Loudspeakers

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Review: Jamie Biesemans, Lab: Paul Miller  |  Oct 18, 2025  |  First Published: Oct 01, 2025
hfnoutstandingThe latest launch from former DALI owner, Peter Lyngdorf, marries expertise from his Nordic Hi-Fi and Purifi brands to ensure a very big sound from very small speakers...

To call the Clarity 4.2 ‘petite’ is no understatement, as this second loudspeaker to be introduced by Radiant Acoustics boldly puts the ‘book’ back into ‘bookshelf’. Moreover, the cabinet, just 260mm high and 164mm wide, still manages to host a full four drive units. This Danish company only surfaced a year ago and won’t yet be a hi-fi household name, but it’s clearly not your run-of-the-mill debutante.

Review: David Price, Lab: Keith Howard  |  May 01, 2018
hfncommended.pngWith its lustrous-looking swooping cabinet, exotic drivers and colossal price tag, this is a seriously special speaker

When you're designing a loudspeaker that sells upwards of £38,000, depending on finish, you can pretty much do what you like. Brands selling sub-thousand pound floorstanders have a super-keen eye on what their competitors are doing, and what the market wants. By the time you reach the Raidho Acoustics D-2.1's level, however, you're in a whole new world – it's where designers spread their wings and fly.

Review: Andrew Everard, Lab: Keith Howard  |  Aug 03, 2020
hfncommendedDanish-based Dantax Radio reinvents a classic: a rework of the Raidho D2.1, now fitted with tantalising drivers

Déjà vu, all over again? Very recently we were playing 'spot the difference' with the Scansonic MB5 B floorstanders [HFN Jun '20], a superficially lookalike but substantially revised version of the old MB5 and one of the latest from Dantax Radio's growing GamuT/Raidho/Scansonic family. This month the focus is back on Raidho itself, with the arrival of a new version of the D2.1 speaker [HFN May '18] where, as with the M5/M5 B, there's quite a bit of visual similarity between old and new.

Review: Andrew Everard, Lab: Paul Miller  |  Mar 01, 2026
hfnoutstandingOffered in limited edition 25th anniversary and standard guises, the X2t is Raidho’s entry-level X series floorstander

Getting big bass from a loudspeaker, many think, requires huge drivers able to shift a lot of air. However, big drivers mean big cabinets to house them, and both skill in their tuning as well as capacity on the part of the amplifier. The former, at least, is something Danish company Raidho has clearly got under control with its X2t, although these £12,500-per-pair floorstanders opt for 135mm bass drivers – one covering bass/mid up to 3.5kHz, the other purely bass to 140Hz – for a slender form factor. The cabinet is just 143mm wide, and the whole speaker only 300mm wide including its aluminium outrigger feet, of which more later.

Hi-Fi News Staff  |  Jan 27, 2015
This handsome pair of Revel F208 floorstanders sits at the top of the California company’s recently introduced Performa 3 range. The R&D team has spent the past three years completely revamping its middle-range Performas. We’re told they’ve been designed not simply to offer a step up in performance from Revel’s cheaper speakers but also to give more than a taste of its far more expensive models. Manufacturing is in Indonesia.
Review: Andrew Everard, Lab: Keith Howard  |  Apr 26, 2019
hfnoutstandingA beryllium tweeter is the highlight of these new speakers – do they really 'redefine performance expectations'?

They clearly don't believe in sitting on their hands at Revel as the Performa3 M106 and F208 speakers have recently been subject to wholesale revitalisation, creating the PerformaBe range, said to 'redefine performance expectations'. Comprising the £4000 M126Be standmount/bookshelf speaker and the £10,000 F228Be we have here, the new models are available in a choice of high-gloss piano black, white, American walnut or metallic silver and, while the use of ceramic-coated drivers is familiar Harman/Revel fare, the new talking point is a beryllium dome tweeter.

John Bamford and Keith Howard  |  Feb 25, 2009
I didn’t need much persuading to audition this sumptuous pair of floorstanders made by Revel, one of its flagship Ultima2 range. Priced a cool £11,000 they exude opulence from their sculpted front baffles in gloss black, highly lacquered cabinets finished in real wood veneer (ours were the mahogany version; also available in piano black) and hi-tech drive units. Revel’s Ultima2 range comprises the Studio2 that we have here, an even larger model called Salon2, a slim bookshelf that’s suitable for on-wall use dubbed Gem2 and the Voice2 centre speaker. Commensurate with price, attention to detail is fastidious; to ensure that each Ultima2 loudspeaker is matched to within a fraction of a decibel to its prototype reference, a final tuning process is conducted on all production units to ensure absolute uniformity.
Review: Mark Craven, Lab: Paul Miller  |  Jun 02, 2025  |  First Published: May 01, 2025
hfnoutstandingLeveraging its 30 years of innovative speaker design, the Orion features Rockport’s ‘next generation’ cabinet

Named after the Maine town where it started in 1984, although now based down the coast in South Thomaston, Rockport Technologies has been known by audiophiles since the 1990s as a manufacturer of high-end – and heavyweight – loudspeakers. The Orion floorstander tested here is no exception, weighing 163kg per piece and selling for £165,000. Suffice to say, it’s a far cry from the early sub/sat systems of chief designer Andy Payor...

Review: Ken Kessler, Lab: Paul Miller  |  Nov 24, 2021
hfncommendedSince its birth, devotees of the LS3/5A have craved more bass – does the answer lie in Rogers' active AB3a sub?

Delayed because of the pandemic, Rogers' AB3a subwoofer is one year off being able to claim it's the 25th anniversary celebration of its passive predecessor, 1995's AB1. Yes, the gap between them has been that long. The postponement doesn't, however, diminish the delight LS3/5A users will show for the arrival of a dedicated active subwoofer for one of the most celebrated small monitors in the history of hi-fi. It's here, and it's a honey.

Ken Kessler and Keith Howard  |  May 25, 2009
Who could have anticipated this even a year ago? One of the most beloved of all loudspeakers, the legendary BBC LS3/5A, was finished. Period. Stalwart fans of the product – Doug Stirling, for example – issued limited runs, but who could imagine that the speaker might suddenly reappear as a commercial venture? Well, it has. .
Review: Ken Kessler, Lab: Keith Howard  |  Sep 12, 2019
hfnoutstandingLike buses, you wait and wait for genuine LS3/5as and then two come along – now Rogers is back with a re-engineered version of the milestone, to our reviewer's delight

Throughout my hi-fi career, I have manifested three fixations: valves, Decca cartridges and BBC LS3/5as, all of which faced sell-by dates 40 years ago. My pessimism was unfounded. Valves have never been stronger, and London maintained the Deccas. But LS3/5as? Aside from occasional facsimiles using non-KEF drivers, the LS3/5a was history. Yet now we have two new proper LS3/5as, a rebirth I never anticipated.

Trevor Attewell  |  Jul 19, 2025  |  First Published: Jul 01, 2025
hfnvintageFollowing revisions to the LS3/5 specification, the BBC monitor makes its ‘domestic’ debut. Trevor Attewell salutes a small speaker with big appeal

The BBC’s outside broadcast engineers often have to work in cramped conditions, for example in OB vans, where the steady proliferation of equipment puts cunning stowage, tidy habits, and a strict diet for the occupants at a distinct premium. Studio monitor loudspeakers are particularly difficult to locate sensibly in these circumstances, and the design aim behind the LS3/5a was the provision of a small but high quality monitor.

Review: Ken Kessler, Lab: Paul Miller  |  Jun 08, 2021
hfnoutstandingOne time staple of BBC monitoring, and with feet in both professional and consumer camps, this large standmount has been resurrected and refreshed by a master of the art

One cannot but think of the notion that 'Once is chance, twice is coincidence, third time is a pattern'. Following the revived 1970s JBLs and Rogers' return to LS3/5A manufacture [HFN Jul '19], the arrival of a dead-accurate, reborn BBC LS5/9 as part of Rogers' 'Classic' range is further proof that a trend is under way. All those Instagram images of systems made up of 50-year-old components tell us the past is back with a vengeance.

Review: Andrew Everard, Lab: Paul Miller  |  Oct 11, 2021
hfncommendedThe middle model in Scansonic's trio of M-series loudspeakers is one of the growing breed of 'compact floorstanders'

Take a look at these Scansonic floorstanders, and you'll notice they look big and impressive, especially for speakers selling for a sensible £1499 in very on-trend black or white silk finishes. But don't let our photographs of the M20 fool you for those mid/bass drivers are just 10cm in diameter – or four inches in old money – and the baffle a few cm wider still. Recalibrate your view based on those figures, and you'll realise these speakers are well short of a metre tall – 93.5cm, in fact – and that, if not quite knee-high to a grasshopper, means these aren't what you'd call 'room-dominating'.

Review: Andrew Everard, Review: Paul Miller, Lab: Keith Howard  |  Jul 09, 2020
hfnoutstandingFrom a new and extended Raidho family these Scansonic floorstanders now benefit from the 'GamuT touch'

We've been here before, reviewing the Scansonic MB5 speakers three years ago [HFN Aug '17]. However, collective amnesia has not set in, for despite the £6249 MB5 B looking near enough identical in its choice of black or white silk finishes, it is in fact a new version of the design, reworked by chief designer Benno Baun Meldgård. Hence the 'B' suffix on the new model.

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