Florida Audio Expo 2020

Pure Audio Project Quintet10 Horn2 Speaker, Pass Labs XP12 Preamplifier and XA25 Amplifier, VPI Prime Turntable, Luminous Audio Arion Phono Stage

Julie Mullins  |  Feb 8, 2020

It's not every day that you encounter a high-end loudspeaker that the end user actually assembles. Pure Audio Project has taken this unorthodox approach in introducing its brand-new Quintet10 Horn2 speaker at the Florida show.

It's a two-way design with five open baffles, four housing 10" drivers and the fifth housing a natural wood horn paired with a 1.4" compression driver. The frame is made of aluminum for the global market, but steel is deployed for the US. The horn handles quite a wide range of frequencies-a remarkable 550Hz to 20kHz. The other lower-frequency drivers/woofers are custom-made in Israel by Morel, a respected manufacturer that supplies drivers to a number of well-known high-end audio brands.

The baffles are made of Valchromat, a trademarked high-density, high-tech material composed of natural wood fiber combined with resins for saturated color. The speakers are available in five or six different hues with black and white being the most typical.

The Quintet10 Horn2 speaker package ships with everything you need and is sold online direct, with a retail price of $9000. The assembly requires no soldering, and I was told that it's been designed so that anyone can put it together—even those who aren't technically inclined.

The rest of the system included a Pass Labs XP12 preamplifier and XA25 power amplifier and a VPI Prime turntable, while Luminous Audio supplied its Arion phono stage and all cabling.

I wasn't able to give these a proper listen but perhaps will report back on the sound. Definitely curious . . .

COMMENTS
Anton's picture
Submitted by Anton on February 8, 2020 - 12:59pm

We seem to be seeing an open baffle renaissance.

Pure Audio Project

Spatial Audio

Emerald Physics

Interesting market niche!

Ortofan's picture
Submitted by Ortofan on February 8, 2020 - 1:01pm

... the frequency range of "550Hz to 2kHz" doesn't seem to be all that "remarkable".

Bogolu Haranath's picture
Submitted by Bogolu Haranath on February 8, 2020 - 1:06pm

Is that a typo? ....... May be it is 550Hz to 20kHz? :-) .......

Art Dudley's picture
Submitted by Art Dudley on February 8, 2020 - 2:16pm
Agreed: That slipped past me during editing. Sorry for the error!
Ortofan's picture
Submitted by Ortofan on February 8, 2020 - 4:07pm

... some Phil Wood grease got onto your keyboard?

adrianwu's picture
Submitted by adrianwu on February 12, 2020 - 8:48pm

Remarkable in the sense that most designers would not do that with a 1.4" compression driver.
Generally, with 2" drivers such as the TAD 2002, one would cross over at 700Hz. A 4" driver could go down to 400Hz with the right horn. To use a 1.4" driver down to 550Hz would involve a lot of compromises, requiring a horn with a fast expansion rate. Also, the throat impedance of the horn rises rapidly below the cutoff frequency, which is dependant on the cross sectional area of the horn mouth. However, using such a large horn for high frequencies would cause the high frequencies to bounce off the sides, causing very complicated dispersion pattern. It would not be an easy horn/driver combination to design.

Ortofan's picture
Submitted by Ortofan on February 13, 2020 - 5:14pm

... Radian 745PB compression driver with an Eminence H14EA exponential horn?

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