It has been shown that larger voice coils have less power compression because they run at a cooler operating temperature. So instead of getting on with the review, I had to walk away for a quick coffee while I grumbled to myself for half an hour, Enough of irritations, though. Once the optical cable was finally ‘in’ though, I played Bob Marley’s Get Up, Stand Up at 24bit/96kHz mixing a typical reggae beat, percussion and secondary percussion lead and rhythm guitar, organ and more. And partly it's the characteristic nonlinear behaviour of the two arrangements at high volume levels that usually kills the underhung option. DIN sockets and plugs are a fine connection system for line‑level signals, but they were never designed to carry this level of power, and to my mind there are many better alternatives — the Neutrik Speakon for example.

With all the electronics in one monitor, a connection is obviously required between the pair, and that's achieved on the A300 with a 5m DIN‑terminated cable. The A100 is the perfect combination of Hi-Res digital audio processing technology and an aesthetic of understated elegance creates a High-Fidelity audio system with intoxicating sound quality and visual appeal. Enjoy our highest quality 3-dimensional sound and reduce the impact of room reflected sound in your audio. Swedish manufacturer Monolit-Speakers make some interesting looking loudspeakers…made out of concrete.As this kind of speaker lends itself to being multi-use I then moved them into the TV lounge and popped them onto our Solidsteel SS6 tripod stands, which they looked perfectly at home on. Yes, if you can forgive the remote its looks and feel, and focus on the fact that it does what it needs to and does it well. The 768 KHz output PWM carrier frequency is twice that of a traditional Class-D amplifier, making it even more suitable for driving the high sensitivity ribbon tweeter. Moving on, I did note that the lower cost Triangle Elara speakers offered none of that accentuated midrange edge. This deep house album has a laid back, late at night feel to it but with a good bass thump, and I was immediately impressed by the playback from the A100s.

Don’t get me wrong, the remote works well, but I’d really like to see something a touch more robust in the next iteration. The sense of explicit clarity and uncoloured detail I thought I heard back at the hi-fi exhibition is definitely all there. Jason and the team at Custom Cans, without whom, I wouldn’t have half the cables I need to make these reviews as controlled as possible.The tweeters have already been discussed but looking at the rest of the build and connectivity the 115mm (5in) mid/bass unit offers a hard anodised aluminium alloy cone suspended in a heavy, ultra-rigid cast magnesium alloy frame. I played Nina Simone and Love Me or Leave Me as a lossy file from my phone to see how the speakers coped with an inferior source signal. The A300 uses a thin aluminum horn loaded ribbon tweeter which extends frequency range and a well-defined resolution reaching to 40KHz high frequencies. When an overhung voice coil reaches the limits of its linear travel the resulting increase in distortion happens relatively slowly, but when an underhung voice coil becomes nonlinear it happens suddenly, and the distortion level rises quickly and noticeably.

Smart Tech is all about convenience and fun and it is able to fit perfectly in your home and life, from switching. It is using an XMOS XU216 chipset, which was implemented in DACs like the SMSL M400 that I reviewed back in 2020. To further reduce colouration, the cabinet interior is fully lined with professional waved sound absorption material.As I've described in previous reviews, organ-pipe resonances aren't uncommon in ported monitors, and that's because they are not easy to suppress without damping the desired port resonance at the same time. An interesting characteristic of the tweeter revealed by the response curves is that its horizontal dispersion at 20kHz is actually slightly wider than at 10kHz. This could have been very easily flattened with either a simple passive Zobel network (a series capacitor and resistor in parallel with the tweeter) or an EQ stage in the active electronics, but the fact that it hasn't been is perhaps to help ensure the monitor doesn't lose its 'sparkle' in the reverberant field. I was very fortunate in my very early years to get an education on great sound since my father played saxophone in a big band.