the States and said I should give them a go as he thought I would like them, knowing my love for BBC monitor speaker designs. […]
Years ago I reviewed a Raidho loudspeaker designed by Michael Børresen. The only thing I did not like about them was their high price. More recently, the same Michael Børresen designed a much cheaper loudspeaker range for the Scansonic brand, from which the small floor standing model MB-2.5 has been living in my listening room […]
In the past I have not been a big fan of Dynaudio loudspeakers, not that I doubt their quality, but somehow my rooms and the speakers never were a good match. But times change even at Dynaudio and as soon as I heard a demo of the Excite X18 on T+A electronics I asked for […]