Our Favourite Classic Speakers #3 - Sonus Faber Electa

This series documents particular loudspeakers gems from our last 30 years in the Hifi industry. Not in any particular order, just as they come to mind.

If you have never listened to, or owned a pair of Sonus Faber speakers, then you have certainly missed out. It would be easy to dismiss them as purely an exercise in style over function, but the range sounds even better than it looks.

Sonus Faber Electa - circa 1990

Sonus Faber's trade mark sculpted real wood cabinets with their leather covered front baffle are quite beautiful pieces of furniture. The Electas, which are our featured model, are almost surprisingly conservative for SF and for a stand mount speaker they are actually a bit of an odd size, almost dumpy and oversized looking.

So why choose the Electas out of such a revered range? Well the main issue with SF as a brand is that they are built to such extreme tolerances that they only really give their all with really high end equipment. They are not difficult to drive as such, but do need an impeccable source. Properly matched, Sonus Faber produce some of the best speakers in the world ..... With the Electas though, whether though chance or a quirk of design, they don't seem to be quite so demanding. I've heard Electas sound amazing with Arcam, Audiolab and bottom range Meridian equipment ... but then if you put them with something really High End they just stepp up a gear. I remember building a system at a customers house in quite a compromised listening room ... Linn Sondek/Ekos/Koetsu Rsig with a SP15 Audio Research and Krell KSA80 into Electas and for many years after I always remembered it as the best system I had ever heard ... and in this business you get to play with some really exotic kit, so that is quite a statement. It was the first time I had heard Hifi create such a live sound from even quite dubious recordings. Some systems do Hifi well, so do music well ... there is a difference.  SF are one of a select few that do both.

Our Favourite Classic Speakers #2 - Royd Audio A7mkII

 

This series documents particular loudspeakers gems from our last 30 years in the Hifi industry. Not in any particular order, just as they come to mind.

Royd Audios owner Joe Akroyd was one of the real characters of the British Hifi industry, always engulfed in a cloud of cigarette smoke, quite abrupt but very likeable,  he was very passionate about his products and never seemed interested in sales or profit .... he would bring up new models to the shop personally and his enthusiasm was infectious. Joe seemed to have a unique ability to make simple products which captured the essence of music ... which may be why Rega and Royd collaborated in the early years as Roy Gandy of Rega was making similar magic happen with Record Players.

All Joe's speakers could be listed here .. and I suspect some more will, but the real star must be the Royd A7 MkII. these were one of a series of 7 litre cabinet designs and in the mid to late 80s sold for £99 ... but such was their ability that they were not out of place in systems with Linn Sondek front ends and Naim amplification ... in some ways their only drawback was that they almost needed equipment of a higher perceived level to do their thing ... so were sometimes overlooked

They certainly didn't look much with their basic vinyl wrap cabinets and cheap 'off the shelf' Audax treble unit. But inside, there was some clever stuff going on .. The handbuilt Royd bass midrange unit was braced by an aluminum tube which exited out of the back. The tube had a slot in it to allow airflow and tuned in such a way that it reenforced the bass output ... the crossover was very simple and brought the treble in at 4khz

The A7 found a lot of  favour with the Linn/Naim customers and was often used as a budget alternative to the Linn Kan, which it sounded similar to in a lot of ways.

They were also quite rewarding to 'mod' ...sealing in the drivers with silicone sealant and damping the aluminium tube, livened them up quite a bit ... also rewiring and splitting the crossover to allow the addition of a second set of sockets for bi-amping was very popular ... I remember Naim NAC32/Hicap/ 2 x NAP140 into modified A7s being quite a combination!

Stax SRM006TII Valve Energiser for Electrostatic Headphones - For Sale

Also traded in recently, quite a rare unit in the UK now, a black SRM006TII. The UK importers now only offer the black option on the higher end 007 and 727 Energisers.

Very good condition and just over three years old

See it here Ebay Listing

Stax SR507 Headphones for sale

Traded in recently we have a very nice pair of SR507. About a year old in 'as new' condition.

The SR507 are the top of the present Lambda range and benefits from improved wiring and higher quality earpads than the SR407. Though quite a jump in price over the 407 the 507 is noticeably sweeter and more open sounding, the leather earpads are much more comfortable too for extended listening.

See them here : Ebay listing

Our Favourite Classic Speakers - #1 Allison Six

This a new series we are going to run ...particular loudspeaker gems from our last 30 years in the Hifi industry. Not in any particular order, just as they come to mind.

#1 The Allison Six / CD6

Allison CD6

 Allison were an American manufacturer formed in the early 70s and were known for quite quirky designs, they didn't make much of an impression in the UK initially, some of the models were quite odd looking and the larger versions were renowned for being difficult to drive.

Roy Allison started out at Acoustic Research and you can see similarities in the use of drivers ...both used inverted paper cone treble units, which although not exactly the same did use very similar design principles.The bass units too, were almost identical.

Acoustic Research Treble Unit

Allison treble unit 

The Allison 6 (and later Allison CD6) were the smallest and cheapest models, roughly 12 inches cubed they seemed to break a lot of rules ... the treble was on the front and the bass unit on the top. Even their cuboid cabinet shouldn't have worked, equal dimensions always throw up all sorts of acoustic issues. But actually the Six was quite astonishing, huge soundstage and almost unnerving bass extension that gave a very realistic dynamic to recordings... they needed a high mass stand, lots of space around them and against convention again, worked better seated quite low, perhaps on a 12-15 inch stand, so you looked down on them.

Quite rare secondhand now as most suffered from denaturing of the bass unit surround, which is quite common on 70s era designs ... if you find a set, reconing is fairly straight forward and well worth doing.

A Rega system for watching films? ... really?

We were asked recently to provide a CD based system that could also be used for watching films. This isn't particularly as easy as it sounds as most Home Cinema set ups are pretty poor at playing music. We have found though, that when we talk it through with customers to find out what their expectations are, most are just disappointed with the lack of clarity from their TV and like the dynamics and bass energy that they have experienced at a cinema. It is interesting that though Home Cinema has always been sold on its surround sound ability, this aspect is not actually very high priority for the high percentage of buyers .... in fact we have seen a lot of systems where the owner has never connected the rear channels as they 'would be in the way'

Generally, we find that though Home Cinema systems are poor at music, straight forward stereo systems are very good at films.... and if that extra bit of scale is needed, adding a subwoofer can work really well.

The system we ended up on was this

Rega Apollo-R  CD
Rega Brio-R Amplifier
Rega RS5 Speakers
REL T5 Subwoofer
Atlas Elements Interconnects
Atlas Hyper 2 speaker cable

Modern TVs are actually quite difficult to connect to  .. this Samsung only had an optical out for audio, so we added a low price optical to line DAC converter (to be upgraded in the future). The Playstation/ Sky and Apple TV were all connected directly to the TV so that the audio would also come through the Rega via the DAC.

The result was quite startling. Although it doesn't look it in the picture, this is quite a large room .. the picture shows around 5%  of the floor area ... the system is tucked into a 'snug' area of the Kitchen/ Diner ... but even so, managed filled the space with clear, dynamic sound .... the solid structure of the building worked in our favour as the speakers needed to be closer in to the walls than is usually ideal ... CDs were very clear with a good tuneful bass and that typical Rega ability to make your foot tap.

On films, switching on the REL subwoofer gave astonishing scale and that true Cinema rumble that adds so much to the atmosphere .. but also as we were using a really capable, purist stereo amplifier, rather that a surround amplifier saddled with multiple channels and noisy video circuits, the music soundtracks sounded superb as well!

If you want a more straightforward approach to enjoying films on your TV then give us a call on 01270 580734

Stax SR007 Mk2 Headphones for sale - secondhand

Traded in recently by a customer upgrading to SR009

We have a very nice pair of SR007 Mk2 Omegas for sale - you can view the Ebay advert here

Only one year old and very carefully looked after by a good customer of ours.

If you are interested, give us a call on 01270 580734 for more information