June 1998

The Frankfurt High End '98 Show Report: Speakers Big and Small
by Robert Jørgensen,
European Correspondent

At a big exhibition like High End '98, there are of course hundreds of different loudspeaker systems on display. Some are silent, some are not, and some you wish to be. In the ShowStoppers section I mentioned two exhibitors, B&W and German Physiks, who represent wildly different approaches to producing the ultimate in loudspeakers. Of course, this is not where the coverage of loudspeakers ends. There were a great many speaker systems on display, a fair number of which I listened to, and several I wanted to listen to, but I ran out of time.

If you wonder why the speakers I will cover here are all mentioned in very positive terms, the answer is very simple: I didn't have time to write about the others. This is not to say that if I have not mentioned a particular speaker here that it was no good. I might not have heard it at all-or it or I or the room might have had a bad moment in time. Or it might be a speaker you have already read kilometers of prose about. So in the end I have chosen to tell you about speakers that I found merit with or which might have been new or you might not necessarily have heard about otherwise.

Wilson Benesch The Bishop

Wilson Benesch has built a name for themselves by applying carbon fiber in many different ways in their products. They have also shown that carbon fiber, when applied in a proper way, is both mechanically and acoustically a viable basis for superb products. Initially known for their turntables, tonearms and cartridges, Wilson Benesch later burst onto the speaker scene with some of the most beautiful examples of last year's show. In these, carbon fiber was used extensively in the cabinet, adding both elegance and structural integrity. The renowned carbon-fiber/paper drivers from Scan-Speak were put to good use, but last year Wilson Benesch mentioned that they were working on their own driver technology.

What Wilson Benesch has produced is a very interesting new midrange-bass unit with some rather unique features. The most obvious is the shape and size of the magnet. It has been possible to reduce the size dramatically by using neodymium, iron and boron as magnetic base materials. This allows for a much higher flux and therefore a much smaller magnet. Another eye-catching feature is the magnet's shape. Obviously much work has gone into shaping the airflow of both the magnet and the basket. However, I was not able to get much hard information on this at the show. The nicely shaped magnet assembly could also be of real importance in the way The Bishop uses isobaric bass loading, leaving the back of the front unit of the pairs of drivers exposed. Certainly in this instance the rather charming looks of the unit itself make a difference in appreciation: I feel quite attracted to what is almost a techno-sculpture. If this sounds like nonsense to you, I hope the picture makes it all a bit clearer.

Isobaric configuration is an interesting idea, but not one that is often put to use in commercial speakers. A more detailed discussion of the pros and cons will have to be covered at another time; here it should suffice to say that it allows designers to get deeper bass with a smaller cabinet.

The Bishop was demonstrated with analog source material only, which was no problem to me. It sounded fine in what I suspect was not a good-sounding room. If this doesn't sound like I'm overflowing with enthusiasm then let me state that The Bishop sounded more than good enough for me to be eager to lend an ear under better conditions.

Finally, I've been wondering about the name. Nobody from Wilson Benesch gave me any information, but I have a hunch that it might be related to the chess piece. Time will tell whether Wilson Benesch has produce a checkmate. (I couldn't resist.)

Avantgarde Trio

If you have any affinity for horn speakers, you must admire and perhaps even lust for the Avantgarde Trio. This is another speaker that makes a statement big as life. Three tratrix horns make up the horn-driver complement of this imposing speaker. A band-pass subwoofer has been added to support the lower frequencies for which even the large horn is woefully inadequate. Even my wife, who is not one for large speakers as such, admits that the Trio is a piece of art. Fortunately, you are not limited to admiring its visual beauty.

I was very happy to have heard these gorgeous pieces of audio sculpture-you might have gathered that I have a weakness for "sculpturesque" designs. Indeed, designers who follow the tenet of "form follows function" and still manage to produce a design that's pleasing to my eyes have my sincere admiration. So I wanted these horns to sound good, and I must admit to having been severely underwhelmed by their smaller brother the Duo on another occasion.

You obviously need a large room to entertain the idea of putting a couple of speakers the size of the Trio in it. In the past I have also heard reports of Trios needing quite some distance between the speaker and listener to achieve a reasonable integration of the different horns. While the hotel suite used at the show certainly was larger than the average European living room by no small margin, the distance of about 3m to the front row of listeners should be no problem if you have a room that will house the Trio at all. Anyway, at the show I did not notice any specific problem in relation to the integration of the horns. I'm a little bit dubious about how well the subwoofer integrates, but problems in this area could also be caused by the room.

The Trio made beautifully dynamic music, displaying the qualities I would look for in a big horn speaker without showing any of the traditional weaknesses (except for size perhaps). If horns are your thing (I seem to have used most of my normal set of superlatives) and you have the space (I don't think the Trios sound their best in a small room) and you have the funds (I understand they are on the high side of $20,000 USD), then these speakers should be high on your list of options. If the previous conditions do not apply, you should still go and have a listen to them anyway. And remember not to close your eyes all the time while listening-the Trios are very nice to look at.

Parker System from Trenner & Friedl

As I have mentioned elsewhere in this report, among the many rooms and demonstrations you visit at a show like this, some stand out in your memory as particularly pleasant. Among a few places that this was the case was in Trenner & Friedl's room. Perhaps it was that more care was given to the acoustic qualities of the room. Trenner & Friedl represent ASC Tubetraps, and several of these were in use. Another aspect is the known fact that smaller speakers that do not produce thunderous output in the lower octaves very often sound better in smaller rooms because they do not excite as many room nodes as their larger brethren.

The sound from the Parker System speakers was captivating. The Parker System has a very flexible set of options. First, you have a fairly small two-way speaker with a slanted front baffle. Then you have a magnesium-coned midrange-bass driver (can you guess which Norwegian manufacturer, with initials "SS," produces these?), and then there is an option. You can either have a soft-dome tweeter (Parker) or a more expensive inverted dome (Parker2), which is said to be assembled in-house. The Parker2 also features an extra tweeter on the back that provides bipolar radiation in the treble as well as a higher-specification cabinet. This will set you back 5,500DM (approximately $3,230 USD) or 9,000DM (approximately $5,290 USD) depending on your choice. I would make an educated guess and say that instead of using a stand for these you should fork out an extra 5,500DM (approximately $3,230 USD) for the accompanying woofer (I can't really call it a subwoofer) also featuring the same magnesium-cone midrange-bass driver.

Certainly this system played with a delicacy and authority that both was a feature of but still belied its size. Despite the speakers not probing the deepest reaches of bass, there certainly was no subjective lack of such. World music/pop such as Dead Can Dance's Into the Labyrinth sounded truly wonderful. Perhaps it was the fact that the room was treated or that the speakers fit the room well, but the Parker System was a real treat for both ears and eyes. In fact, the photograph in no way does justice to the seeming perfection of the cabinetry.

From the picture you might also get a small idea (probably very small) of the beauty of the La Luce turntable on top of the rack. It was faceted in such a way that the light reflected just about everywhere. This, of course, does not say anything about how it sounds (and I didn't hear it), but it was a real piece of art.

Dali MegaLine

This speaker embodies one of my favorite technologies (in terms of sound): A very large ribbon line source built of three cabinets placed on top of each other. The ribbon covers from the lower midrange up, and a total of 12 6.5" midrange-bass drivers reproduce the low frequencies. The bass units are mounted in closed cabinets while the ribbon is mounted on the inside of the boxes in a dipole configuration. The speaker is delivered with an electronic crossover, and as a result of this it needs two sets of stereo amps. These amps do not need to be hugely powerful, but I have a hunch that some current capability will not hurt.

At the show, the Dali speakers were demonstrated with the new AudioNet amplifiers and CD player, which looked like a cross between a UFO and an old-fashioned removable disk pack (this will only mean something to people who have worked with computers more than 15 years I suppose). The speakers sounded fabulous. A well-executed dipole in a decent to good acoustic space offer something that's very alluring to me. Last year (at High End '97) I found that the best dipole I heard was an Audio Artistry model; this year it was the Dali MegaLine. It had the true dipole magic-a wonderful depth of soundstage and a homogenous quality that comes from covering such a large portion of the frequency spectrum without any crossovers or phase aberrations.

The speakers and the ancillary equipment feeding them seemed quite unfazed by whatever was thrown their way, including heavy rock, classical orchestra, or very intimate singer/songwriter stuff. It all came out free of stress and made you just want to hear more and more music. The soundstage was well sized, by which I mean that it was larger than that of most monopoles, and the depth of the soundstage was substantially greater than what most speakers present. This is only natural considering the dipole operation of the ribbon, and some will claim that this is an artificial depth. Well, they could be right, but it sure sounded good to me. After a good many years of pursuing this elusive grail of perfection, I must admit to being less than adamant about getting the perfect theoretical solution and more concerned with getting the best possible compromise.

The MegaLine is a large system (over 2m tall), but one that is quite elegant for all its size, and it might achieve a higher visual acceptance factor than a lot of the other large speakers on display. It would not at all be out of place chez Jørgensen, where its dipolar qualities certainly would be appreciated.

ALR/Jordan Factor 2 and Factor 7

ALR is a fairly new company based in Essen and has produced very competent speakers since they began, and they now have gone and done a very smart thing. They became interested in aluminum-cone drivers, and so they have associated themselves with none other than the grand old man of aluminum cones, Ted Jordan. More than 25 years ago I built a pair of loudspeakers using what was a rarity in those days: aluminum-cone drivers. These were designed and produced by Ted Jordan. Today many manufacturers produce such beasts, but Jordan's experience counts for quite a bit. So it is according to his cone geometry that the units in the ALR/Jordan speakers are made.

It is not without reason that Karl-Heinz Fink has become a very respected speaker designer in Germany. His designs combine down-to-earth engineering with real flair and cover a broad range of prices and sonic ambitions. I have listened to a number of his designs and have always come away feeling that no matter what price class they are in, they always represent real audiophile value for money. Some ALR/Jordan speakers can be had for just a few hundred dollars. The Factor 2 and Factor 7 are more expensive. This is as it should be since they represent a very high level of ambition, and neither cost nor effort has been spared to produce something special.

The Factor 2 was playing in the ALR/Jordan room and it gave a rather extravagant impression. Initially you may think that the Factor 2 is just a fancy-looking two-way, but there is more to the speaker than you might expect. Instead of being of the normal bass-reflex design, the Factor 2 uses a passive radiator that fires at the back of the cabinet, which has been cast in a pseudo-concrete material to cut down on resonance and create a unique sound-enhancing shape. The units include a tweeter with a neodymium magnet and a mid-bass driver, both of which are produced for ALR/Jordan by Scan-Speak. In another effort to produce a system with as few compromises as possible, the crossover has been placed in a separate enclosure outside of the main speaker.

Few people will be unmoved by this speaker. The sound is truly high end and the looks are special. I understand that some people think Factor 2s are a bit over the top in appearance, but I really like their unusual "designer" look.

The considerably larger but more conventional-looking Factor 7 was shown in the Pioneer room. The Factor 7 is a big three-way speaker using the Scan-Speak Revelator tweeter with aluminum-cone midrange and bass drivers. Just like the Factor 2, the Factor 7 uses passive radiators (two instead of one) placed on the back of the speaker. The resonance frequency of the passive radiators can be adjusted by changing the weights mounted on them. In this way some adjustment to the specific room in which the speakers will be used can be achieved. The Factor 7 is a large all-out effort as far as I could judge. As such, the price of around $10,000 USD does not seem unreasonable. The Factor 7 definitely calls for closer acquaintance.

Elac Spirit of Music and CL 310 JET Little Wonder

Elac is an old name in European hi-fi. In fact, it goes back to the beginning of the century and has a proud history, including in the production of phono cartridges. Currently Elac produces a substantial series of loudspeakers and electronics that are sold under the Elac and Linear Technology brand names. What is special about Elac is the fact that the company developed and produced so much of their base technology instead of just buying it from an OEM supplier.

In many of the Elac loudspeaker systems we find the company's aluminum-cone technology and the JET tweeter, which essentially is a Heil AMT device, and a very unusual-looking 360-degree true ribbon tweeter called "4 pi" due to its radiation pattern, which looks like a large mushroom. The sound was yummy.

Elac was also showing its new flagship, The Spirit of Music, which is a tall but elegant obelisk with the above-mentioned "mushroom" on top. It is quite richly endowed with drivers: three bass units, two of which are used in a ported enclosure for the lower bass and one is a midbass coupler, followed by the midrange. All of these are the Elac-developed aluminum sandwich cones. Directly radiated treble is cared for by a JET tweeter and finally the "4 pi" on the very top. The speaker has quite an impressive array of adjustments available on the back panel, allowing for midrange cut or boost as well as varying cut-off slopes for the two tweeters.

So what is the final result of so much effort? Well, I think that Elac can be very satisfied with the resulting speaker. It certainly lets you "see" into the details of the music. And all sorts of music was played-from rock, world music, classical, and German lieder where the ability to project the human voice realistically is put to the test. The Spirit of Music gave a fine rendition of it all. The bass was very good, and I do appreciate the added sheen that the ribbon tweeter produced. The midrange resolved voices in exemplary fashion.

One thing that I considered a pity was that Elac had not done more to the acoustics of the large room in which they were showing their flagship speaker. It had several resonances in the bass that somewhat limited the total experience. I'm convinced, however, that The Spirit of Music can deliver the goods, and I hope to make a closer acquaintance under better conditions. You will have to forgive me that my camera failed for a number of photos, so I had to resort to a commercial picture of The Spirit of Music.

I am happy that Elac also showed the other end of their high-end offerings. By this I mean the CL 310 JET, nicknamed the "Little Wonder."

This is indeed a tiny speaker when compared to almost anything else on display, and you would be hard pressed to believe that a box this small could even give a resemblance of bass or in any way be considered truly high end. Nonetheless this tiny speaker, which is well equipped with one of the above-mentioned aluminum sandwich midrange-bass drivers as well as the JET tweeter, can really impress. Here comes another old war horse: It's hard to believe that all that music came out of that TINY box. The Little Wonder certainly had no problems in comparison to quite a few larger speakers.

These speakers suffered perhaps even more from the acoustics than that of The Spirit of Music-you just have to look at the picture to see the bare walls. A far cry from ideal. Please Elac, for the next show do yourself and your visitors a big favor and pay more attention to the acoustics of the rooms. I don't really want to hit just on Elac for this because a number of exhibitors could have paid more attention to the rooms in which they demonstrated their equipment. I just have the feeling that the Elac products are even better than they presented themselves at the show. I'm sure that my wife will be just as interested as I am in listening to these "Small Wonders" under more relaxed conditions.

T&A A2D

T&A is not widely known outside the German-speaking area of Europe. They have been building up a palette of products over the years: loudspeakers, electronics, and now digital products. Their most exciting products include all of these disciplines. From a design point of view and for those of you who can remember Braun, T&A are the natural inheritors of a very functional and "cool" look. In a modern interior, T&A products can really fit in.

While T&A has a very large palette of different speakers aimed at all levels of ambition and price and for audio as well as home-theater applications, it is their flagship Solitaire series that has my deep interest. Meridian has been producing speakers for quite some time that utilize digital crossovers and equalization, but T&A has (as far as I know) been the first major company to produce a line of speakers with digital capability that includes active digital room correction.

These systems, while not exactly cheap, form a very affordable attack on the real high end. Consider the largest of the systems, the Solitaire A2D which provides you with two 12" optically controlled motional-feedback woofers, two aluminum midrange units, a tweeter driven by four 150-watt power amps (the bass units have one each) and a digital system consisting of nine digital-signal-processing CPUs. Being not just a music lover but also a bit of a techo-freak, I must admit to being strongly interested in this all-in-one approach. Currently the speakers require a technician for proper in-room adjustment, but the whole system really only requires a CD transport as source since remote control of treble, bass and volume is done via the speakers themselves. And the price for all this high-tech is 24,000DM, or approximately $14,100 USD-very reasonable considering what you're getting.

With a bit of good luck I should be able to report back later this year on an entire T&A system.

Visaton DS 4

Visaton, which might be known for their large catalog of speaker drivers, have long had a good reputation among DIYers. Lately they have shown a number of very interesting new designs. With the DS 4 they have set their sights on the absolute top. This is not a kit, though, but a highly refined new development created in cooperation with the University of Aachen. Like the T&A A2D and a growing number of other new designs, the DS 4 applies DSP technology in order to assault the state of the art.

Actually I had not heard many systems when on the first day I wandered past the Visaton exhibit. I had not expected something at the very highest end, but I was VERY pleasantly surprised. As I came into the room, some rhythmic music was being played, and considering the so-so reproduction I had already been exposed to in a couple of other rooms, my interest was captured. It certainly did not diminish when I realized that Visaton had made a real product here. I had first thought that it perhaps was an advanced prototype, although the finish of the cabinet was impeccable.

What catches your attention first is that this is a large box, solid and with its own certain elegance. The shape of the baffle is dictated by the radiation characteristics. The system supports two 10" bass drivers for the lower bass, one 8" unit for the upper bass, a 5" metal-cone driver for the midrange, and a soft-dome in a specially designed tratrix horn for the treble.

What sets the DS 4 apart from most other speakers is, of course, the digitally implemented crossover and equalization. The controller providing this comes with two digital inputs as well as an analog input with 24-bit A/D conversion. This is followed by the digital filters themselves, which provide the four-way crossover with about 300dB-per-octave filtering, followed by equalization of both amplitude (basic frequency response) and phase. Having done this for the speaker itself, it is possible to perform correction within the speaker, which keeps a constant group delay, meaning that the speaker is essentially phase coherent. The handouts show a remarkable square-wave reproduction as well as a very impressive impulse response.

Finally, the four frequency bands per speaker are output to a total of four NAD 218 stereo amps, each capable of delivering 200 watts into 8 ohm and pulses of well over 600 watts into 2 ohms. These, by the way, make up part of the whole system which has been priced at 40,000DM, or $23,500 USD, again a large sum of money but not overly exorbitant when you consider that you get a complete system.

How did it sound? Oh, YES! Playing a piano concerto, the system had the piano standing like a rock in the middle of it all. Playing a soprano, the system sent shivers down my spine. I was very impressed; the music sounded very right. It was clear and resolved and still so pleasant to listen to. These are not necessarily qualities that always go together. The Visaton DS 4 is something worth investigating if a speaker system like this is on your wish list.

And all the rest

Now this is, of course, just a handful of names and products. Many more could and should perhaps be listed.

Manger had a most unusual driver. A Capella supplied some fantastic horns. Audio Physic demonstrated the superb Midas and wonderful Caldera models. The Duevel Bella Luna and Jupiter were supremely dynamic. I hope to do them all justice another time.

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