For a number of years now, I have been shaking my head in disbelief over the sound of Mapleshade CDs. They had no right to sound that good because Pierre Sprey, the recording engineer, is what we used to call a TWAD—a “Tree-Worshipping Analog Druid.”

Sprey is also the boss of Mapleshade and he masters everything live to 2-track analog tape at 15 ips, as if the year were 1958! The signal, when it’s transferred to CD, gets converted to 44.1/16 PCM anyway, so why not start with PCM, especially with the options available today in digital recording? It seems to be pure mysticism, but the results vindicate Pierre Sprey’s strange methods. I can honestly say that I have never heard more startlingly real-sounding recordings than his. They are closely miked, because that suits the program material, and the sound is in your face, as lifelike as if you were there. I have shut my eyes on occasion and could easily pretend that I was there. Is it because of “no mixing board, filtering, compression, equalization, noise reduction, multitracking or overdubbing,” as it says in the blurb? Maybe so, maybe not, but the sound speaks for itself.

The music on the Mapleshade label is another matter. It’s mostly jazz, of various schools, and the melancholy truth is that jazz is dead, through no fault of Mapleshade. Sure, many of their recording artists are extremely capable musicians and they go about their business with the utmost seriousness, but the basic jazz culture is a thing of the past, and no straggler, bringing up the rear, can possibly sound like Louis or Bird or Diz or Miles or any of the other greats. It’s just not the same, much as it hurts to admit it.

Here are a couple of the more recent Mapleshade CDs I have listened to:

“A Touch of Evil.” Windmill Saxophone Quartet: Clayton Englar, Jesse Meman, Ken Plant, Tom Monroe, with guests Ran Blake, Paul Murphy, Frank Kimbrough, and Ben Allison. #09432 (recorded in 1989).
This is amazing. Recorded more than 15 years ago but released only in 2002, it’s the ultimate saxophone sound, so real you think you can touch the bells of the instruments. The bass sax, especially, is awesome. The acoustical perspective is close; the saxophones could be in the same room with you. The music is modern jazz, originating from Charles Mingus, John Coltrane, and others. I won’t say it’s as good as if those gents were playing it, but it’s highly listenable, and the unique sound holds your interest to the end.

John Previti Quartet: John Previti, bass; Rick Whitehead, guitar; John Cocuzzi, vibes & piano; Big Joe Maher, drums & vocals; Marianna Previti, vocals. #09652 (recorded in 2002).
Another amazing-sounding jazz recording, subtitled Swinging Lullabies for My Rosetta (based on the first track, an Earl Hines number). The bass and the vibes are particularly palpable. The studio acoustics are a bit more spacious than on the CD above. These are not especially well-known musicians but you can’t say they ain’t got that swing; their rhythm and phrasing are quite convincing. For example, Track 5, a Duke Ellington number, is really very elegant jazz. The vocalists are good but not great. But ah, that plucked bass, those mallets on the vibraphone, those brushes on the cymbal… Audio heaven.

—Peter Aczel

A note about CD and DVD reviews by the Editor:

Why am I writing these capsule reviews of CDs and music DVDs instead of having a professional music critic write them? Because I just can’t find a suitable successor. There are plenty of practitioners with a greater knowledge of music than mine, but they are all so boring! (B. H. Haggin, where are you now that we need you?) I read the magazines, I read the newspapers, and their music critics all seem deliberately convoluted in their style, noncommittal, covering their asses, making only unverifiable observations, and nearly always completely humorless. I wish it weren’t so. Tell me if I’m wrong.

I also want to clarify why there are only classical music and occasional jazz reviews here (and in the previous print issues of The Audio Critic). Not because I am a music snob. I sincerely believe that, for instance, the Beatles’ “Hey Jude” is better music than any number of concertos by Manfredini. It’s just that present-day pop/rock music is at an all-time low. I cannot believe the depths to which popular music has sunk. No melody, no harmony, no texture, no rhythm (other than boom-boom), no nothing, just unstructured noise to accompany the inane words. I think the marketeers have discovered that the tin ears far outnumber the people with even a shred of musicality. What upsets me even more are the pretentious discussions of this garbage in print and on the air, the deep analysis of shallow music. What a farce!

(Please note, in the reviews below, that the year in parentheses after the CD number is the year of recording, not the year of release.)

DVD-V from
BBC Opus Arte

W. A. Mozart: Die Zauberflöte. Will Hartmann, Tamino; Dorothea Röschmann, Pamina; Diana Damrau, Queen of Night; Franz-Josef Selig, Sarastro; Simon Keenlyside, Papageno; Ailish Tynan, Papagena. The Orchestra and Chorus of the Royal Opera House (Covent Garden), Colin Davis, conductor. DVD-Video OA 0886 D (2003).
Is The Magic Flute Mozart’s greatest opera? Probably not. Is it the most delightful, the most lovable, the most disarming? I would have to say yes. This production certainly does not contradict that point of view. Colin Davis knows his Mozart and leads a stylistically impeccable performance. One is not even aware of the conductor’s presence; everything is just right; nothing is “interpreted”—Mozart addresses us directly, without an intermediary. The singing is uniformly excellent, close to world-class I would say, with Simon Keenlyside particularly outstanding as one of the most engaging Papagenos in my experience (the German of this Englishman is flawless!) and Diana Damrau also impressive, histrionically even more than vocally, as an exceptionally convincing Queen of the Night. The staging is very stylish (the stagehands are intentionally visible as they manipulate the props!), and the Dolby Digital surround sound is state-of-the-art in both localization and envelopment. All in all, a highly successful production.

CDs from
EMI Classics

J. S. Bach: “Legend”—Famous Transcriptions by Leopold Stokowski. Symphony Orchestra, Leopold Stokowski, conductor. 7243 5 57758 0 1 (1957–58). Also includes a DVD-Video (see text).
Recorded by the 75-year old Stokowski with an unidentified orchestra (most probably top-notch New York freelancers) in New York City’s Manhattan Center, these half-century old tapes were digitally remastered in 1997 and reissued in 2004. The audio is absolutely stunning, fully up to present-day standards and then some. The soundstage is huge and the creamy Stokowski sound is unmistakable. Perhaps in 1957–58 they didn’t know yet how to foul up the stereo image and the instrumental sonorities. As for Stokowski’s orchestral transcriptions of Bach organ works and chamber music, purists have always rejected them and less uptight music lovers always enjoyed them. I think Johann Sebastian, with his early 18th-century instrumental palette, would have absolutely wallowed in the almost ridiculously rich orchestration of the Passacaglia and Fugue in C Minor. It’s over the top but it’s great—only an effete snob could object to it as an occasional indulgence. All eleven compositions on the CD are performed with tremendous gusto, vitality, and beauty of sound. Stokowski could make any orchestra sound like the Philadelphia; he was an orchestral magician. To top off the treat, there is a bonus DVD in the package. It shows the 90-year old Stokowski, in 1972, conducting the London Symphony Orchestra in Debussy’s Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune. He doesn’t exactly look young but he conducts with authority, and the sonorities are exquisite. What a maestro!

Ludwig van Beethoven: Symphonies 1–9. Wiener Philharmoniker, Sir Simon Rattle, conductor. 7243 5 57445 2 4 (2002).
Ludwig van Beethoven: Fidelio. Angela Denoke, Leonore; Jon Villars, Florestan; Alan Held, Don Pizarro; László Polgár, Rocco. Berliner Philharmoniker & Arnold Schoenberg Chor, Sir Simon Rattle, conductor. 7243 5 57555 2 0 (2003).
Every first-rate conductor in the world leads off his repertory with Beethoven and every one of them does a creditable job, with various individual emphases, mannerisms, and idiosyncrasies. Even Toscanini had his little quirks in this music; Furtwängler had a lot of them, and so did all the other greats. Sir Simon Rattle is no exception, and depending on whether or not one likes his personal signature one can call these performances great or merely competent. I’ll leave it to the professional music critics to fight that out; there has already been a lot of controversy about these recordings; that they are world-class is pretty much a given. I’ll restrict myself to pointing out some interesting specifics. The symphonies were recorded with the Vienna orchestra rather than Sir Simon’s own Berliners to honor a firm commitment that predated his current association. He explains that he would have lost all credibility if he had switched. The Viennese are not quite as disciplined and precise as the Berlin orchestra but they play magnificently, giving it everything they’ve got. (Let’s not forget that Beethoven was also Viennese, by choice if not by birth.) The recorded sound is excellent—clear, detailed, sufficiently reverberant and dynamic, but there exists one step up in depth, juiciness, and general realism (à la Lew Layton or John Eargle) that it lacks. (No big deal.) The Fidelio is somewhat small-scale, almost Mozartean, because Rattle believes that most interpretations are too bloated and Wagnerian. The singers are good, highly professional, but far from great. The traditional entr’acte, the great Leonore No. 3 overture, is omitted! The audio is again highly satisfactory, nothing wrong with it, but also rather small-scale in its soundstage and unexciting. I have always regarded this opera as a disappointment, considering that it was created by the greatest composer who ever lived (see the CD reviews in print issue No. 25 for a longer discussion), so you may want to take my lack of enthusiasm under appropriate advisement.

CDs from
Sony Classical

Franz Joseph Haydn: Piano Sonatas No. 31 in A-flat Major, Hob. XVI:46; No. 34 in D Major, Hob. XVI:33; No. 29 in E-flat Major, Hob. XVI:45; No. 49 in C-sharp Minor, Hob. XVI:36; No. 35 in A-flat Major, Hob. XVI:43. Emanuel Ax, piano. SK 89363 (2000).
Emanuel (“Manny”) Ax is the most genial, relaxed, and unpretentious classical superstar I’ve ever met personally, in addition to being, almost incidentally, a superb musician and a great piano virtuoso. His pixieish appearance and evident sense of humor contribute to the nonintimidating impact. In this Grammy-award-winning recording he plays five “middle-period” piano works by Haydn with tremendous panache and fleet-fingered precision. It is in every way a wonderful performance. He uses very little pedal and is recorded rather close-up, although the acoustics of the American Academy of Arts and Letters in New York City would have been quite flattering with a more ambient pickup. I happen to think that this drier recorded sound suits the music perfectly. Haydn’s musical ideas are always delightfully unpredictable and satisfying. These sonatas are not as frequently played as some of the symphonies and string quartets but they are far from second-rate Haydn. All in all, an outstanding recording that moves right to the top of the pile in the Haydn/keyboard category.

Franz Schubert: Piano Sonatas in C Minor, D. 958; in A Major, D. 959; in B-flat Major, D. 960. Murray Perahia, piano. S2K 87706 (2 CDs, 2002).
There is no better pianist in the world today than Murray Perahia. Different and equally good, yes; better, no. And there are no greater piano sonatas in the literature than the last three of Schubert. Different and equally great, yes; greater, no. When Murray Perahia plays, you hear the composer, not the pianist. That’s because the playing is so flawless, so musical, so natural, so egoless, that nothing comes between the composer and the listener. I have heard many outstanding performances of these sonatas, but none that I would clearly prefer to Murray Perahia’s. Beautiful, beautiful piano playing. As for the music, these three sonatas—along with the great C Major symphony, the G Major quartet, the C Major quintet, and the E-flat Major mass—represent Schubert’s quantum leap from excellence to transcendence at the very end of his tragically short life. I am inclined to believe that if Schubert had not died at the age of 31 but lived to be, say, 60, he would have surpassed Bach, Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven. Mere speculation, of course. At any rate, this recording is on the highest plane of musical experience, except perhaps for the audio, which is a bit too resonant for my taste. The big fortissimo chords sound great that way, but some of those perfectly fingered pearly runs and trills get blurred in the acoustic soup created by the engineering team in Germany. Drier recording would have been better, but it’s a superb CD even so.

Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky: Piano Concerto No. 1 in B-flat Minor, Op. 23. Sergei Rachmaninoff: Solo Piano Works. Arcadi Volodos, piano; Berliner Philharmoniker, Seiji Ozawa, conductor. SH 93067 (2002/2003).
Another recording of the most played-to-death piano concerto in the world? Yes, but with two differences. One is Volodos, the other is SACD surround sound—both of which are distinctly different. Volodos is the other young Russian giant of the piano, one year younger than Evgeny Kissin and equally phenomenal, albeit a little less publicized. He has been characterized as a Horowitz with soul (or words to that effect), and indeed his technique is absolutely astonishing without in any way coarsening his lyricism in the tender passages. Really an amazing pianist, a complete package—and he was only 30 when he recorded the concerto. The shorter Rachmaninoff pieces, for piano alone, came a year later, including a “concert paraphrase” by Volodos of the composer’s Polka italienne, a bravura showpiece. The Tchaikovsky remains one of my favorites, despite the obviousness—some would even say vulgarity—of the music; I am reliably in tears when the big theme of the last movement is restated fortissimo near the end. Volodos plays the concerto with tremendous virtuosity but also the most intense expressiveness. Ozawa and the Berliners also perform on the highest level, and the solo Rachmaninoff selections are equally brilliant. As for the surround sound, it definitely makes a difference in this music, especially in giving the piano its own separate space as distinct from the orchestra’s. There is adequate depth and envelopment; indeed, all sonic elements are first-rate. I recommend this CD even to those who own several versions of the music.

—Peter Aczel

Powered 3-Way Dipole Loudspeaker System

Linkwitz Lab, 15 Prospect Lane, Corte Madera, CA 94925. E-mail: sl@linkwitzlab.com. Web: www.linkwitzlab.com. “Orion” loudspeaker system, $5300.00 the pair (custom-built, complete with electronic crossover and cables, but without the required power amplifier and not including S&H). Kit versions available in various stages of completion at lower prices. Tested samples on loan from manufacturer; later samples purchased by The Audio Critic.

Advancements in technology can proceed along one of two routes: (1) the improvement of old, standard concepts or (2) the pursuit of new and different concepts. The first is safe and generally productive, but the second can lead to considerably more brilliant results. The Linkwitz Lab “Orion” loudspeaker system clearly falls into the latter category. The dipole approach is not exactly a new concept, but using conventional dynamic drivers that are not enclosed in a box (i.e., open front and back) is still a fairly radical approach. And, yes, the results are brilliant.

I’ll go further. I have never listened to a loudspeaker that sounded as musically convincing, in stereo, as the Orion. The soundstage is simply wider, deeper, and more precisely layered—and therefore more lifelike—than I have ever heard out of a pair of transducers. It’s startlingly 3-D sound out of two channels. I feel it is necessary to make that statement before I go into details. The Orion was a totally new kind of audio experience in my life, one that required the reshuffling of established values and assumptions.

That said, I must immediately point out the sad fact that this particular speaker, of all speakers, is not available commercially. You can order it as a kit or you can buy a one-off custom-made pair from Linkwitz Lab. Isn’t that typical of today’s audio scene? You can walk into a store and buy just about anything—except the best! The best just isn’t sufficiently commercial.

The Orion is an “active” loudspeaker, requiring a multichannel power amplifier driven by an electronic crossover/equalizer. That may be one reason why it isn’t commercial—audiophiles stubbornly resist the inherently superior powered-speaker approach, although in this case the power amplifier is not built in and thus a number of alternative amp choices are possible. In any case, other things being equal, an electronic crossover is preferable to a passive crossover, and direct coupling of the drivers to the amplifier is preferable to coupling through a network. The active (powered) format is simply better, in every way—but who will believe me? Only those who already know.

The Design

I’ll have a lot more to say about the sound of the Orion, but first let’s look at the design. Each speaker incorporates four drivers. Two 10″ woofers—Peerless Xtra Long Stroke (XLS) “subwoofers,” model SWR 269, from Denmark—cover the range from 120 Hz down. They have a fundamental resonance frequency (fS) of 19 Hz, are wired in a push-pull configuration to cancel distortion, and are not baffled—they fire into open air forwards and backwards. The all-important range from 120 Hz to 1.44 kHz is covered by an 8″ woofer/midrange—Excel W22EX001 by SEAS, from Norway—which is also mounted completely open, front and back. This driver has an exceptionally stiff and light magnesium cone and a natural rubber surround. Above 1.44 kHz a 1″ soft-dome tweeter—Excel T25CF002 “Millennium” by SEAS—covers the range up to about 27 kHz (that’s right!); it is also open, front and back, but the rear radiation is blocked by the magnet structure. These driver models represent the current state of the art; they were not available until quite recently and are extremely costly. (I understand Linkwitz Lab pays $1200 for the eight drivers in a pair of Orions.) The cabinet housing the four drivers is simplicity itself (see photo), consisting basically of a rigid box with an internal dividing wall but no front and back, topped by an open baffle board. Of course, the dimensions of the cabinet are supercritical, since the exact back-to-front cancellations are part of the fine-tuned acoustical design. It requires a six-channel or eight-channel power amplifier to drive a pair of Orions, six channels if the 10″ woofers are paralleled, eight channels if they are driven separately. Not much power per channel is needed for optimum performance; 75 or even just 60 watts into 8 ohms will be sufficient, but twice that power is also safe (and actually needed in the woofer channels with the parallel connection).

A crucial part of the design is the dedicated crossover/equalizer that drives the multichannel power amp. It is an elaborate circuit on a single PC board with many op-amps, powered from an outboard ±12V power supply and available either as a kit or fully wired. All connections are through single-ended RCA jacks. The electrical crossover points are at 120 Hz and 1440 Hz; all slopes are 24 dB per octave; and of course each driver except the tweeter is boosted on its bottom end to compensate for the open-baffle acoustic cancellation. (In the case of the woofers that’s a very substantial boost to yield flat response down to the lowest audio frequencies, so you can imagine the excursion capabilities the woofers must have in this kind of design.) A toggle switch on the front panel cuts the low-frequency boost in if there is unwanted subsonic content in the program material.

The Orions need to be set up quite differently from box speakers. The more air there is around them the better. They must be placed as far as possible from the back wall and not too near the side walls. Consequently, they are not suitable for all rooms and all decors. That’s the bad news. The good news is that they require no room treatment—the average live room is a perfect match to their dipole launch pattern. Also, they can be listened to at much closer range than typical box speakers. The angle subtended at the listening position by the distance between the speakers can be much larger than the conventional 60° and yield an awesome sonic perspective. More about that below.

The Measurements

A dipole speaker like the Orion cannot be measured exactly the same way as a monopole box speaker. For one thing, the usual nearfield measurement of the low-frequency response isn’t valid because it only indicates what the driver (with equalization) is doing without including the acoustic cancellation from the back wave. Moving the microphone further back will include the acoustic cancellation but also allow the room to intrude, so the measurement will no longer be quasi-anechoic. The open-air woofer resonance of 19 Hz is a good indication of the actual bass-response profile, as there is nothing to push the turnover frequency higher.

At the higher frequencies there are also some complications; even so, my indoor MLS measurements are certainly valid as far as the midrange-to-tweeter transition is concerned and unquestionably valid for the tweeter response. The irony of the situation is that the MLS curves, despite their limitations (or possibly because of them?), indicate virtually perfect frontal frequency response (see Fig. 1 and Fig. 2), and I have no reason to believe that totally anechoic swept-sine-wave measurements taken outdoors would be significantly different. (If I were younger and not as lazy as I have become, maybe I’d take the trouble to do those labor-intensive measurements.)

Fig. 1: Frequency response (blue) and phase response (green) at 2 meters on midrange axis.

Fig. 2: Frequency response (blue) and phase response (green) at 2 meters, 45 degrees off midrange axis.

Distortion is also very low, an example of which is shown in Fig. 3. That’s a pretty damn loud 40 Hz tone, and the second harmonic is only –43 dB (0.7%), with the third harmonic, which is more important, down to –60 dB (0.1%). I could have made many more measurements, but it’s fairly obvious that they would not have changed the overall picture. (Linkwitz is quick to point out on his Web site the shortcomings of simplistic measurements such as mine, but it’s nice to know that the numbers are good even if they don’t tell the whole story.)

Fig. 3: Nearfield spectrum of a 40 Hz tone at a 1-meter SPL of 91 dB.

So—the Orion is flat (at least in terms of my particular frequency-response curves), wide in dispersion, deep in the bass, low in distortion, and in general picture-perfect according to my admittedly limited measurement techniques. That, however, says very little about the audible qualities of the speaker, which apparently have more to do with the boxless design and the dipole wave launch.

The Sound

Evaluating the sound of the Orions requires the same readjustment of conventional mindsets and assumptions as the measurements. I have already referred to the positioning of the speakers in the room, but that’s just the beginning. The big surprise comes when you first put on a CD, preferably of orchestral music. What’s going on here? The depth of the soundstage has tripled in comparison with high-end box speakers! Everything is more spacious, more solidly defined, more clearly directional, more 3-D. It’s not a small difference. It’s close to a revelation. The orchestra is laid out with crystal clarity behind the speakers, with respect to both left/center/right placement and front/middle/back placement. The simpler and more straightforward the stereo recording, the greater the clarity—messy 20-microphone recordings are less precisely delineated. If the recording is of a single instrument, say an acoustic guitar, the sound is no bigger than it should be, just the correct size within the recorded acoustics, but with a large sound source, such as a full choir, the reproduced sound becomes huge, as if the speakers were eight feet tall and four feet wide. The subjective impression is that the speakers are no longer there; the listener is looking into the soundstage—big or small, as the case may be—without any intermediary.

Note that I said looking into the soundstage. That’s the limitation of stereo. In the case of 5.1 surround sound, one is immersed in the soundstage. The remarkable thing, though, is that the Orions render a more precisely defined soundstage in stereo, i.e. in front of you, than my excellent Waveform Mach MC 5.1 surround system produces all around you. That I really didn’t expect; I had been pretty much convinced that the best surround system always trumps the best stereo system. (Of course, the fairest comparison would be with five Orions plus a subwoofer.) The fact is that I now prefer to listen to the CD layer of SACDs through the Orions rather than the 5.1 DSD layer through my surround system. I get more auditory information about the performance that way, albeit with an inevitably more limited acoustic perspective. (Oh yes, I forgot to mention than I ordered and purchased a pair of Orions from Linkwitz Lab after I completed the evaluation of the loaner pair.)

Experimenting with the placement of the Orions yields some unexpected results. The conventional equilateral triangle setup with the listener at one of the apexes is fine; the sonic perspective is excellent that way, as long as the speakers are at some distance from the walls. But listening from much nearer, almost centered between the speakers but not quite, say at a 135° angle, brings the soundstage almost frighteningly alive, especially with a wide sound source such as a symphony orchestra. Needless to say, it would not be practical to have your sofa or armchair that near the speakers on a permanent basis, but it’s a very interesting temporary deployment. As I said, the Orions make you revise your established assumptions and procedures.

What about the tonality, the basic audio texture? The lack of coloration or neutrality of the sound, as well as its transparency, will be determined primarily by the quality of the drivers, which in this case is as high as it gets—if better drivers had been available, Siegfried Linkwitz would have chosen those instead. Since the Peerless and SEAS drivers are not exclusive to this design—a few other speaker systems also use them—I cannot say that the Orion is lower in coloration, more neutral, or more transparent than any other speaker. It is certainly equal to the very best out there but no better. Its superiority lies in the structure, rather than the texture, of the reproduced sound. The texture is merely superb but not different; the structure is entirely different from the usual. As for bass response, I find the reproduction of the deepest orchestral and even organ sounds to be fully satisfactory without a subwoofer, but bass freaks may disagree with me. The lowest notes are there, but if you are looking for very high-level playback below 40 Hz or so—maybe for movie soundtracks, etc.—you may want a subwoofer. I don’t.

Playing some of my familiar CDs through the Orions produces new insights. Recordings that I did not consider particularly outstanding suddenly sound magnificent. Others that I rated especially high sound nice, with the expected deep soundstage, but nothing more. The speakers, to say it once again at the risk of being repetitious, make you reevaluate all your previous value judgments. Also, the volume at which each recording sounds the most real, the most alive, is much more critical on the Orions than on other speakers. The sound almost seems to click into perfect realism as you hit the right level. One surprise after another.

Availability

“It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man”…to obtain a pair of Orions—well, maybe not, but certainly easier for him to purchase a pair of Wilson Audio Alexandria X-2’s or Von Schweikert VR-11SE’s for 23 times as much money. They are more readily available but won’t yield equal musical satisfaction because they are still box speakers and don’t benefit from Linkwitz’s special insights. If you just want a set of Orion construction plans and an empty PC board, that’s relatively easy; Linkwitz Lab will ship them to you as soon as you pay for them. If you want precut cabinet panels shipped to you in a flat package, there is a source, and you can also order the eight drivers separately. If you just want to sit back and wait for a finished pair of Orions to arrive at your doorstep, you’ll have to put in a special order and wait a month or more while Linkwitz Lab has them custom-built for you. There are so many different options and so many different prices that it’s easier to refer your to www.linkwitzlab.com than to list them all here. The basic price of a finished pair of Orions with fully wired crossover and all necessary cables, but not including the required six-channel or eight-channel power amplifier, is $5300.00 plus shipping and handling. Considering that it’s arguably the world’s best loudspeaker system, that’s a freaked-out bargain—not even counting all the DIY opportunities to pay a lot less. No, I haven’t tested all the good loudspeakers in the world; I’m just basing my opinion on what I know. My enthusiasm for the Orion knows no bounds. I never had its equal in my listening room; I am totally sold on the “boxless” approach; and I am planning to keep my pair forever. What more can I say?

PS: “Revision 0.1”

After the above review was written and presumably completed, Siegfried Linkwitz posted a modification of the Orion on his Web site under the title of Revision 0.1. The modification consists of removing the screws that hold the midrange driver to the baffle board and holding the driver by the magnet instead. The magnet is glued with silicone adhesive to a light bracket which is fixed to the top of the open woofer box; the rim of the midrange driver remains in exactly the same position as before but floating, with a very small gap between it and the baffle, which is sealed with a soft foam strip. Thus there are no forces whatsoever transmitted from the rim of the driver to the baffle, and the minuscule “pendulum” effect of the magnet in free suspension on the basket is also stopped. It’s a deader, more completely damped mounting system than before, similar to the mounting system used in Linkwitz’s old, expensive Audio Artistry speakers.

Don Barringer, Linkwitz’s associate who researched and developed Revision 0.1, was kind enough to make the changes on my Orions personally, so I know they were done right. The $190.00 conversion kit, available from Linkwitz Lab, is just a bit too tricky for duffers like me to apply without errors. Minimal carpentry skills are necessary.

The difference in sound before and after is not dramatic, as you may have guessed by now. Before-and-after listening tests are not as reliable as side-by-side double-blind tests, so I cannot swear to my conclusions, but I believe there is a definite difference. The total acoustic inactivity of the baffle board results in a slightly more neutral, more uncolored, more natural sound on certain instruments and voices. It’s as if the speaker had totally disappeared, leaving no intermediary between the music and the listener. Or so it seems to me. The trouble is that the sound was pretty terrific even before Revision 0.1.

—Peter Aczel

Siegfried Linkwitz, His Web Site, and the Issue of Credibility

If you haven’t heard of Siegfried Linkwitz, at least in the context of the famous Linkwitz-Riley crossover, you haven’t been an audiophile very long. That crossover, however, is the least of his accomplishments. The man is a walking encyclopedia of audio design, one of the most enlightened audio technologists in the world. Go to his Web site, www.linkwitzlab.com, and convince yourself. It is a whole universe of loudspeaker facts, speaker design concepts, and general audio philosophy, with innumerable links and all sorts of entertaining digressions. I haven’t so far found anything remotely comparable to it on the Internet. It’s an evolving book, a labor of love, and—here’s the most important point—you can take every statement in it at face value because it’s science, not tweako subjectivism.

Siegfried Linkwitz was a Hewlett-Packard scientist before he branched out into speaker design, with three and a half decades of electronic instrument designs to his name. Now, in his late sixties, he has an unequaled overview of loudspeaker engineering possibilities, having considered all available options, all transducer types, all “what-about-this-other” alternatives—he makes a special point of this on the Web and in his other writings—and ending up with the Orion design as the best of all possible tradeoffs. He had ample previous design experience with open-back speakers, among them the Audio Artistry “Dvorak,” “Vivaldi,” and “Beethoven” (Audio Artistry is meanwhile out of business), and the more recent Linkwitz Lab “Phoenix,” but he considers the Orion to be the culmination of his engineering efforts. Read all about it on linkwitzlab.com.

There is a very interesting and very fundamental issue raised by the persona of Siegfried Linkwitz and his Web site. When a scientifically educated professional talks to him or reads him, his statements will not be disputed because they are supported by incontrovertible science and properly qualified by his reservations or exceptions, if any. On the other hand, when a typical audiophile, let us say a music-loving dentist, reads his statements, his credibility will be called into question with a “maybe it’s so and maybe it isn’t—who knows?”. And then—and this is the point I’m trying to make—when a half-educated, self-appointed audio guru in one of the audiophile journals makes a statement, the typical reader reaction will be the same—maybe it’s so and maybe it isn’t. In other words, to the average audiophile, Siegfried Linkwitz and (let us say) Michael Fremer or Jonathan Scull have the same level of credibility! This is an intolerable situation, a symptom of sickness within the audio community. I have no idea what to do about it but I’m highly sensitized to it because I, too, try to be scientifically incontrovertible, although I’m no Siegfried Linkwitz, not by a long shot. Still, The Audio Critic should have a higher level of credibility than the tweako/weirdo subjectivists, and Siegfried Linkwitz should have absolute credibility, without ifs, ands, or buts.

I think this credibility issue is more problematic in audio than in nearly all other disciplines. When people read something in, let us say, Scientific American, they don’t tend to conclude that maybe it’s so and maybe it isn’t. There should be some kind of widely accepted arbiter of authority in consumer audio, but I see none. In professional audio there is the Audio Engineering Society, but the typical audiophile doesn’t even know that it exists. In the case of loudspeakers, especially, qualified and unqualified opinions appear to have equal weight. A sad state of affairs and apparently impossible to remedy.

Powered 4-Way Digital Loudspeaker System

Bang & Olufsen America, Inc., 780 West Dundee Road, Arlington Heights, IL 60004. Voice: (847) 590-4900. Fax: (847) 255-9064. E-mail: beoinfo1@bang-olufsen.dk. Web: www.bang-olufsen.com. BeoLab 5 loudspeaker system, $16,000.00 the pair. Tested samples on loan from manufacturer.

I have a dream. I dream of the Ultimate Loudspeaker. It can only exist in my dream because in the real world no manufacturer would have the overarching vision and multifaceted expertise to incorporate each and every one of its ideal features in a single design. No way; it could never happen. It would of course have to be a powered loudspeaker because perfect matching of the amplifier channels to the drivers is possible that way and because separate, free-standing power amplifiers are hopelessly twentieth-century. It would have to be a 4-way loudspeaker because 3-way design always stretches the capabilities of the drivers to the limit. It would have high-order digital filters in the electronic crossover because they are linear-phase and just plain superior. The four power amplifiers would be extremely powerful yet small enough to be tucked unobtrusively inside the speaker enclosure, thanks to the most sophisticated switch-mode design. The various functions and protection modes of the speaker would be controlled by a powerful internal computer and DSP processor, which would also permit a single digital S/PDIF connection from a stereo signal source to produce music from the all-in-one amplifier/speaker system. One of the capabilities of the DSP would be to tune the bass response of the speaker to its specific location in the listening room. (I can dream, can’t I?) Also, the midrange and treble response of the speaker would be much wider in dispersion than the usual 60° or 90°, extending essentially to 180°, so that the location of the listener would become totally unimportant. (Asking for the moon? What are dreams for?)

Am I still dreaming? What are those two strange-looking monoliths in my listening room? Could they be loudspeakers? Introducing the Bang & Olufsen BeoLab 5, the speaker that makes my dream come true in every detail, bar none. I can hardly believe it. Amazing. Speakers will never be the same again.

The Design

Bang & Olufsen really did it this time. The Danish firm whose philosophy always seemed to be cosmetics (“Dansk design”) first, engineering second, has leapfrogged the whole speaker industry with an engineering design so advanced and so imaginative that it leaves everyone else in the dust. The BeoLab 5 is the most sophisticated piece of loudspeaker engineering in the world today, at least in the world known to me—and they didn’t neglect the cosmetics, either. Just look at it! It’s a tour de force both technically and visually. There is simply nothing else like it. For once, the high price tag (sixteen big ones) does not appear to be excessive when you “look under the hood.”

The drivers around which the BeoLab 5 is designed are a 15″ subwoofer, a 6½” upper woofer, a 3″ soft-dome midrange unit, and a ¾” soft-dome tweeter. The downward-facing subwoofer is in a 29-liter (just over 1 cubic foot) sealed enclosure, remarkably small for the high-level 18-Hz capability, and proof of both the elaborate electronic equalization and the large excursion range of the driver. The upper woofer is in a 5-liter (0.18 cubic foot) sealed enclosure, facing forward. The midrange driver and tweeter each face upward and fire into very special acoustic lenses, one larger and one smaller, licensed from Sausalito Audio Works. This Acoustic Lens Technology, invented by SAW president Manny LaCarrubba, permits 180° dispersion of each driver’s frequency band in the horizontal plane. Three circular disks—below, between, and above the lenses—are part of the dispersion system. (The SAW lens reminds me a little bit of the Karlson speaker enclosure of half a century ago—who is old enough to remember it?—which also had the driver firing forward through an aperture that narrowed to a point on top, but of course it was a much more primitive technology, designed for full-range drivers and with a two-dimensional aperture as against the three-dimensional cavity of a SAW lens.) The ultrawide dispersion of the upper midrange and treble is one of the features that distinguishes the BeoLab 5 from all other speakers.

The four amplifiers feeding the four drivers are of a uniquely efficient switch-mode design by ICEpower, a Bang & Olufsen subsidiary. They are so small that they fit easily inside the speaker (along with all the associated electronics), yet they can deliver 1000/1000/250/250 watts, respectively, into the four drivers. Distortion and noise are as low as in the best conventional amps. (This is the technology of the future, not the Halcro kind of thing.) The electronic crossover that feeds the four power amps is part of the elaborate DSP module. Digital filters split the audio spectrum into four bands, without the phase nonlinearities that are inherent in high-order analog filters. Frequencies above 500 Hz are directed to the two acoustic lenses, below 500 Hz to the two cone drivers. (The two other crossover frequencies are not specified.) The DSP is of an advanced design, with 32-bit floating-point processing. S/PDIF outputs from any external source, with sampling rates up to 96 kHz and word depths up to 24 bits, can be fed directly to the speakers. All signals are up-sampled to 192-kHz/24-bit before being converted to analog for the power amps. All you need is some kind of digital player, without any other electronics, to hear music out of the BeoLab 5’s. The DSP also effects delay compensation for each driver, monitors voice coil temperatures and dynamically corrects output levels accordingly, and—most remarkable of all—manages the unique Adaptive Bass Control. A substantial handheld remote control commands all these functions—and more.

The Adaptive Bass Control works as follows. You press the center of the top circular disk on the speaker. A tiny microphone snakes out from underneath the subwoofer. A sequence of tone bursts begins. When it’s over, the microphone changes its position by a short distance. A second sequence of tone bursts follows. When it’s over, the microphone retracts. (Showmanship reinforcing technology!) From the two readings, the onboard computer calculates the low-frequency equalization required for flat room response at that particular location and applies the calculated curve. Flashing red and green pilot lights monitor the entire sequence. Then you repeat the same process with the other speaker. Thus, no matter where the speakers are located, you can have totally optimized in-room bass response. No additional instrumentation needed. The difference in low-frequency smoothness before and after the procedure has to be heard to be believed. Most rooms are terrible bass messer-uppers.

The foregoing is just a superficial summary of the BeoLab 5 design. There is a lot more to it. Go to www.bang-olufsen.com, where you can download various PDFs that will answer whatever question you are likely to have. Sausalito Audio Works’ web site, www.sawonline.com, also has some excellent technical information on the BeoLab 5.

The Measurements

Fig. 1: Frequency response (blue) and phase response (green) 2 meters on axis.

Fig. 2: Frequency response (blue) and phase response (green) 2 meters off axis (approx. 45 degrees).

The most obvious difference between the measured response of the BeoLab 5 and that of any other speaker is the complete absence of high-frequency rolloff at any angle off axis horizontally. Compare Fig. 1 and Fig. 2. Those are my quasi-anechoic (MLS) curves from 300 Hz up, taken at 2 meters on axis and approximately 45° off axis, respectively. There is virtually no difference between the two curves, all the way up to the highest frequencies. Fig. 2 could actually have been taken at 85° off axis with little or no effect on the response—the speaker just doesn’t care! That’s unique to the Acoustic Lens Technology. There is, however, something slightly disturbing about the curves. They ought to be quite flat but show instead a shallow S-shaped bend, dipping in the upper midrange and peaking in the treble range. That vaguely S-shaped profile is evident at all output levels and no matter how close or far the measurement microphone is placed. It appears to be the signature of the BeoLab 5. I asked the design engineer at Bang & Olufsen whether this was deliberate “formatting,” perhaps based on listening-test preferences. He vehemently denied that and sent me B&O’s own frequency-response curves to prove that the speaker is flat. The funny thing is that the B&O curves also suggest the S-shaped profile in amplitude response but, on the other hand, indicate dead-flat power response above 1 kHz. Now, I don’t have the technology (or the patience) to do the large-scale reiterative solid-angle averaging required to derive an accurate power response, so I’ll have to give B&O the benefit of the doubt. I’m wondering, however, why the BeoLab 5 can’t have flat amplitude response—at least on axis and at moderate angles off axis—like some of the other top-notch speakers out there that also have excellent power response.

As far as vertical dispersion is concerned, it is severely limited by the three circular disks that constitute the tops and bottoms of the acoustic lenses. This is not just a byproduct of the design but an essential part of the design philosophy. B&O believes in preventing floor and ceiling reflections, in preference to the arguable sonic benefits of greater vertical dispersion. More about that below.

The nearfield low-frequency response of the speaker, before any adaptive in-room correction, is shown in Fig. 3. It is as good as it gets, flat down to an f3 of 18 Hz with only ½ dB ripples. That 15″ subwoofer and its 1000-watt ICEpower amplifier are state-of-the-art. Distortion of a 40 Hz tone at a 1-meter SPL of 95 dB is shown as an FFT spectrum in Fig. 4. That’s a very loud level for such a low frequency—as loud as I’m willing to tolerate in my laboratory when I do my measurements—and the numbers are very good. The –41 dB second harmonic translates to 0.89%, the –48 dB third harmonic to 0.4%, the –60 dB fourth harmonic to 0.1%. You can’t get much lower than that, and even if you could the difference would be inaudible. I did not take any other distortion measurements because at higher frequencies the distortion is inevitably lower, typically approaching zero in the top three octaves of the audio band. This is clearly a very low-distortion loudspeaker.

Fig. 3: Nearfield small-signal response of woofer (adaptive bass-control calibration set to “neutral”).

Fig. 4: Nearfield spectrum of a 40 Hz tone at a 1-meter SPL of 95 dB.

The Sound

The ultimate purpose of world-class engineering in a loudspeaker is world-class sound, and the BeoLab 5 has got it. It was the immediate successor to my 1996-to-2003 reference standard, the Waveform Mach 17, in my main listening room, and after a very brief initial listening session I said, “Yes, this is better.” Now, the Waveform was gone by then, so I could not do an ABX double-blind listening comparison (which would have been invalid, in any event, because the size and vastly different launch geometries of the speakers would have precluded same-position substitution of any kind). The fact is that no side-by-side comparison was necessary. The Adaptive Bass Control alone, once activated, produced obviously superior results. The low-frequency response was utterly smooth, effortless, powerful, without the slightest lumpiness, and extending all the way down to dc—or so it seemed. Unbelievable bass. The wide horizontal dispersion of the frequencies above 500 Hz also resulted in a unique listening experience—you can sit anywhere in the room with these speakers, as long as they are somewhere in front of you. The aiming of the midrange and tweeter has become totally uncritical. That alone is worth the price of admission.

As for the slightly S-shaped frequency response curve—was it audible? I am not at all sure. Just the slightest suspicion of extra zing at the highest frequencies, of reduced brightness at around 3 kHz—maybe, maybe not. The fact is that the overall sound was superb, as transparent, defined, and alive as I have ever heard out of any speaker, and definitely less boxy than the remembered sound of the Waveform, which had been really minimally boxy to begin with. The BeoLab 5 is, on the whole, a masterpiece in sound, as well as in electroacoustic theory. About the only reservation I ended up with had to do with the height of the soundstage, which should have been taller, ideally. Those circular disks were doing their job—no floor or ceiling reflections, somewhat restricted height on the soundstage. It’s a tradeoff. In all other respects, the soundstage was extremely well-defined.

I must add that the BeoLab 5 does not have the unique 3-D soundstaging characteristics of the Linkwitz Lab “Orion”—no other speaker does. (See the Orion review.) On the other hand, the BeoLab 5 is a brilliant all-in-one engineering package unlike any other design in the world and also unique in sound, in its own way. If I could afford both, I would own both. I particularly appreciate the BeoLab 5’s total repudiation of the tweako audiophile worship of 200-pound amplifiers, the “sweet spot” for stereo listening, and strictly analog design. If an audiophilic orthopedic surgeon happened to be fortuitously persuaded to purchase a pair of BeoLab 5’s, he would be automatically spared every bit of idiotic propaganda about triode amplifiers, silver cables, biwiring, burn-in, spiked feet, etc., etc. Isn’t that wonderful? Bravo, B&O!

—Peter Aczel