When you make as many loudspeakers as Bowers & Wilkins do it must occasionally get difficult thinking up new range names. Before the 700 series there was the CM or compact monitor series that sat between the 600 and 800 ranges, a range that grew out of one model in a distinctly organic fashion. So […]
Introduced in 2016 the Dynaudio Contour 20 is the smallest member of a range that keeps the longstanding Contour name alive for Dynaudio. Evolution has not only changed the size but also the drivers, the looks, the materials and the crossover into a modern product, looking extremely fresh for the Danish who have always been […]
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 […]
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. […]
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. […]
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 […]