Loudspeakers

If you have a preconceived notion of System Audio, chances are it’s been formed by its Silverback range of active, wireless loudspeakers. Occupying the top tier in the Danish manufacturer’s catalogue, models including the Silverback 60.2 and Silverback 40.2 [HFN May ’21 and Aug ’21] combine DSP-based crossovers, DACs and integrated amplification, with cable-free transmission via the WiSA standard. Add in the app control and room EQ and there is, to put it bluntly, a lot going on in the Silverbacks – something which can’t be said of System Audio’s new Signature series.

Although it’s relatively easy to build a large ‘cost no object’ loudspeaker worthy of a brand’s flagship, things get a little trickier when the requirement is for a compact model. Quite apart from the budget constraints – customers believe there should be a direct relationship between size and price – there’s the small matter of ‘you can’t argue with physics’ when it comes to delivering a big, room-filling sound from a smallscale enclosure.

The Danish brand’s flagship floorstander mixes upgraded in-house drivers with a sculpted ‘Directivity Control’ baffle

The latest member of Focal’s Utopia loudspeaker family is clearly cut from a different cloth – and that’s before you lay eyes on its felt cabinet wrap. Sure, at £29,995 the Diva Utopia boasts a similarly ‘high-end’ asking price to the likes of the £34,999 Scala Utopia Evo [HFN Aug ’17] and its overall styling isn’t far off its siblings either. But this is Focal’s first active loudspeaker, the result of a collaboration with Naim Audio, its stablemate brand since 2012. In fact, to call it a speaker doesn’t really do the Diva Utopia justice. It’s more like a full system inside a loudspeaker enclosure.

Whether it be cars or guitars, anniversaries benefit small manufacturers because they present authentic marketing opportunities. One of these is a reason to release a special model while another is to declare one's provenance. You can't fake longevity, so the real value is that anniversaries cannot be 'made up' as they arrive only with the passage of time. And while it's hard to believe, 2024 marks the first half-century of Utah-based Wilson Audio Specialties, and the designated birthday cake is The WATT/Puppy you see here.

The smallest speaker in Technics' three-strong F series has already featured in our Vintage Review section . It was a popular product and sold in decent numbers for something that could have easily been mistaken for a mere novelty. Less well remembered were the larger members of the same family, the SB-F2 and SB-F3. Neither of these was exactly 'large', but the SB-F3 was certainly too big to be considered a miniature model like the SB-F1. It was, instead, in the class of conventional compact loudspeakers intended for shelf or stand placement, a sector where the number of competing models was far greater.