Loudspeakers

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Loudspeakers
Franco Serblin Ktêma Loudspeaker
Review: Ken Kessler, Lab: Paul Miller  |  Oct 01, 2020
hfnoutstandingAs boutique Italian brand Franco Serblin prepares to boost its range we look at the iconic flagship

Franco Serblin, who passed away in 2013, first unveiled his flagship Ktêma in 2010. He had left Sonus faber, which he founded in 1983, in 2006, so the Ktêma was in development for nearly five years before he felt it was ready to be sold by the new company bearing his name. I remember the tension during its gestation, and Franco's elation at being able to produce a no-compromise system – not that he was ever restrained at Sonus faber. Think of the phenomenal Extrema, Guarneri and Stradivarius. The wait for the Ktêma proved worth it – as did the anticipation lasting a decade to hear a pair in my own system.

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Loudspeakers
Fyne Audio F301 Loudspeaker
Review: James Parker, Lab: Keith Howard  |  Jun 06, 2019
hfncommendedA group of ex-Tannoy engineers bring their experience to bear on a new speaker brand

As past reviews have noted, the market's not exactly short of budget speaker offerings. Though prices down at the entry-level have shown an upward trend – after all, the £100-a-pair 'superboxes' of a decade or two back really wouldn't be sustainable these days – there's also an argument for saying there's not exactly a crying demand for new speaker brands.

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Loudspeakers
Gamut M'inent M5 (£8460)
Hi-Fi News Staff  |  Oct 16, 2014
The M’inenT range [one standmount and two floorstanders] is new from GamuT. The M5s have a tall and commanding presence yet somehow seem less bulky than their paper dimensions would suggest. The cabinet is exceptionally well finished in a flawless real wood veneer and a wide range of finishes is available at extra cost. The three drive units are configured as a two-and-a-half way design, with crossover points at 500Hz and 2.
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Loudspeakers
Gamut Phi7 (£3940)
Keith Howard  |  Sep 25, 2009
Gamut by name, gamut by nature. Danish audio company Gamut (it writes it GamuT), not content with offering eight models of loudspeaker, of which the Phi7 is top of the four-model Phi range, also manufactures a CD player, preamplifier, two integrated amps and four power amps plus interconnect and speaker cables. So it can supply you with an entire hi-fi system, wires included. Phi in the context of this Gamut speaker and its siblings is the golden ratio, 1:1.
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Loudspeakers
Gershman Acoustics Grand Studio II Loudspeaker
Review: Andrew Everard, Lab: Paul Miller  |  Mar 01, 2024
Unusual, if not unique – does this Canadian company's idea of stacking two speakers for each channel pay sonic dividends?

The idea of stacked speakers is nothing new: SME founder Alastair Robertson-Aikman was famed for using double-decker Quad ELS57 electrostatics [HFN Sep '77 & Dec '01] and the idea was even endorsed by the speaker company which provided instructions to achieve the same thing, with the upper speaker mounted in a frame upside down above the lower. Even the late brand ambassador, Ken Ishiwata, was for a while demonstrating his Marantz electronics with stacked pairs of Mordaunt-Short Performance 6 speakers mounted in frames he'd spec'd and had custom-made.

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Loudspeakers
GoldenEar BRX Loudspeaker
Review: Mark Craven, Lab: Paul Miller  |  Oct 24, 2022
hfnoutstandingNow owned by AudioQuest cable's parent company, GoldenEar has added the compact Bookshelf Reference X to its range – the final design from longstanding CEO Sandy Gross

Looking at the BRX (Bookshelf Reference X) loudspeaker, it's easy to feel slightly unnerved by the amount of, well, 'technology' that's been squeezed into its compact dimensions. But then we should remember it hails from American brand GoldenEar, a company that – under the auspices of founder Sandy Gross – has always seemed to approach loudspeaker (and subwoofer) design a little differently to many rivals.

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Loudspeakers
GoldenEar T66 Loudspeaker
Review: Jamie Biesemans, Lab: Paul Miller  |  Feb 01, 2024
hfnoutstandingA refinement of GoldenEar's established Triton series, the new T range still combines an AMT tweeter, active bass and ABRs

When the Quest Group, known for the ubiquitous AudioQuest brand, acquired GoldenEar in 2020 it raised some eyebrows. Why would a company excelling at manufacturing and selling cables, often co-operating with speaker brands, wish to tackle the challenging loudspeaker market itself? And what would happen to the GoldenEar product range, which next to custom install and subwoofer models mostly consists of curious semi-active loudspeakers? The answer to that second question, at least, is the £6249 T66, the first arrival under GoldenEar's new ownership.

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Loudspeakers
GoldenEar Triton Five Loudspeaker
Review: Andrew Everard, Lab: Keith Howard  |  May 21, 2019
hfnoutstandingThis slim column hides its light under a bushel – or at least a sock – but is an addictively attractive performer

You might seem to be setting yourself up for a fall if you call your company GoldenEar Technology. It's a cue for all those jokes about effects heard only by those claiming such aural ability, grist to the mill of the 'design them properly and they all sound the same' brigade. Fortunately for the team behind the GoldenEar Triton range – including the £2300 Triton Five we have here – the product lives up to its billing, for the Five is perhaps the most striking speaker I have heard at this price level for a very long time.

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Loudspeakers
GoldenEar Triton One.R Loudspeaker
Review: Andrew Everard, Lab: Keith Howard  |  Jan 06, 2020
hfnoutstandingBreathed on with the spirit of the company's flagship model, these speakers are nothing less than spectacular

From the sheer performance and value of the flagship Triton Reference [HFN Jun '19], down to the bargain that is the Triton Five [HFN Mar '19], we've been very much taken with the sound of the GoldenEar range. And this despite the 'but it shouldn't work' cost-effective engineering employed by the company, including its liberal use of plastics in the cabinets' construction.

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Loudspeakers
GoldenEar Triton Reference Loudspeaker
Review: Andrew Everard, Lab: Keith Howard  |  Aug 23, 2019
hfnoutstandingThe top model in this slimline range takes on the big boys – do built-in subwoofers give it sufficient clout?

Our admiration of what GoldenEar's Triton Five model achieves for the money [HFN Mar '19] also prompted a desire to hear what the Maryland company could do when going for broke. Its ambitiously named 'Reference' flagship is definitely playing with the big boys at £9495, and with brands better known, at least in the UK. So it has its work cut out…

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Loudspeakers
Goldmund Mimesis 15/Prana Active Loudspeaker
Review and Lab: Paul Miller, Review: Andrew Everard  |  Sep 02, 2020
hfnedchoiceThere certainly aren't many speakers that look like them, but these baby models – yes, really – in the Swiss brand's wireless active range combine style with all-alloy substance

When the entry-level model in a speaker range costs £70,000 a pair, and weighs no less than 80kg – that's each speaker – you'd rightly assume you're in very serious high-end territory. And yes, imposing though the Prana speaker looks, its two aluminium enclosures mounted on a hefty 'Z-frame' and the whole enterprise standing some 99cm tall, this is the baby of this particular range. Above it sit the Satya speakers, 1.23m tall, 140kg apiece and £110,000 a pair, while the flagship is the 1.47m tall, 180kg-a-pop Samadhi, yours for a nice neat £200k a pair...

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Loudspeakers
Green Mountain Audio Eos (£4400)
Keith Howard & Paul Miller  |  Apr 16, 2010
The famous Bauhaus diktat ‘form follows function’ was an aesthetic imperative rather than an engineering philosophy, and a good job too, because for structural engineers in particular the concept was already old hat. All those Martello towers littering England’s south coast, for instance, are not round in plan view on a whim: it’s because castle builders, centuries earlier, had discovered that round towers better resisted artillery bombardment than those with corners. It’s natural to suppose that modern engineers would never do anything so crass as to make something fundamentally the wrong shape, but don’t be so sure. Most loudspeaker manufacturers have done it, continue to do it, and give every sign of proposing to do it in perpetuity.
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Loudspeakers
Grimm Audio Ls1 (€10,000)
Keith Howard  |  Mar 10, 2011
This innovative Dutch company provides an active audiophile speaker which is unusually styled and also features sophisticated onboard Digital Signal Processing So, Grimm Audio is not the most propitious name, in English, for a hi-fi manufacturer. But once the schoolboy giggles have subsided, there are two very good reasons to take this Dutch company, and its new LS1 loudspeaker, seriously. Firstly, there are the people involved. The second reason is the LS1 itself, because run-of-the-mill it is not.
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Loudspeakers
Handbridge 501 (£4195)
Steve Harris and Keith Howard  |  Dec 24, 2009
When John Durbridge and Ian Hanson met in 1993, both were studying electronics, and both chose to develop a hi-fi prototype as their degree project. John’s design was a two-way speaker, while Ian came up with a 100W power amplifier. Each then made a career in electronics but, with audio interests pushed into the background, John worked in industrial electronics while Ian then specialised in ultrasonics. Of course, their interest in hi-fi had never died, and in 2005 they decided it was time to do something about it.
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From the VaultLoudspeakers
High Caliper
Martin Colloms, Ken Kessler  |  May 13, 2020  |  First Published: May 01, 1987
hfnvintageWith the latest Apogee, ribbon technology comes in a more affordable package. Ken Kessler's assessment follows Martin Colloms' review

The US company Apogee has expanded its range of open-panel loudspeakers, which began with the Apogee model itself. This was a large-scale design using three separate diaphragms, with pure aluminium ribbons for frequencies above a few hundred Hertz. Three other models are now in production, comprising, in descending order of size and price, the Scintilla [HFN Sep '85], Duetta, and now the so-called 'baby' of the group, the £2500 Caliper.

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