LOUDSPEAKERS

In the UK for many decades we were told that the source is the most important component. Well that particular maxim did hold some weight all those years ago simply because a typical CD player or mid level specification Linn Sondek or Pink Triangle was fairly atrocious by today’s standards. You needed to spend a good chunk on the source to acquire anything even remotely resolving and transparent. Nowadays though, you can buy a DAC for just a few thousand pounds or less that will utterly obliterate all those fancy turntables and CD players of yesteryear. A case in point would be the basic bundled DACs with the entry Thrax and Vitus integrateds we sell. These will outperform market leading DAC’s you can buy today for over twice the price, let alone yesterday’s five figure relics such as the Naim CD555, Puccini, Sondek CD12 etc.

A new system or indeed any system should ultimately be designed around a set of speakers. They are without doubt the most important part of the system and the most pertinent selection you will make. This is because they have the greatest influence on what the final sound is like and also because there are very few truly great loudspeakers in existence. Now that you can get a great sounding DAC or Amplifier for a fairly modest outlay, speakers should receive the largest share of the budget. It doesnt really help that unlike electronics they haven’t gotten any cheaper over the years or easier to manufacture. In fact the opposite is true; they are more expensive to build than they used to be and you probably get less for your money as well. There are no shortcuts with speakers.

Loudspeakers are very difficult to design and create. Most of them make glaring mistakes. These range from the very sloppy amateur kind, like you can hear the tweeter sticking out, bass that is ‘subwoofer like’ with no detail or transparency, or even a cabinet boxiness God forbid, to the subtler type like they are not phase correct, not truly linear in response or they are too forward, too sterile or clinical sounding. Most loudspeakers ultimately still have residual noise in them – it takes nothing short of an engineering miracle to iron it all out – and to the human ear this just makes them sound wrong, unnatural or hugely coloured. That is to say that they contribute a very large amount of their own intrinsic ‘sound’ into the final result. It’s this high degree of colouration that traditionally has made choosing and buying them such a vexatious and personal choice.

I am very fussy when it comes to speakers. None of the models I sell will contribute their own ‘sound’ or colouration into the final result. They are all a pure open window back onto the signal they are being fed. They all disappear as objects in the room and the music will not seem to emanate from them but will exist as a 3d soundscape in front of you with prodigious depth and width. It has taken me over 10 years to assemble the brands I have. Really good loudspeakers like these are extremely difficult to design and manufacture and so they are unavoidably very expensive. Even amongst many popular high end brands you will find deal breaking mistakes, a biting sharp treble, an added boost in the bass or a nagging sterility across the midrange. Let’s go through my portfolio and explain how they relate to one another.

Thrax Audio make two compact aluminium standmounts, the little bookshelf Sirens and more established Lyra SE, now in MK2 guise. The Lyra SE can be purchased with their own stands or with the Hades low frequency extension module which acts as a stand but also very convincingly upgrades the speakers time coherency and microdynamic denisty. Extreme transparency and super neutral, they deliver music in an organic and very open, holographic manner but also with much precision and image stability. They are particularly suited to UK rooms and liked by UK customers and the Hades upgrade path is useful as well. Whilst the Sirens is every bit the equal of the Vimberg Amea and even competitive with the Avalon PM1 at twice the money, the venerable Lyra SE with Hades can happily go toe to toe with the Vimberg Mino. Sirens and Lyra SE like all Thrax products are very high performing for the money.

The Avalon sound has always been traditionally defined by a wide and deep 3d openness with exceptional imaging, beautiful rich tonal colours and an unforced performance that is highly expressive and extremely refined. The music rather than the detail, the coherence of sound as opposed to it’s separate parts. The new PM “performance monitor” range build on all those Avalon strengths but add speed, precision and a greater degree of focus to proceedings. The PM range then heralds a new era for the Colorado based company, bringing them into the modern era and right back to the top 1% of speaker manufacturers.

The entry ‘Idea’ is actually our lowest cost speaker. Over the years it has won many hearts and transitioned many customers into a proper High-end sound. A tiny inconspicuous floorstander, it possesses all the Avalon hallmarks and renders a beautifully open and natural sound into the room. After the Idea, the PM1 might have become one of the most common choices here at Lotus. It still comes in a surprisingly compact package that is so well suited to UK homes, and with added weight, greater neutrality and insight, it is a big step on from the Idea. In 2023 it was improved to the PM1.2 model with even more openess and macrodynamic ability.

Moving up the range the new 2023 PM2.2 and PM3.2 bring even greater levels of scale, weight, resolution and out and out coherency. The new PM2.2 delivers a huge sound reminiscent of the PM1 but with far greater levels of almost everything, and the 3 is for the best systems around with an extraordinarily unflustered and stable presentation even at very loud volumes. Finally the Saga and isis signature, will do justice to the loftiest of systems and the biggest of rooms and dynamic requirements. When you look back over the last 3 decades the Avalon range is arguably now at its most staunch and most compelling; it is the very best time now to engage with this brand.

Designed by Jorn Janczak and made in the Tidal factory, the temptation is to view Vimberg as a low cost Tidal. In a way that does apply – they cannot do what a Tidal can – and part of Jorn’s idea was to make the Tidal level of loudspeaker available to a much wider audience at far lower cost. But this viewpoint is to miss the observation that when you reduce a Tidal speaker by 10 or 20% of its performance level, so high is the starting point that you are still left with a transducer whose ability will leave other rival manufacturers scratching their heads in bewilderment.

A Vimberg is still operating at a level of resolve and transparency that is difficult to find elsewhere in its price bracket. A Vimberg sounds so naturally right and so utterly composed. Beautifully linear, extremely refined and open. They also are remarkably forgiving both of upstream equipment and room acoustics or size, and just seem to sound quite wonderful no matter what the system or space.

The Amea standmount has recently picked up some stellar reviews and has arguably set a new bar for this type of speaker. The Mino is the model for most people whilst the larger Tonda will move more air in larger spaces, a truly enormous sound. Each speaker has a diamond tweeter option so there is something to suit everyone.

Rockport Technologies are the newest loudspeaker manufacturer to join the Lotus fold. This alluring boutique outfit from Maine USA is a brand who have been on my wishlist for many years now though so it’s only really by accident that that are a tad late to the party. As a result of me approaching them in early 2020 they are now committed to a new and strong presence here in the UK and are available for the first time where they belong here at Lotus Hifi.

A Rockport is an end product that is the result of so much passion, hard work and ingenuity, the produce of a group of master craftsmen and engineers, a beautifully bespoke loudspeaker that has been quality controlled to the nth degree and realised using some exceptional machining resources and ingenious construction techniques. Moulded monocoque enclosures, aluminium sub baffles, epoxy core material to bond successive cabinet shells, carbon fibre driver skins, drivers designed from the ground up, epoxy encapsulated crossovers featuring custom designed capacitors and inductors – this is a company who clearly care very deeply about what they are doing and are only really interested in being the very best.

They have a neat five model lineup starting with the compact Atria II and ending with their flagship Lyra. All models are highly coherent with the same family presentation and strengths. Out and out quality starts very high in the Atria II model and as you go up the range you essentially pay for a bigger and better cabinet. All models are characterised by exceptional neutrality, superb imaging and soundstaging and a refined and rich treble. The Rockport standout hallmarks have to be their famed sense of naturalness  and amazing bass performance with an exemplary degree of transparency and articulation in the lower octaves. The stability and localisation of the music is also breathtakingly surefooted and affixed in space. The clue is in the name !

Weighty, rich, deep propulsive bass and a simply gorgeous tonality, Rockports are an utterly addictive experience and designed and finished in the way they are, are always a very special purchase indeed.

Tidal loudspeakers are truly the stuff of legend. The most incredible deeply lacquered finish, the sumptuous woods, the very best driver technology, the most advanced crossover electronics, they are really something special to behold in the flesh. They will accomodate the highest resolving and most natural hifi sounding systems in the world without breaking too much of a sweat.

The starting model is the 2023 Piano G3 Diacera and then there are 3 more current models, Contriva G3, Agoria 2, Akira, until you get the flagship one of a kind, 7.5 foot tall La Assoluta, a true state of the art half a million pound product which is unsurpassed as far as loudspeaker design goes.

We have many customers mixing Tidals in all sorts of systems but they do prefer to be in a very good setup, neutral with high transparency and noise reduced in all nooks and crannies. In an all Tidal system they can the fully exercise all their purity and resolve and a remarkable thing it is too. There isn’t anywhere to go after a Tidal. Even the Piano posseses a degree of upper end purity and clarity which is unique and unmatched and something we simply do not find in other speaker brands, anywhere in their entire range.

Pride of ownership with a Tidal loudspeaker is something very special. Like buying a Rolls Royce or a Saville Row tailored suit, it is a purchase that brings immense joy, not just when it is a delivering beautiful music, but also purely by the act of it just being in your possession. For many, it is a purchase of a lifetime, something unique and treasured that will endure forever.