Loudspeakers

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Loudspeakers
Canton Reference 9K Loudspeaker
Review: Andrew Everard, Lab: Paul Miller  |  Sep 15, 2022
hfnoutstandingThis well-established German brand's Reference K loudspeaker series starts off with a compact, but deep, standmount design and it sounds as polished as it looks...

What do you envisage when you think of 'serious speakers'? All too often it can seem that bigger means better, judging by some of the behemoths we've recently had through the HFN listening room. For a while it seemed that every speaker stood taller than us, and had a mass well into three-figure kilo territory, often with a price that would buy a very decent car, even in the current shortage-inflated market. In the face of all that, Canton's Reference 9K could look desperately unfashionable, standing as it does just 41cm tall and with a price of £2850 in either black, white or cherry veneer finishes, all with a multilayer lacquer topcoat.

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Loudspeakers
Canton Vento 100 Loudspeaker
Review: Jamie Biesemans, Lab: Paul Miller  |  Dec 01, 2023
hfncommendedThis German institution offers a vast catalogue, including the Reference-inspired Vento range, topped by the 100

Canton is not only Germany's largest loudspeaker manufacturer, it might also be one of the most prolific speaker builders in the world. Yet within an extensive range that includes everything from on-wall and in-ceiling speakers to soundbars and subwoofers, its Vento series has long been a main 'pillar' of the brand, in production for nearly two decades. And now, as part of a recent refresh of the Canton catalogue overseen by technical director Frank Göbl, it's been comprehensively upgraded.

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Loudspeakers
Castle Windsor Duke Loudspeaker
Review: Adam Smith, Lab: Paul Miller  |  Nov 06, 2023
hfnoutstandingNo citadel in the sky, these latest Castle speakers are firmly grounded in great sound courtesy of the FinkTeam

What do you get if you take a venerable British loudspeaker marque, mix with the (from 2007) owners' fabrication facility in China, stir in a highly respected German loudspeaker designer and top the whole creation with British assembly? In this case, it's the Castle Windsor Duke loudspeaker, an elegant £4500 standmount design that's the fruit of a truly worldwide network.

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From the VaultLoudspeakers
Celestion 300 floorstander
Martin Colloms  |  Nov 21, 2023  |  First Published: Oct 01, 1992
hfnvintageThis slim design offers the traditional benefits of transmission line bass loading yet manages to overcome the drawbacks, says Martin Colloms

New ideas are being introduced at Celestion to bring its upmarket SL series into the 1990s. The first example, designed by Bob Smith, was the 100 [HFN Nov '91] followed now by the 300 reviewed here. This is a £1000 floorstander that aims to bring improved bass extension, power handling and superior dynamics to the genre, while sensitivity remains below average at 84dB/1W. A remarkable aspect of the 300 is its transmission line loading, a first for Celestion, and developed with an unusually authoritative theoretical approach, by the designer Martin Roberts.

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From the VaultLoudspeakers
Celestion 3000
Ken Kessler  |  Jan 31, 2020  |  First Published: Jan 01, 1990
An acoustic ribbon hybrid loudspeaker at a realistic price without the need for a huge amplifier. Too good to be true? Ken Kessler finds out...

Hybrids are supposed to be the best of two or more technologies, and we've seen the approach used for all manner of products. The most feverish of hi-fi's Dr Frankensteins though, have always been devoted to loudspeakers.

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LoudspeakersVintage
Celestion SL6
Paul Miller  |  Nov 19, 2011
Innovative when released, the Celestion is still capable of entertaining results

Launched at the Harrogate Hi-Fi Show in 1981, the Celestion SL6 looked different, and it was more different than it looked. In essence, its all-new drive units had been designed with the help of Celestion’s then-unique and revolutionary laser-based vibration analysis measurement system. It was the first British speaker to use a metal-dome tweeter, but the bass unit was equally innovative.

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From the VaultLoudspeakers
Celestion SL6 Loudspeaker
Trevor Attewell  |  Sep 27, 2019  |  First Published: Feb 01, 1982
Trevor Attewell examines a trend-setting loudspeaker from Ipswich

It is no exaggeration to state that the SL6 is one of the most interesting moving-coil speakers to come my way for a long time, and that it embodies significant advances in driver design. Many readers may find this surprising. After all, Celestion has traditionally been associated with the mass end of the market, its reputation justifiably built on product consistency and value-for-money rather than on innovation.

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LoudspeakersNews
Compact speaker reborn
Hi-Fi News  |  Sep 12, 2024
Audiovector ‘reimagines’ 1970s-era Trapez floorstander

Audiovector has returned to the design of founder Ole Klifoth’s first ever loudspeaker – the 1979 Trapez – for a new £15,500 model called Trapeze Reimagined.

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Loudspeakers
Curvi Model 1 (£4000)
Ed Selley  |  Dec 24, 2009
When Arthur Bailey first described the transmission line loudspeaker enclosure in the pages of Wireless World in 1965, and then again in 1972, there seemed every prospect that this new alternative to the familiar sealed box or reflex cabinet would come to enjoy widespread use. Yet it never did. Instead transmission line loading has remained a relative rarity, associated with a handful of speaker makers in particular: IMF in the early years and PMC more recently, although B&W has made perhaps the cleverest use of it in the form of its inverted horn Nautilus tubes, which had their ultimate expression in the snail-shaped speaker of that name. Although the transmission line is often classified as a form of bass loading, its modus operandi actually affects a much wider frequency range, as B&W’s use of it confirms.
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Loudspeakers
Dali Callisto 6 C and Sound Hub Wireless Loudspeaker
Review: Andrew Everard, Lab: Keith Howard  |  May 30, 2019
Wireless speakers aren't new, but Dali ups the game with this hefty floorstander and versatile connection hub

Were all the column-inches expended over the years about wireless hi-fi justified, the world's audio cable companies would have long ago gone out of business. Think back a decade or more and we were already being told that our music was about to come from miraculously-powered speakers attached to nothing, yet able to pluck all the music available in the world out of thin air and play it in quality previously unimaginable.

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Loudspeakers
Dali Helicon 400 Mk2 (£3800)
Keith Howard  |  Mar 25, 2009
In this era of DSP room correction systems, surprisingly few loudspeaker manufacturers seem to be looking at the issue of room interaction from the speaker design angle, trying to find ways to quell the room’s influence and thus, potentially, render DSP assistance redundant. Danish company Dali is an exception, although to look at the Helicon 400 Mk2 you could be forgiven for thinking that it is an entirely conventional direct-radiating floorstander. The giveaway, although its significance may not be immediately obvious, is the trademark Dali twin tweeter module which combines a 25mm soft-dome unit with a leaf supertweeter whose diaphragm is 10mm wide by 55mm high. Supertweeters are normally deployed these days to extend response out to low ultrasonic frequencies but the Dali supertweeter also has an important function within the audible range, where it takes over from the dome tweeter at 13kHz.
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Loudspeakers
Dali Ikon 6 Mk2 (£1199)
Ed Selley  |  Nov 20, 2011
This slimline floorstander features some unusual unusual driver materials Awarded EISA Loudspeaker of 2010-11 [see HFN, ’Oct 10], the latest version of Dali’s Ikon 6 may be relatively easy on the wallet, but you wouldn’t believe it to look at it. OK, it has a vinyl finish (this comes in a choice of black, light walnut or white) rather than a proper wood veneer. But most customers will surely consider that to be a fair exchange for what is a large cabinet at 1028mm tall, equipped with twin 6. 5in reflex-loaded bass-mid drivers – the lower of which is rolled off gently above 700Hz – and Dali’s trademark twin-tweeter module.
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Loudspeakers
DALI KORE Loudspeaker
Review: Andrew Everard, Lab: Paul Miller  |  Jan 02, 2023
hfnoutstandingYears in the making, DALI's KORE flagship breaks cover and it's a triumph of engineering, style and superlative sound

There are many ways to express that emotion of delighted surprise when encountering something unexpected: everything from the archaic 'Gosh' or 'Goodness', through the more contemporary low whistle or 'Wow', or even the kind of expletive never found in these pages. Meanwhile, the Blessed Google suggests that the Danes might say 'hold da helt ferie', literally 'take a whole vacation', which I guess is somewhere close to the American 'get outta here'. But for those of us brought up on British films of the latter part of last century, perhaps the best reaction to these new DALI flagship speakers is just to mention their name, perhaps followed by 'blimey' for the full effect.

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Loudspeakers
Dali Lektor 8 (£1150)
Keith Howard  |  Dec 16, 2011
Larger than average drivers give the Dali a performance edge Compared to the other speakers in this test the Lektor 8 – largest of Dali’s five-model Lektor range, not including the centre speaker and sub – looks almost old-fashioned. It isn’t size zero thin, for a start, because it uses twin 8in (200mm) bass drivers rather than the ~170mm units of the Quadral, Elac and Paradigm. Moreover, those drivers – along with the 5in midrange – don’t boast hi-tech- looking metal diaphragms but Dali’s familiar wood fibre reinforced coated paper cones, which are a dull brown colour. It’s a lot of speaker for the price, though, and those unmodishly large bass drivers – reflex loaded by ports front and rear – promise to move plenty of air.
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Loudspeakers
DeVore Fidelity O/93 Loudspeaker
Review: Ken Kessler, Lab: Paul Miller  |  Apr 20, 2023
hfnoutstandingThe smaller of DeVore's 'Orangutan' loudspeakers still achieves that elusive goal of offering high sensitivity and an amp-friendly load, but without full-fledged horn-loading

Here's a platitude which should adorn a t-shirt made mandatory attire for all audiophiles: 'It's OK To Like More Than One Thing'. In my view, hi-fi is no more cut-and-dried than wine, cars or shoes. Components are not mutually exclusive. With speakers in particular, there are more competing, different-sounding technologies than just about any other part of the chain. And what DeVore Fidelity has in its £9998-per-pair Orangutan O/93 is a design which ticks numerous boxes, all the better to alleviate any guilt about loyalty to a single topology.

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