Floor Loudspeaker Reviews

After a year spent exploring the best that can be obtained from minimonitor loudspeakers, I embarked on what will be an equally long examination of what floorstanding towers have to offer. I began with the Sonus">http://www.stereophile.com/floorloudspeakers/1207sonus">Sonus Faber Cremona Elipsa ($20,800/pair) in December 2007, followed in 2008 by: in February, the KEF">http://www.stereophile.com/floorloudspeakers/208kef">KEF Reference 207/2 ($20,000/pair); in April, the PSB">http://www.stereophile.com/floorloudspeakers/408psb">PSB Synchrony One ($4500/pair); and in May, the Magico">http://www.stereophile.com/floorloudspeakers/508mag">Magico V3 ($25,000/pair). For this review, I've been listening to a speaker aimed at those with shallower pockets than are required even for the PSB: the Avalon NP Evolution 2.0, which costs just $1995/pair.

"Where do you want 'em?" Doug'n'David (of Stereophile's shipping and receiving, not your favorite morning drive-time talk radio co-hosts) had just wrestled over 500 lbs of cocooned Wilson WITT loudspeakers onto the floor of my garage. Like the Thiel CS7s I had parted with just a few weeks earlier, the WITTs came packed in solid, heavy wooden crates. The pained expressions on Doug'n'David's faces indicated that it was time for me to start reviewing minimonitors! The unpacking went more smoothly than I expected, but this is clearly a pair of loudspeakers that demand to be delivered, uncrated, and set up by a dealer.

We all know it's impossible to reproduce live music. An obvious statement, no doubt, and one that holds every audiophile hostage to the never-ending search. As a musician, I find the situation especially frustrating. The constant reminder of live vs reproduced makes living with an audio system a serious compromise, regardless of price or quality. About three and a half years ago, however, I reviewed a product which I felt, and still feel, offers the first real glimpse of that impossible dream: the B&W">http://www.stereophile.com/floorloudspeakers/506">B&W 801 Matrix Monitor (footnote 1). Although it wasn't perfect, I found this speaker provided more musical honesty than anything I had heard before. In this respect, it established a new standard by which others would be judged.

Last year, when Epos importer Music Hall contacted me about reviewing the then-new M16 floorstanding loudspeaker, I hesitated. I had been very impressed with the M16's little bookshelf brother, the M5 (see my">http://www.stereophile.com/standloudspeakers/405epos">my review in the April 2005 Stereophile, Vol.28 No.4), which I found uncolored, detailed, and a great value. Most of all, the M5 had an incredible balance of performance. But several times in the past, having been seduced by a wonderfully balanced bookshelf speaker, I've then been disappointed by one of its costlier, floorstanding brethren. The larger speaker might share the bookshelf's overall character, have deeper bass, and play louder with less strain, but too often that magical sense of balance that I had so enjoyed in the smaller speaker would be absent.

Back in March 1998, Revel's Ultima Salon1 floorstanding loudspeaker generated quite a stir at Stereophile (Vol.22">http://www.stereophile.com/floorloudspeakers/96">Vol.22 No.3). Our reviewers were impressed by its seven designed-from-scratch drive-units, its ultramodern enclosure with curved rosewood side panels, exposed front tweeter and midrange, rear-facing reflex port and tweeter, and a flying grille over the mid-woofer and woofers. In the December issue (Vol.22 No.12), the Ultima Salon1 ($16,000/pair) was named Stereophile's "Joint">http://www.stereophile.com/features/178/index1.html">Joint Speaker of 1999" for its "big bass, timbral accuracy, low distortion, dynamics, lack of compression, and best fit'n'finish."

Thiel is one of those loudspeaker manufacturers, like Spica and Dahiquist, among others, that pay close attention to detail.

So far, as part of my quest to find good affordable box loudspeakers, I have reviewed 16 models, in the August, October, and November 1987 issues of Stereophile (Vol.10 Nos.5, 7, & 8). This fourth group of loudspeakers expands the price range covered, down to $329/pair and up to $1349/pair, and includes one model from California (Nelson-Reed), one from Canada (Paradigm), and one, Monitor Audio's "flagship," the R952MD, from the UK.

The conventional wisdom in publishing is that magazines are dependent on scoops—that getting the news out to the readers first is of primary importance. Yes, being timely with what it has to say is important for any publication. But soon after I joined Stereophile in 1986, a series of negative experiences with review samples that were little better than prototypes led me to rethink the need for scoops. As a result, I decided to impose restrictions on what we chose to review; this would allow us to focus the magazine's review resources on products that were out of beta testing and were ready for prime time, and, most important, would be representative of what our readers could audition for themselves at specialty retailers, confident in the knowledge that what they heard would be what we had reviewed.

"Something's wrong. It sounds confused."

No matter how well you think you know the specialized world of high-end audio, there are always new companies, new technologies, and new products you just haven't gotten around to knowing yet.