Fischer & Fischer SN/SL 270 AMT speakers
Having enjoyed Fischer & Fischer’s standmount SN70 last year so much that I made it one of my best products of the year, it was with excitement that I awaited arrival of the compact floor-standing SN270. When it arrived, I was even more thrilled to discover that it was the version with the optional AMT tweeter and, like its smaller sibling, in glorious slate cabinets. I had a feeling that good times lay ahead.
German refinement
Fischer & Fischer was founded in 1981 by school friends Heinz and Thomas Fischer while studying electronics engineering, they shared both the same surname and a passion for building loudspeakers. In 1989 Heinz Fischer left the company and moved into car audio. Thomas’ mother owned a slate mine so he was familiar with slate and slate products at a time when reducing box resonances was a popular topic, so he tried different materials, including his mothers’ slate.
Peerless were using slate cabinets to measure their drive units when a resonance detection microphone system was developed by Michael Mudra. His work revealed the best material for a speaker cabinet was 50mm industrial concrete, closely followed by natural slate. Michael joined Fischer & Fischer in 1997 and the collaboration continues with Thomas Fischer the owner and managing director.
Design
The Fischer & Fischer SN270 AMT is an elegant compact floorstanding loudspeaker, and as my listening room is not enormous it is a bonus to find a floorstander which works well in the more compact spaces that many of us have. Slate is an interesting choice for a loudspeaker cabinet, but not easy to work with and expensive to transport. It is incredible to think that for almost a half a billion years, soil has been compressed and shaped into the solid rock which is today’s slate.
This all-important cabinet material is between 12 and 20mm thick to offer low-resonance and minimize unwanted vibrations. Finish options include classic natural slate or polished and lacquered in any RAL or car colour of your choice (SL 270 AMT). While offering a small footprint, the larger volume and double in-house 160mm mid-bass drivers in the SN270 are combined with a glorious AMT tweeter, pushing the response into full-range territory.
The bass reflex loading on this model is factory configurable. While normally downward-firing onto the plinth (as in the review sample), it can also be specified as forward or rear-firing.
The phase and impedance-corrected crossover has been conceived well and shows no obvious anomalies; it helps the frequency response to go down to 39Hz and extend to a quoted 27kHz. To the rear we have a pair of high-quality connectors which are rhodium-plated for single-wire connection to a nominal four Ohm design which has a stated sensitivity of 89dB, so it should be a benign load for most modern amplifiers.
A clean slate
Due to its flaky, layered structure, its negligible resonant qualities and its extremely high mass, slate boasts extraordinary acoustic properties. In slate cabinets, almost the entire energy of the drive units is available to excite the surrounding air. Fischer & Fischer point to a range of audible outcomes from their choice of slate. These include: greater bass dynamics and superior LF energy balance; cabinets which are non-bulky; and a very low resonance baffle that doesn’t interfere with the vibration of the high frequency driver.
The Fischer & Fischer SN270 AMT is the first speaker in the company’s range to feature the acclaimed Air Motion Transformer (AMT) high-frequency driver made by Mundorf. It is a unit that I much admire and usually brings a smile to my face, assuming it’s been well implemented.
Relying on the AMT for the HF response, the designer is striving for a sense of spaciousness and an almost ethereal subtle nuanced quality. The AMT version on the SN270 replaces a dome tweeter and has similar in benefits to a true ribbon tweeter, although the operation is different. In a ribbon, the driver is a flat foil whereas an AMT uses a pleated driver that is driven rather like a concertina, to move the air forward and backward. The folded-driver design, combined with the small motion range, means the AMT acts like a point source version of a larger driver, inherently resulting in lower distortion.
Central tweeter
Another interesting design principal adopted in the 270 AMT is the midrange-tweeter-midrange configuration, called MTM for short. The aim is to help maintain a consistent sound profile across multiple seating positions. Placing the HF unit between a pair of midrange drivers was an arrangement from the late 1960s that suffered from serious lobing issues until it was perfected by Joseph D’Appolito. He pioneered a way of correcting the inherent lobe tilting in an MTM design at the crossover frequency so that it was time-aligned. D’Appolito experimented with a third-order (18 dB/octave) crossover but switched to fouth-order. And we are still benefitting from his work today.
First thoughts
When the 270 AMTs arrived I still had Atoll’s new top-of-the range INS400 integrated on my rack and it was a simple task to connect the Fischer and Fischer floorstanders to see how they fared in my room. Using satellite and internet tuners to listen to radio stations and an Auralic streamer for Qobuz music, I settled down to see what the SN270 AMTs could do.
First impressions can count for a lot and I was aware that, just like the smaller SN70s, the slate cabinets of the 270 AMTs offered something rather special. Imaging was remarkable, almost breath-taking, along with a combination of grip, drive and transparency.
I recall how, when on a hi-fi magazine in the 1990s, we used Stravinsky’s Soldiers Tale (Pangea) with its spoken dialogue and music as a musical phrasing test of equipment. A variation on the Faust story, it relies on two actors, a dancer and narrator with on-stage music from seven instrumentalists. The strings of the violin were so realistic as to make my neck tingle while overall imaging was spot-on and really brought the piece to life with its wit and pathos. The central dance sequence showed how these modest floorstanders are capable of generating a soundstage of fine proportions.
Moving to chamber repertoire and Boccherini’s E major string quintet (Hyperion, 2001) which includes that minuet immortalised in the 1955 Ealing comedy The Ladykillers. The tempo was maintained well by the SN270 AMTs which allowed the tune to buzz along merrily. During a prolonged run-in period, I enjoyed my usual mix of live classical recitals, Swiss Radio Classic’s variety as well as speech-based dramas and current affairs material without the SN270 AMTs putting a foot wrong. They were highly detailed, beautifully transparent and presented the entire audio spectrum in a most natural way without the forced exaggeration that spoils too many a modern-day loudspeaker. We were on a roll.
Panel musings
When the listening panel arrived the Atoll was already on its way back and I had connected my mighty Hegel H600 streaming amplifier and we upped the tempo. Listening began with a 1970s track in the shape of California by Manfred Mann’s Earth Band. This soft, melodic piece, featuring beautiful vocals by Chris Thompson, was their second follow-up single after Blinded by the Light and conjures up a very summery American sound. Arguably their best song ever. It really oozes Seventies music culture and its great imaging was handled with aplomb by the SN270 AMTs. We noted how much atmosphere from the recording session came through and the high level of realism created.
The panel selected Bon Jovi’s Livin’ on a Prayer, which put us in solid bass territory as the cones on the SN270 AMTs visibly moved with all the energy. The volume was raised and the loudspeakers responded with increased realism and seemingly faithful bass reproduction but not at the expense of masking other parts of the spectrum as some speakers are prone to. These speakers are clearly very much in their comfort zone with this kind of material, even if I am not. The panel noted the realistic and deep bass, which was lower and more involving than they expected from the cabinet/driver sizes. They spoke of it being well controlled, tight and rhythmic.
We moved on to Born to be Wild, the 1969 hit by Steppenwolf which put the pedal to the metal as the panel revelled in the delights of the SN270 AMTs, saying “we’ve not had speakers this good for ages”. High-octane, epoch defining, this track didn’t trip up the SN270 AMTs one iota as they created a ‘big sound’, lively and bursting with energy.
For their millennial offering we turned to a catchy pop song in the form of Sophie Ellis Bextor’s Take Me Home (cover of a relatively unknown Cher song), which might qualify as the perfect summer record. Certainly, it’s a catchy number with excellent production qualities. Sophie’s vocals fit the song’s upbeat tempo perfectly, and the SN270 AMTs lapped it up; so much so that we played it twice and there probably isn’t a better loudspeaker endorsement than that.
I left the panel to it as they wallowed in the SN270 AMT sound from further rock material, reporting that powerful attack and decay didn’t faze these masterful loudspeakers which revealed plenty of slam on many track. Synths were powerful and drums were fast, faster than many a lesser transducer can handle well, they noted. Percussion was sharp and detailed without being shrill, while midrange vocals came through with clarity and emotion.
Conclusion
In the SN270 AMT, Fischer & Fischer has demonstrated what is possible from well-engineered, beautifully constructed loudspeakers of moderate proportions. To call this compact floorstander a Jekyll and Hyde of a loudspeaker suggests a negative connotation, and that’s unfair. But the SN270 AMT certainly has two strings to its bow. Given classical and speech-based material it sits there and faithfully reproduces the original.
But, my goodness, when fed rock which is bulging with low-frequency power and detail, these beauties come alive. They can rock with the best. Even better is that they do it at a competitive price; I mean, just look at what else is available at this money.
The strongest possible recommendation to book a personal audition of the SN270 AMT is conferred; not just from this reviewer, but from a listening panel that left the session with the most enormous smiles on their faces.