Loudspeakers

The 210mm Scanspeak Ellipticor bass/mid driver works to a high 2.8kHz here, the CSD waterfall [Graph 2] revealing a series of low-level modes up to ~4kHz before the 34mm Ellipticor dome tweeter builds to a peak at 10kHz [see Graph 1]. Distortion, however, is a very low sub-0.1% at 90dB SPL right up to the top of the bass/mid driver's passband. Otherwise, the offset MTM geometry complicates measurement of the R80's forward response at 1m but the slightly downtilted trend is likely to 'fill out' between 1-3kHz at greater listening distance, improving upon the ±3.7dB and ±3.8dB response errors, respectively. However, the HF roll-off is a 'feature' of the R80, even on-axis, leading to a limited 17kHz extension (–6dB re. 10kHz). Pair matching is good to 0.9dB (worse case between 3-5kHz but typically within 0.4dB from 200Hz-20kHz) while the R80's sensitivity is a healthy 91.1dB/1kHz (89.7dB/500Hz-8kHz).

The R80's conjugate loading flattens its impedance above a few hundred Hz where it dips to a minimum of 4.1ohm/127Hz but never rises above 8.8ohm from 75Hz-100kHz. All the big swings in impedance occur in the low bass where phase angles of –58°/67Hz and +51°/18Hz contribute to a minimum EPDR of 1.8ohm/93Hz. While this is not especially tough, the abundance of bass (33Hz at –6dB re. 200Hz) is not achieved without some 'colour'. The two woofers share a 48Hz-415Hz (–6dB) bandwidth but the upper driver is punctuated with notches at 150Hz, 450Hz and 900Hz associated with a pipe mode in the reflex port (tuned to 25Hz) that are also seen on the impedance and response [green shaded area, Graph 1]. PM