Floor Loudspeaker Reviews

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Floor Loudspeaker ReviewsJ. Gordon Holt
Magnepan MG2.5/R loudspeaker
J. Gordon Holt, John Atkinson  |  Dec 07, 2016  |  First Published: Jun 01, 1988  |  1 comments
888maggie.promo300.jpgNow there's a Magneplanar speaker to fill the price gap between the $2000 MGIIIa and the $1225 MGIIc. The '2.5/R is priced almost exactly midway between them, which explains the unusual model number.

Like all the other single-panel Magneplanars, these are attractive enough in appearance to be surprisingly unobtrusive in the room, despite their imposing 6' height. Apart from the wooden endcheeks, they are covered with fabric grille all the way around, which could be a cosmetic liability as well as an asset: Domestic cats love to climb up fabric stretched tightly over wood (as at the bases of these) and, given the opportunity, will have these speakers in shreds in no time. Magnepan recommends spray-on cat repellent; I have to tell them that some cats don't seem to mind its odor as much as most people do.

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Floor Loudspeaker Reviews
DCM Time Frame TF1000 loudspeaker
John Atkinson  |  Apr 06, 2017  |  First Published: Jun 01, 1988  |  4 comments
It is almost ten years since I last heard a pair of DCM loudspeakers, the Time Windows made famous by writer Peter Aczel in the first incarnation of his magazine The Audio Critic. The "Time" nomenclature traditionally used by DCM in their models refers to the fact that for any hi-fi component, its performance in the frequency domain is related to, and implicit in, that in the time domain, the two being connected by the mathematics of the Fourier Transform. To put it in simplistic language, a speaker's impulse response can be translated directly into its frequency response: all the information needed to show how its response varies with frequency is contained in the shape of the impulse it produces.
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Floor Loudspeaker Reviews
Rauna Balder loudspeaker
John Atkinson  |  Aug 13, 2021  |  First Published: Jun 01, 1988  |  1 comments
The Swedish Rauna company, which has been in existence for about five years—their little Mk.II Tyr two-way impressed J. Gordon Holt a couple of years back in Vol.9 No.2—appears to be dedicated to the use of concrete as an enclosure material. One of the problems with conventional wooden cabinets is that the walls flex and vibrate, adding a spurious and often time-delayed output at some frequencies. It has even been reported that in extreme cases, the contribution of the cabinet to the overall sound at some frequencies approaches that from the drive-units. In theory, concrete should give a rigid construction with any panel resonant frequencies moved up above the critical midrange.
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Floor Loudspeaker Reviews
Orpheus 808 loudspeaker
John Atkinson  |  Jan 14, 2022  |  First Published: Jun 01, 1988  |  2 comments
So far, as part of my quest to find good affordable box loudspeakers, I have reviewed 20 models, in the August, October, and November 1987, and January and February 1988 issues of Stereophile (Vol.10 Nos.5, 7, & 8, Vol.11 Nos.1 & 2). Nearly all affordable loudspeakers have to be used with a pair of stands: as these have an important influence on the integrity of the sound and tend to cost upward of $100 a pair for good models, this makes such speakers less of a bargain. This month, therefore, I review loudspeakers designed from the outset to be floor-standing: three from the USA—DCM's Time Frame TF1000, the planar-magnetic Magnepan MG2.5/R, and the Orpheus 808—and one from Sweden, the Rauna Balder. The prices are pretty closely grouped, with the DCM being the least expensive, at a hair under $1100/pair.
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Floor Loudspeaker Reviews
VMPS Tower 11/R loudspeaker
Thomas J. Norton  |  Dec 28, 2008  |  First Published: May 28, 1988  |  0 comments
When JA suggested I review one of the "smaller" VMPS loudspeakers, I felt the hot breath of controversy in the air. The recent debate in these pages concerning the "proper" amount of bass required for true high-fidelity reproduction, and the inability of small loudspeakers (according to one camp) to provide it, hadn't yet cooled off, nor showed any sign of doing so. VMPS, a small West-Coast manufacturer most famous for its humongous Super Tower IIa/R (at 6-plus feet and 250 lbs per side, first reviewed for Stereophile by AHC in Vol.9 No.3 and the latest version of which is examined by JGH elsewhere in this issue), is hardly a fence-sitter in the debate; they are clearly pro-low-end response. I chose to request the Tower II/R, an upgraded version of the smallest of their floor-standing systems, for review; with a rated 3dB-down point of 22Hz (the same as their standard subwoofer), it's not exactly a member of the restrained bass brigade.
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Floor Loudspeaker ReviewsJ. Gordon Holt
PSB Stratus loudspeaker
J. Gordon Holt  |  May 24, 2012  |  First Published: May 01, 1988  |  0 comments
PSB is a small, Toronto-based manufacturer that has been collaborating with Canada's National Research Council to try and take some of the guesswork, some would say magic, out of loudspeaker design.

The NRC, financed by the Canadian government, does basic research in many technological areas and makes its findings available to any firm wishing to use them. (Most other countries provide or encourage this kind of government/business cooperation. It is against the law in the US, to our great disadvantage.) The NRC's audio division, headed by physicist Dr. Floyd E. Toole, has devoted the last several years to the rather formidable task of defining, and assigning numbers to, the various aspects of loudspeaker performance that affect listeners' subjective assessments of their sound.

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Floor Loudspeaker ReviewsJ. Gordon Holt
Nelson-Reed 8-04/B loudspeaker
J. Gordon Holt  |  Aug 17, 2012  |  First Published: Apr 01, 1988  |  0 comments
According to designer Bill Reed, the Nelson-Reed 8-04/B was not originally intended to be an audiophile speaker system, but was instead designed as a high-quality monitor for the critical recording engineer who wanted to be able to walk from the studio into the control room and hear the same thing from his speakers that he heard "live." The fact that modern studio mike technique ensures that this could never happen is probably beside the point. The point is that reproducing the original power and dynamic range of live music is a formidable challenge, which practically no audiophile speakers have met successfully. On the other hand, so-called studio monitors, which can do that routinely, have tended to be highly colored and otherwise generally lousy in all areas of fidelity except output capability. The 8-04/B was an attempt to combine the strengths of both kinds of speaker, while avoiding their usual weaknesses.
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Floor Loudspeaker Reviews
Spica Angelus loudspeaker
John Atkinson, Various  |  Feb 25, 1995  |  First Published: Feb 25, 1988  |  0 comments

I am puzzled. No, really. I know you find it hard to believe that we sacerdotes of the golden-eared persuasion could ever be perplexed, but I have been pondering the imponderables of ports. Ever since the classic work of Richard Small and Neville Thiele in the early '70s showed how the low-frequency response of any box loudspeaker can be modeled as an electrical high-pass filter of some kind, with the relevant equations and data made available to all, there would seem to be very little reason why all loudspeakers with the same extension should not sound alike (or at least very similar) below 100Hz. Yet after reviewing 20 dynamic loudspeakers (and using 24) in the same room over the last seven months, I am led to the conclusion that speakers vary as much in the quality of their mid-to-upper bass as they do in any other region. A few are dry, more are exaggerated in this region; some are detailed and "fast," most are blurred, with the upper bass "slow" (by which I mean that the weight of bass tone seems to lag behind the leading edges of the sound).

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Floor Loudspeaker Reviews
Monitor Audio R952MD loudspeaker
John Atkinson, Sam Tellig  |  May 27, 2008  |  First Published: Jan 28, 1988  |  0 comments
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.
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Floor Loudspeaker ReviewsHistorical
B&W Matrix 801 Series 2 loudspeaker
Lewis Lipnick  |  Dec 03, 1995  |  First Published: Dec 03, 1987  |  2 comments
Since the introduction of the original B&W 801 monitor loudspeaker in 1980, it has been adopted as a reference by several recording studios around the world, Over the past five years, I have seen 801s present in just about every recording session with which I have been artistically involved. While the original 801 monitor had its strong points, I was never satisfied with the detached and muddy-sounding bass, discontinuous driver balance, and low sensitivity. Unless this speaker was driven by an enormous solid-state power amplifier, with an elevated high-frequency response, the tubby and slow bass response often obliterated any detail in the two bottom octaves of musical material.
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Floor Loudspeaker ReviewsCD Player/Transport ReviewsIntegrated Amp Reviews
The Mission System
John Atkinson  |  Feb 24, 2013  |  First Published: Oct 01, 1987  |  1 comments
Since its founding just over ten years ago, Mission Electronics has grown to become one of the largest "real" hi-fi companies in the UK. Although their product line originally consisted of three relatively conventional loudspeakers, it rapidly grew to encompass high-end pre- and power amplifiers, cartridges, tonearms, and turntables, and, in the mid 1980s, a system concept based on CD replay and relatively inexpensive electronics: the Cyrus amplifiers and tuner.
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Floor Loudspeaker Reviews
Thiel CS1 loudspeaker
John Atkinson  |  Sep 07, 2017  |  First Published: Aug 01, 1987  |  7 comments
666thielcs1.promo.jpgKentucky manufacturer Thiel has acquired a reputation for the coherence of sound presented by its range of distinctive, sloping-baffle, floor-standing loudspeakers. Designer Jim Thiel gives a high priority to linearity of phase response; as a result, he chooses to use phase-linear, first-order crossovers in his designs, the target response being the combination of electrical and mechanical filtering. As the out-of-band rejection is then only 6dB/octave, it places demands on his chosen drive-units to be well-behaved, not only in their passbands, but also outside of them. In effect, the loudspeaker has to be designed as a whole system, the interaction between the drive-units and crossover being considerable.
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Floor Loudspeaker ReviewsHistorical
Quad ESL loudspeaker
Dick Olsher  |  Oct 10, 2017  |  First Published: Aug 01, 1987  |  1 comments
High fidelity took a giant step forward in 1956 with Peter Walker's introduction of the Quad ESL. Walker's research efforts had been motivated by his firm belief in the superiority of the electrostatic dipole over the box loudspeaker, but actually to take the economic plunge and market such a speaker was surely an act of bravery. After all, those were the pre-stereo, pre-audiophile days of the mid '50s, and the public's tastes and expectations were relatively unsophisticated. The average front end was abominable by today's standards, so that making definitive assessments of loudspeaker quality was a difficult task at best.
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Floor Loudspeaker ReviewsJ. Gordon Holt
Acoustat Spectra 3 loudspeaker
J. Gordon Holt  |  Nov 09, 2017  |  First Published: Aug 01, 1987  |  1 comments
Founded in the mid-1970s, Acoustat was the first manufacturer of full-range electrostatics literally forced to address what had long been a major weakness of such speakers: high-voltage breakdown, or "arcing." The original design was built and used in JP (Jeep) Harned's home, where the living-room french windows opened out onto a stream in the back yard. That, plus Florida's legendary humidity, conspired to produce summer days when moisture would trickle down every vertical surface in the house, including the speaker elements.
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Floor Loudspeaker Reviews
Ohm Walsh 5 loudspeaker
Dick Olsher  |  Jan 17, 2008  |  First Published: Jun 17, 1987  |  0 comments
The Ohm Walsh 5 displaces the Ohm F at the top of the Ohm line, and the current Walsh 5 production run represents a "limited edition" of 500 pairs worldwide. There's even a certificate of authenticity—hand-signed by Ohm Acoustics President John Strohbeen—packed with the speakers that makes it all official. I think that this is more than a clever marketing gesture and clearly demonstrates Ohm Acoustics' pride in their new flagship loudspeaker.
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