AudioKinesis Swarm Subwoofer System
$3200
Bass in concert venues behaves differently than bass in rooms of domestic size: the density of the modal frequencies in the lower part of the music range in a large hall compared to its spareness in smaller rooms makes modal irregularities all but totally insignificant in concert halls but troublesome in home listening. This difference cannot be completely eliminated, but it can be minimized by the use of multiple subwoofers, with their multiple positions serving to make modal behavior less audible. This idea is embodied in practical, elegant, and modestly priced form in the AudioKinesis Swarm system of four subwoofers, designed by Duke LeJeune. This system outperforms any single or dual subwoofer system, creating a startling sense of being in the recording venue.
Stirling Broadcast LS3/6 Loudspeaker
$5995
This redesign of the original by Derek Hughes stands as the latest embodiment, thus far, of the design principles of the Spendor BC1 (taken up later by the BBC as its LS3/6), which was the progenitor of the Spendor SP1 and SP1/2. This family of speakers has intrinsic neutrality and an unusual ability to interact with the room around them correctly to produce a result superior, in musical terms, to the vast majority of speakers—even much more pretentious and expensive ones. The cabinet moves resonances away from the area of maximum hearing sensitivity; the use of one mid/bass driver to cover a large range makes phase linear where phase linearity counts; and the overall balance comes out right in actual rooms. Add AudioKinesis Swarm subwoofers, and the result is a system that sounds more like actual music than almost anything else at any price. (Another version of the original BC1, also designed by Derek Hughes, has recently been released by Graham Audio; a review is forthcoming.)
Townshend Trough
$3000
Decades ago, Townshend Audio introduced a vinyl playback system (the Rock Reference, Issue 70), which, with design input from Jack Dinsdale and John Bugge at Cranfield Institute of Technology, included a way to damp the tonearm at the cartridge end via a trough of damping fluid that swung out over the record being played. This was one of those ideas that was so clearly good that one wonders how other people missed it. One wonders even more how, with the idea revealed, they kept on missing it. This is just the right way to do it for vinyl playback. The trough can be used with ’arms in general on other turntables—in effect, anywhere. Combine the trough with a Morch DP8 (with its uniquely correct moment of inertia behavior) and/or with one of the remarkable Pear Audio turntables or, say, with the Nakamichi TX1000 to solve the off-center problem, and one is well on one’s way to realizing at last the true possibilities of vinyl playback. Why the trough has not become universal is, indeed, an ongoing mystery, because this thing works.
Tags: LOUDSPEAKERS
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