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This group test focuses on the more popularly priced, sub-$2500 per pair sector of the stereo loudspeaker market. Our five models range from the $998 per pair Arcam Alto up to the most costly example from
Dynaudio, the not much larger Focus 110 at $2200 per pair.
On this occasion, the standmounts outnumber the floorstanders by three to two, it reflects the fact that these standmounts are far from beer budget packages: all come dressed in attractive real wood veneers and feature rather more than basic enclosure and drive unit engineering.
Three of our standmounts are very small indeed. The Arcam, B&W and Dynaudio all have port-loaded enclosures of seven litres or less, and bass/mid drivers of around 130mm frame diameter. As one would expect, all the standmounts are simple two-way designs. But so too is the least expensive of the two floorstanders, the ALR Jordan. As its Entry L name suggests, this aims to deliver the most sound for the least money, and you do get a lot of speaker for little more than the cheapest standmount in our group, with no need to purchase stands either. Okay, so its vinyl finish isn't particularly pretty, but what do you expect for $1199?
Monitor Audio's Silver RS6 looks equally fine value for money. An extra bass-only driver holds the promise of some worthwhile extra muscle, and the very smart styling package includes a proper separate plinth, all of which makes the little standmounts look rather pricier than they really are.
When it comes to providing sheer refinement at a relatively modest price, the small speaker still has plenty going for it, whereas the larger floorstander faces the difficult task of trying to control the vibrations generated in its much larger enclosure. Even the fact that the standmount sits on a dedicated stand with fresh air underneath can be fair compensation for the inevitable lack of bottom end muscle.
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ALR Jordan Entry L ¦ $1199 per pair ¦ 
¦www.audiodynamics.com.au
Fo
r: Smooth and controlled with good tonal balance.
Against: Lacking a little weight and authority.
Verdict: Great sound outweighs this floorstander's prosaic styling.
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Despite the reference to British speaker designer Ted Jordan, ALR Jordan is actually a German brand, headed by speaker designer Karl-Heinz Fink. Ted Jordan was the original pioneer of metal cone driver technology, and the company's models combine his main driver expertise with German engineering and production.
While Ted Jordan's own designs have always favoured crossover-free, full-range operation, Karl-Heinz Fink's acknowledged expertise lies in voicing and crossover design. As such, the ALR Jordan designs are more conventional and feature separate tweeters.
The Entry models are the least costly of three ALR Jordan ranges. This is clear from the decidedly basic cosmetic presentation, with a plain charcoal grey front baffle and a rather unconvincing vinyl woodprint elsewhere.
This $1199 per pair Entry L is third up the four-rung Entry ladder of stereo speakers, and is the least expensive floorstander in ALR Jordan's line-up. From the outside, it's a large two-way, port-loaded at the front. From the inside though, only part of the enclosure is acoustically active: the lower third or thereabouts is blanked off from the space behind the main driver, and an access hatch allows ballast to be added. This improves physical stability and allegedly tightens the bass.
The main driver here has a 165mm cast frame and 120mm Jordan-designed aluminium cone, while the tweeter has a 25mm soft fabric dome. A single terminal pair feeds a crossover network that uses low loss capacitors and, unusually, an autotransformer (instead of resistors) to set relative treble level. Reversible spike/domes are supplied for floor coupling, but no separate plinth.
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Sound Quality
This bulky two-way has a delightfully musical integrity and coherence, together with a surprisingly delicate and transparent midband. The bass-alignment looks very well suited to positioning the speakers clear of walls. Here, it shows an even balance that's also dry enough to suggest that some wall proximity should also give good results.
Perhaps the greatest strength of this speaker lies in its exceptional smoothness and all-round even-handedness. Colorations are very well controlled and the tonal balance is beautifully neutral. It has sufficient restraint in the presence zone to avoid any aggressive tendencies, while still maintaining good voice and speech intelligibility. The treble proper is also exceptionally well judged, providing the essential fine detail that is the reason for using it, yet avoiding drawing unwanted attention to itself.
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It's simply not practical to mess around with adding and then removing optional damping materials in a review context, especially when undertaking a group test. While there's no denying that adding ballast will improve the physical stability of a floorstander, past experience has indicated that the sonic benefits are less predictable – worth trying for those who have the inclination, but net improvement is by no means guaranteed. In any case, the Entry L without ballast has a very respectable bass performance, lacking a little weight and authority perhaps, but showing good evenness with a lively and purposeful delivery that fits in properly with the rest of this very fine and inexpensive loudspeaker.
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Arcam Alto ¦ $998 per pair ¦ 
¦ www.absoluteaudiovision.com.au
For: Fine voice projection with superior all round coherence.
Against: Slight lack of scale and weight.
Verdict: Good midband and treble coherence.
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A leading British manufacturer of hi-fi electronics since the 1970s, Cambridge-based Arcam has dabbled in the speaker market before, but not for a number of years. The reason for its return to the speaker fray is Arcam's hugely successful Solo system. This combines the functions of CD player, FM/DAB radio tuner and stereo amplifier in a single stylish electronic component. The little $998 per pair Alto speaker is an obvious companion to the Solo, reflecting a similar preoccupation with high-class performance, alongside diminutive dimensions.
Arcam doesn't actually build the Alto, rather it has picked a partner in Danish speaker specialist Audiovector. The two have worked together to create the Alto, although it is based closely on Audiovector's own pretty
sub-miniature, the K1. It does differ significantly in a number of important respects.
It's a relatively lightweight speaker at just 4kg, and our samples came with a metallic silver paint on the double thickness (20mm) front panel, while the rest is covered in a choice of maple or cherry real-wood veneers. The grille is retained by four shiny little magnets, and covers the two drivers and two tiny ports.
The 130mm main driver has a 95mm diameter diaphragm made from mineral-loaded woven glass fibres, to give a superior combination of high stiffness, low mass and good self-damping. The 25mm fabric dome tweeter is also carbon loaded. A six-element crossover network is fed from two pairs of very high quality terminals, permitting bi-wiring or even bi-amping, although not using two Solos!
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Soun
d Quality
Some close-to-wall reinforcement is essential with this tiny speaker, though just how much will depend on the low frequency characteristics of the particular room. Our listening room is on the large side, and it's pretty clear that something as small as Arcam's Alto is likely to be better suited to a smaller room, where the volume and major modes that provide ‘room gain' will tend to come into play at somewhat higher frequencies.
There is much to like about this mighty mite, which has fine voice projection and superior all round coherence. Diction is particularly clear when listening to speech, and lyrics are made easily discernible even with what frequently passes for singing in the modern rock idiom. But there's no denying that there's also a significant lack of weight and authority here, and that robs larger scale material of much of its power and majesty.
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You get to hear all the harmonics of the bass instruments, for sure, and that provides most of the clues needed to hear what is being played and how it's being played. But few speakers can make a better case for the addition of a subwoofer or two, just to add the sort of gut-wrenching visceral excitement that is a key ingredient in so much recorded material.
It's noteworthy that the Alto seemed to handle close-to-wall siting without apparently suffering a significant increase in midrange coloration, so much so that even Radio 3's Choral Evensong was reproduced with great clarity and a convincingly spacious and coherent acoustic.
Indeed, so good is the broad midband and treble coherence and transparency here, it's easy to forget the lack of scale and weight for much of the time during everyday listening. It's only when things start to get serious (perhaps unlikely with the Solo) that limitations start to become apparent.
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B&W CM1 ¦ $1499 per pair¦ ¦ www.e-hifi.com.au
For: Provides amply fine sound.
Against: Lacking dynamic tension and some expression.
Verdict: looks gorgeous and sounds great
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World leader in specialist hi-fi loudspeakers, UK-based B&W has featured CM and CDM models in its line-up for around a decade. Pitched at a price a little above its budget 600 Series, but below the 800 Series speaker range, both in terms of price and performance, these models fill a niche for speakers with high-quality design and luxury finish.
That description certainly applies to this $1499 per pair CM1. This must be one of the smallest hi-fi speakers B&W has ever produced, yet unquestionably one of the prettiest, too. Sufficiently so as to confirm its credentials and to suggest it should also be subject to Group Test scrutiny. B&W, like many large speaker companies, does produce smaller speaker designs (like the slinky floorstanding XT4), but these are as much home cinema oriented as hi-fi specified.
High-performance miniatures of around five to seven litre enclosure volumes have a history that includes numerous legitimate ‘classics', such as the Acoustic Energy AE1. In that lofty context, the CM1's $1499 per pair price tag is by no means excessive, and its classy real wood veneer and shiny driver trim certainly looks the part. Finish options are limited to wenge or rosenut, and the grille is held in place by magnets cleverly secreted beneath the veneer.
Naturally enough, it's a two-way design, with a nominal 130mm main driver equipped with a 95mm woven Kevlar cone and pointed dust cap, plus unprotected (and potentially vulnerable) 25mm aluminium dome tweeter. The enclosure is very slim, but also nearly as deep as it is tall, giving a total enclosed volume of 6.5 litres, port-loaded by one of B&W's flared, stippled Flowports set into the rear panel. The tweeter is fitted conventionally into the front of the enclosure here, but it does use an internal Nautilus-style rear loading tube, and a new surround allows a simple first-order feed. Twin terminal pairs offer the bi-wire/bi-amp option, and a hollow foam sleeve may be used to re-tune the port.
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Soun
d Quality
As the room measurements suggest, this model is primarily aligned for free space siting, though it's possible to use the supplied bungs to adjust the bass alignment. This will make the CM1 better suit the characteristics of a particular room, or closer to wall siting.
The sound is very well balanced, cleverly managing to avoid the slightly ‘bleached out' character – with insufficient warmth and richness through the lower midband – that often seems to afflict very small loudspeakers. Very much in the B&W tradition, the presence zone errs on the side of restraint, giving a rather laid back character to voices and speech in particular. But the clean, sweet and well-judged top end assists intelligibility and provides ample fine detail. There's certainly no tendency to make music sound aggressive, even where
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the recording quality is innately edgy and compressed.
Stereo images are spacious and precise, and cabinet coloration is low – helped no doubt by the fact that there's not a lot of cabinet here to create coloration. Boxiness is also well controlled here, and the sound this little speaker creates has surprising weight and solidity for its size.
Rather less impressive is its dynamic behaviour, where the CM1 – in common with other miniatures – demonstrated a basic inability to create the sort of dynamic tension that distinguishes the ‘real' from the ‘reproduced'. This is not merely due to lack of bass, but because of the dynamic constraints a small box bestows on the sound itself. But, given the size and the tangible benefits elsewhere in the sonic performance, this slight lack of dynamism is utterly forgivable.
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Dynaudio Focus 110 ¦ $2200 per pair ¦ ¦ www.ozhifi.com
For: Impressively neutral balance.
Against: Cymbals can be a little insistent.
Verdict: A stylish miniature with impressive intelligibility.
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Danish brand Dynaudio has always concentrated its efforts on the more upmarket segment of the market, with stereo pair prices ranging. Dynaudio has the advantage of building its own drive units, which helps in developing a consistent and good sounding speaker design. This little speaker is no exception. It is smaller than that Audience 42, yet it's also a whole lot prettier, and more than twice the price. Selling at a considerable $2200 per pair, the Focus 110 is one of four models, which slots in between Dynaudio's existing Audience and Contour series.
The Focus line-up currently includes three stereo pairs – two standmounts and a floorstander – of which this Focus 110 is comfortably the smallest. The enclosed volume is just 7.5 litres, and the 130mm bass/mid driver has a diaphragm just 95mm in diameter, so this is a genuine miniature in the classic mould. It's also very much a luxury one too, not only because of its elevated price, but also the very classy real-wood veneer finish – and cunningly shaped enclosure.
What looks at first sight like a conventional rectilinear box, on closer scrutiny turns out to be gently tapered from front to rear. This is sufficient to spread out and defocus the internal lateral standing waves. A further refinement is the chamfered front edges, which should smooth the off-axis distribution.
In the Dynaudio tradition, the main driver has a combination cone/dome diaphragm in moulded MSP (magnesium silicate polymer) plastic, driven from a large diameter aluminium wire voice coil. The 25mm doped fabric dome tweeter is the company's premium quality Esotec+ device. A single pair of terminals feeds first order crossover filters, sharing the rear panel with a flared port. Foam bungs are available to block the latter if desired, and a pillar stand with damped sandwich top and bottom is also available.
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Soun
d Quality
Unlike the budget variety, which tends to favour close-to-wall bass reinforcement, more costly miniatures like this Focus 110 tend to trade sensitivity for a free-space alignment, in order to minimise midband coloration and maximise imaging properties.
That's certainly the case here, and if genuinely deep bass isn't really on the agenda, the Dynaudio delivers healthy mid-bass punch and drive, even when well clear of walls. Indeed, while the port bungs could well prove useful in some sites and rooms, the mild mid-bass excess provides rather effective subjective compensation for the lack of bottom octave output. While an authoritative delivery of heavyweight material is naturally absent, there's no denying that this speaker actually sounds significantly larger than its modest dimensions might suggest.
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With an impressively neutral balance distinguished by a top end that's strong – but very clean and sweet with it – this is a thoroughly involving loudspeaker, even though dynamic tension is a little weak. The clever cabinet design and construction is very effective at banishing any boxy coloration and providing notably precise and out-of-the-box stereo images.
Fine detail is particularly well projected, bringing impressive intelligibility to voices and to speech in particular, with clean and crisp sibilants and fricatives helping to clarify diction even when playing the system very quietly. Such a character can sound aggressive though, and while it's true that brass and cymbals can be a little insistent when the volume is turned up loud, the all round compromise of the Focus 110 is very hard to beat.
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Monitor Audio Silver RS6 ¦ $1699 per pair ¦ ¦ sales@monitoraudio.
com.au
For: Has warmth and tonal richness.
Against: Can sound too heavy on some recordings.
Verdict: Often lacking and a bit sharp on price.
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Monitor Audio has been in the hi-fi speaker business since 1972, so it must have been doing plenty of things right down the years. The company underwent the transition from original founder to new ownership nearly a decade ago, and its hierarchy of Bronze, Silver and Gold hi-fi oriented ranges continue to prosper.
The Silver RS series represents the third generation of the company's attractively styled mid-price range. And styling is very much at the core of the RS6 agenda, with a nicely grained real-wood veneer covering all surfaces, gently smoothed edges, moulded silver driver trim, and a neat badge mounted on the top surface. A proper plinth finishes things off, supplying good physical stability; it comes with chunky spikes that are locked by large knurled plastic wheels. These look good, work well and avoid putting too much strain on the sockets, as well as ensuring secure floor coupling.
Alongside various home cinema extras, four stereo pairs lie at the heart of the Silver RS line-up – a standmount and three floorstanders, the latter distinguished by the size of their enclosures and the quantity of bass drivers used. Whereas the RS5 is a straight two-way, with just the one bass/mid driver, this $1699 per pair RS6 adds an extra bass-only unit and operates as a two-and-a-half-way.
All the diaphragms here are aluminium/magnesium alloy, deep anodised to create a ceramic oxide surface coating to increase stiffness and extend the pistonic operating range. Both the bass-only and bass/mid drivers have 120mm diameter cones in 160mm moulded polymer frames, though they differ in the way the central voice coil cover is handled – a shiny ‘bullet' centre plug is used for the bass/mid driver, while the bass-only unit finishes the cone as a dish. Both are separately port-loaded. The tweeter has a 25mm metal dome, derived from that used in the Gold series, while twin terminals are fitted on the rear for bi-wiring or bi-amping.
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Soun
d Quality
As the in-room measurements indicate, the RS6 is suited to siting well clear of walls, though port-blocking bungs are also supplied if close-to-wall siting is unavoidable. That extra bass-only driver ensures a full and powerful bottom end, with the sort of warmth and tonal richness that is all too often lacking in simpler two-way designs. That said, it can sound too heavy on some recordings, with a tendency to thump at times.
That full bass end balances up with a relatively strong treble output, and while that element of compensation makes plenty of sense, it's also true that the top end is inclined to draw attention to
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itself. Although the overall tonal balance is impressively neutral, and happily free from the sort of midband emphasis found elsewhere in this group (and common among modestly priced speakers in general), the RS6 is not particularly transparent, and does lack sweetness and delicacy. Its music making is rather matter-of-fact, lacking dynamic tension, and it somehow doesn't manage to touch the listener on an emotional level as effectively as it might.
And while that smooth midband is creditably in proper perspective, it's not without a measure of congestion and nasal coloration. This keeps an otherwise fine speaker from recommendation.
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Conclusions
These five mid-price speakers deliver the goods in small, elegant packages; it was a relief to get back to a semblance of normality and the regular market stereotypes that make up this test group.
Working up the price ladder, the tiny $998 Arcam Alto tries very hard to behave like a larger loudspeaker, and almost succeeds. Size – or rather the lack of it – is the crucial factor with what is really a small room speaker for those who value compactness above bass grunt. Bass aside, it's really rather good, and an ideal partner for the company's Solo CD/DAB/amplifier system.
The star of the whole group test has got to be the $1199 ALR Jordan Entry L, which is unarguably the least interesting style wise but the most interesting sonically. Essentially, it's a hugely impressive combination of neutrality and transparency. An obvious Best Buy, especially given the competitive price tag. At the same price point, B&W little CM1 is no less tempting, and likewise deserves Best Buy status, though naturally its miniature dimensions involve some sonic sacrifice.
Top marks for perceived value in the group has got to go to the $1699 Monitor Audio RS6, with its extra bass driver, proper plinth, shiny embellishments and real wood veneer, though the sound quality fell somewhat short of the physical promise.
At $2200, the Dynaudio is unquestionably pricey for such a small speaker (indeed, it's the most expensive model in the group) and – like the B&W – there are sacrifices involved in scaling things down to such a degree. But good things come in small packages. This is unquestionably a thoroughbred design, and its top class drive units – not exactly surprising, given Dynaudio's reputation for drive unit design and manufacture – coupled with a cleverly and elegantly tapered enclosure, demand serious consideration.
