Displaying items by tag: speaker - StereoLife Magazine

Melodika is a Polish brand that has advocated a no-nonsense approach to audio equipment since its inception. The core of its offerings are cables and accessories, and the priority has always been the same - to give music lovers good sound for as little money as possible. When it comes to cabling, I've always associated Melodica with the budget-priced but extremely elaborate Purple Rain series. Signal, speaker, digital, and power cables, as well as splitters, adapters, or plugs - everything is here. I also like the concise descriptions focused on technical issues and parameters. Construction, conductors, cross sections, shielding, resistance, and other facts, rather than reports of sound written in verse and tales of geometry inspired by the concept of yin and yang. Wanting to go a bit further, the company introduced the Brown Sugar series. It currently contains seventeen items, all of which are speaker cables and jumpers. This is quite remarkable, as the idea wasn't born yesterday, and still, we haven't seen a single signal, digital, or power cable in this series. Instead, Melodika decided to show us - yes, you guessed it - another speaker cable. But what a cable it is!

It's not surprising that more and more people are interested in hi-fi equipment that is luxurious, beautiful, and offers excellent performance, but at the same time is as simple to use as a network speaker. Some audiophiles believe that increasing the comfort of our music experience automatically reduces the sound quality. If we have a pile of sources and amplifiers connected with expensive cables, if our living room has been transformed into an anechoic chamber, if before each listening session, we carry out an elaborate procedure of warming up the system while checking the humidity of the air and the voltage in the socket, we deserve great sound, and if we buy easy-to-use active loudspeakers, we don't. Is it true? Manufacturers of audio electronics have already discovered that it can all be simplified. Almost every new all-in-one system is an instant sales hit because all you have to do is add a pair of decent speakers and your home stereo is ready. But what if you could go one step further and eliminate the need to buy any electronics? This mission has already been undertaken by many companies, as the idea itself is not new or revolutionary. However, it has usually involved rebuilding budget boxes so that, with additional electronics inside, they don't cost a fortune. The result was cheap speakers powered by poor electronics, meaning lots of compromises and a sound far from ideal. Now Pylon Audio introduced its first series of wireless speakers. And it has done it quite differently.

Following the ongoing popularity of the Brown Sugar series, the Polish manufacturer, Melodika, decided to expand the offer with a flagship speaker cable. Melodika Brown Sugar BSSC95xx is the result of Polish technical thought and the culmination of 7 years of research, testing, and observation undertaken by Melodika specialists. The Hi-End speaker cable from the Brown Sugar series is based on the BSC2950 cable, which is the top model in this series and represents an impressive 9.5mm² cross-section. Since audiophile-grade Melodika Brown Sugar BSSC95xx uses high-quality materials and technical solutions, it is able to extract the maximum from your audio system potential and deliver an audio signal without compromising its purity and balance.

Sonus Faber is proud to announce the revival of its iconic and award-winning Homage Collection, showcased in the premiere of 4 new products. The extension of the current collection highlights Sonus Faber's deep Italian heritage, commitment to its artisans' craftsmanship, and progression of the brand's product collection, paying tribute to the musical instruments that inspired the collection's creation. The collection honors the genius of the talented creators of musical instruments and the lute making tradition with roots in Cremona, Italy.

Danish loudspeaker manufacturer introduced a grand yet shallow high-performance in-wall speaker designed for true Hi-Fi reproduction in high-end/high-performance home-cinema installations and stereo set-ups. Featuring no less than eight drive units, all developed in-house, this in-wall speaker offers the very best sound experience. The M-675 is our new addition to the Phantom M series offering a step up in size and sound quality compared to the smaller models in the Phantom M range, the M-250, and the M-375. The Phantom M-675 ensures a coherent, powerful, and musical listening experience - all of which offer the spacious and detailed signature DALI sound. Once installed, DALI's wide dispersion philosophy will provide a room-filling sound - reproduced exactly as the artist recorded it. No more, no less.

Piega is probably Switzerland's most famous loudspeaker manufacturer. Founded in 1986 by Leo Greiner and Kurt Scheuch, the company was initially a typical hobbyist, garage-based manufactory. Kurt concentrated on developing transducers, while Leo took on design matters and the company's finances. At some point, ribbon drivers became Piega's trademark and have remained so to this day. The cheapest models use drivers built with this technology to reproduce high frequencies, while the top-of-the-range speakers also use larger ribbon midrange panels. Because the designers allow them to play backward, the result is unique loudspeakers resembling electrostatic panels, supported by dynamic drivers only in the low frequency range. Piega's flagship designs demonstrate technical capabilities and audiophile splendor hidden under the guise of a minimalist design. During my test of the Coax 711 LTD speakers, their coaxial midrange/tweeter ribbons and aluminum enclosures fascinated me so much that I decided to find out more about them, which led to an interesting conversation with the brand's head of research and development, Roger Kessler.

On the occasion of the 2023 edition of the Consumer Electronic Show in Las Vegas, Octavio, the Lille-based start-up specializing in the democratization of audio systems, announces Maestro, its connected speaker, at the cutting edge of innovation. Thanks to the Wi-Fi sound technology developed by Octavio, this new speaker offers a high-fidelity soundstage, without any coloration, for daily listening without auditory fatigue. Octavio Maestro completes Octavio's Hi-Fi offer, already composed of the Octavio Stream, the high-fidelity audio streamer, and the Octavio AMP, the compact and connected amplifier.

The French brand Focal expands its collection of loudspeakers for Home with Vestia. This line comprises five models and has been designed for high-quality music enjoyment and Home Cinema experiences delivered by Focal's renowned savoir-faire in acoustic. The brand which is recognised by the French government as a French “Living Heritage Company” chose its exclusive Slatefiber cone for Vestia range.

Among lovers of audio equipment, there is no shortage of people who believe that the greatest improvement of sound quality can be achieved by replacing cables, buying a power conditioner, or an anti-vibration rack. Sometimes, however, it's worth coming down to earth and reminding ourselves of the basic rules that govern this world. If we want to build a decent stereo system, we should first choose loudspeakers that match the size and sound of our listening room and then select a suitable amplifier and source. Everything else can be taken care of later, choosing cables and accessories to spice up the effect. Unfortunately, many music lovers trying to buy hi-fi equipment stumble at the first stage, ending up with too large speakers or positioning them so as not to disturb the rest of the household rather than achieve a balanced and spacious sound. It's believed that monitors are the optimal solution, especially in smaller rooms, but are they? In many cases, they have to be placed on stands anyway, so they take up as much space as medium-sized floorstanders. And where's the upside? That we won't experience any problems with a booming bass? Perhaps a better solution would be to buy small floorstanding speakers which, if wisely designed, will offer an equally healthy but a bit more powerful sound? It's a very tempting prospect, only where to find such speakers? One interesting suggestion came from a distributor of Davis Acoustics.

Designers of hi-fi equipment will never cease to amaze me with ideas for the names of their products and brands. We have already seen gear lineups inspired by celestial bodies, mythological characters, precious stones, weather phenomena, and popular drinks. I remember when a friend working in one of the showrooms told me with some disbelief that he would now sell cables called, for example, "Root Beer" or "Vodka." At first, I thought he was screwing me, but it turned out that he was earnest, and now these cables can be found in Audioquest's catalog. Hendry Ramli, the founder of Vermouth Audio, went one step further.