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 […]
Atohm may not be a familiar name to many readers, but when we couple Atohm to Devialet and mention that these two companies brought us the Devialet Ensemble 120/GT1 it might a ring a bell. Atohm is a French company that was chosen to supply loudspeakers for a Devialet package that is sold worldwide under […]
By way of an upside-down review, and to save you scrolling to the conclusion at this point, I wanted to like this product. I had liked this product at a couple of recent European events (no, correction: I absolutely adored the sound they made), and, thankfully, after correct amp-matching and room placement– I did like […]
For a long time German loudspeakers were considered heavy in the bass and bright in the treble, but that was last century, things have changed. Maybe ELAC considered this when they opened a second research centre, this time in the USA, to finally shed that image. The designer in the USA is Andrew Jones, a […]