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Red Rose Music R3 loudspeaker

Red Rose Music founder and CEO Mark Levinson may have lost the rights to use his own name, but not the good timing that helped make him a successful businessman and an accomplished bass player. (According to his online bio, Levinson has sat in with the likes of John Coltrane, Sonny Stitt, Chick Corea, and Keith Jarrett.)

After designing the mixer used onstage at Woodstock (pretty good timing, I'd say!), Levinson decided to enter the home hi-fi market with a new solid-state amplifier—hardly a rational business decision in 1971, when he founded Mark Levinson Audio Systems, Ltd.,…

Red Rose Music R3 loudspeaker Page 2

If Levinson's Cello foray was haute monde, Red Rose is Dockers: loose-fitting and relaxed. How relaxed would you be trying to sell vacuum tubes and ribbon tweeters to non-audiophiles? I bet Levinson is. He's got his story straight, and he believes.

Enter the R3
The entire Red Rose loudspeaker line presently consists of the R1, a $45,000/pair floorstander, and the stand-mounted R3, a $3500/pair bookshelf model. (The $20,000/pair R2 is in the works.)

The 17-lb R3 is small: just 17" tall and 7" wide. There's a vented 5" Dynaudio polypropylene woofer, a proprietary ribbon…

Red Rose Music R3 loudspeaker Page 3

I never heard the lowest organ pedals, or the illusion of a large room space that can be developed only by speakers extending flat to below 30Hz. And the R3 didn't deliver large-scale bass dynamics or high-volume bass slam. However, it did provide musical bass that was otherwise richly satisfying and dynamic. But whatever level of bass reproduction you expect from the R3 when you first see a pair—even after reading this—I bet what you'll hear will be far more, and better. The R3's low-frequency performance had me shaking my head long into many a night's listening.

The R3's soundstaging…

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That freedom was demonstrated again on the second track, Kenny Rankin's breezy turn on "Blackbird." He plays a nylon-stringed guitar, which was reproduced just about right, and not at all with the boxy midbass coloration you often get from a small speaker. Spatially, tonally, and dynamically, the R3s delivered the performance with convincing ease, putting Rankin in the room.

Solo performances are one thing; how did the R3 do with larger ensembles? Shirley Horn's superb new CD, You're My Thrill (Verve 314 549 417-2), arrived toward the end of the review period. With a big orchestra…

Red Rose Music R3 loudspeaker Specifications

Sidebar 1: Specifications

Description: Two-way, stand-mounted loudspeaker. Drive-units: proprietary ribbon tweeter, 5.25" Dynaudio polypropylene-cone woofer. Frequency response: not specified. Impedance: 4 ohms nominal. Sensitivity: 87dB/W/m.
Dimensions: 16" H by 7 7/8" W by 10 1/4" D. Weight: 16.5 lbs.
Serial numbers of units reviewed: 0433 & 4.
Price: $3500/pair. Approximate number of dealers: 11.
Manufacturer: Red Rose Music, 943 Madison Avenue (at the Whitney Museum), New York, NY 10021. Tel: (212) 628-5777. Fax: (212) 628-6150. E-mail: info@redrosemusic.com. Web: www…

Red Rose Music R3 loudspeaker Associated Equipment

Sidebar 2: Associated Equipment

Analog source: Simon Yorke turntable; Graham 2.0, Immedia RPM2, and Triplanar VI tonearms; Lyra Helikon, Discovery, Clearaudio Insider, and Accuphase AC-2 cartridges.
Digital source: Sony SCD-1 SACD/CD player.
Preamplification: Hovland HP-100 preamplifier, Audio Research Reference phono section.
Power amplifier: Musical Fidelity Nu-Vista 300.
Cables: Phono: Hovland Music Groove DIN-RCA. Interconnect: Harmonic Technology Pro-Silway II. Speaker: Harmonic Technology Magic Woofer. AC: JPS Labs, Electra Glide.
Accessories: PS Audio Power Plant…

Red Rose Music R3 loudspeaker Measurements

Sidebar 3: Measurements

There are no surprises in the Red Rose Music R3's plot of impedance magnitude and phase against frequency (fig.1). The saddle in the magnitude trace at 46Hz indicates the tuning of the rear-facing port, the peak in the upper midrange is due to the crossover filters, and the rising impedance at ultrasonic frequencies is a result of the ribbon's inductance. The impedance drops below 4 ohms only in the lower midrange and in the mid-treble, and although the electrical phase angle occasionally reaches high values, this never coincides with low magnitude. Consequently,…

Red Rose Music R3 loudspeaker Measurements part 2

This graph probably looks worse than it sounds, as the perceived in-room balance will also be strongly affected by the speaker's radiation pattern. The lateral dispersion is shown in fig.5 (actual responses) and fig.6 (the differences between the off-axis plots and the axial response). Although it's hard to see exactly what's going on these graphs, they do suggest that the reverberant field in a smallish room will have more energy in the presence region, which, together with the peak at the top of the woofer's passband, might compensate subjectively for the lack of on-axis energy in the same…

Red Rose Music R3 loudspeaker Manufacturer's Comment

Manufacturer's Comment

Editor: We appreciate Michael Fremer's excellent review of the R3 ribbon speaker, and thank Stereophile for its consideration.

It is curious but true that if a piano is tuned in perfect fifths, the octaves will be out of tune. This required the development of the tempered scale. So much for logic in music.

Most companies tune speakers for flat response measurements. In addition to making measurements, my associates and I fine-tune Red Rose speaker models with music. We make recordings of classical, jazz, blues, and spoken-word artists, and optimize…

Fine Tunes #47

Sometimes tweaks take on a life of their own. Take the one of using Armor All to keep speaker surrounds from drying out, which you can read all about in the November 2001 "Fine Tunes No.41" I recently got another e-mail on the subject from Dan Mazza at Arizona Hi-Fi, who agrees with Mark Gdovin's objections to using Armor All. (Read Mark's comments on the entire issue in the readers' letters linked to "Fine Tunes No.41.").)

Dan has been, he informs, a member of an auto-racing crew for more than 25 years (for which I salute him), and has done some racing himself. He seems very aware of…