LOUDSPEAKERS

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go to: Contents | Features | Bookshelf, Stand-Mount and Desktop | Floorstanding | Editors' Choice Awards EQUIPMENT REVIEW - Bowers & Wilkins Prestige Monitor 1 progression, but Gustavson, in particular, alters his piano phrasing by gently softening some of the notes (or leaving some out) so that you, the listener, are drawn into the performance by filling in the missing elements in your own mind. The effect makes the music more intimate, in my estimation, than if the trio had played the work more straightforwardly. The PM1 gets some of the “Draw Near” magic, but leaves some behind. Perhaps it is unfair to ask so much from a $2800 speaker. The PM1 makes a lot of music sound enjoyable, even flawed recordings, and this should make it appealing to many listeners looking for an easyto-use speaker. Alanis Morissette’s voice on “That Particular Time” [Under Rug Swept, Maverick] will veer toward brightness (or even shrillness) through some speakers, but the PM1 kept Morissette’s upper register from painfully popping out in the mix. Rather than attempt to push the resolution envelope at its price level, it artfully integrates musical details with sonic solidity so that one is more likely to listen to the music for its tunefulness rather than for the documentation of a musical event: “art reproduction” over “archive retrieval,” if you will. Please do not assume that the PM1 is a soft-focus, pillow-like speaker. It has plenty of resolution; it just doesn’t hurl details at you. The new carbon-filament-braced aluminum tweeter apparently extends the dome’s breakup frequency (B&W claims it to be 40kHz) far enough beyond the limits of human hearing to allow a linear and smooth response. Such an extended response supposedly removes tweeter breakup effects from influencing the part of the spectrum we can hear—at least in theory. The new tweeter is impressive, but…it is no 800 Series Diamond, either. Of course, one has to shell out another $2200, over the price of the PM1, to buy a pair of 805 Diamond speakers, and the 805 Diamond’s superior performance comes from a lot more than merely its diamond tweeter. While its limited absolute bass output and dynamic range prevent it from portraying a large orchestra with gusto or rocking out with abandon, the PM1 nevertheless has enough resolution, dynamic life, and bass presence to make many recordings viable and enjoyable. I spent many an hour simply listening to music for its own sake and not really worrying about how much better it could be. The PM1 gets more right than not. As a speaker/stand package, I found the PM1 easy to like, and I daresay it will appeal to many other listeners as well. 50 Guide to High-Performance Loudspeakers RAIDHO C1.1 RAIDHO C1.1 RAIDHO C1.1 www.theabsolutesound.com and previous page RAIDHO C4.1 NEXT page
go to: Contents | Features | Bookshelf, Stand-Mount and Desktop | Floorstanding | Editors' Choice Awards Harbeth Monitor 30.1 Ravishing! Paul Seydor Alan Shaw’s Harbeth Monitor 30.1, which has been released in time to celebrate the company’s thirty-fifth anniversary as a manufacturer of high-quality loudspeakers, is the best compact two-way speaker system I have ever heard, regardless of type, cost, or complexity. By this I mean, of course, that it does a better job of doing the things that are most important to me when it comes to the reproduction of music in the home: tonal neutrality, timbral accuracy, cohesiveness, low distortion, and that elusive impression of vitality which makes recorded music come alive. The speaker is an updated version of the Monitor 30, a studio monitor intended for professional applications where high accuracy in a not large enclosure is required. I say “not large” to indicate that the speaker is not a sub-compact, being three to four times the size of mini-monitors like the fabled LS3/5a or Harbeth’s own P3ES yet somewhat smaller than the standard two-cubic-feet of speakers like Spendor’s SP1/2 or Harbeth’s own Super HL5. The size was in fact dictated a priori, part of the brief to develop a drop-in replacement for the BBC’s Rogers LS5/9, which became unavailable in the late nineties. As befits its monitor status, the 30.1 boasts high neutrality, superb resolution, and a matching of drivers with respect to coherence and sonic character that is equaled by only a small handful of multipledriver dynamic loudspeakers in my experience. Speaking with a single voice in a way reminiscent of Quad ESLs, it is also of similar seriously low coloration and distortion, high transparency, and musical authority. The Monitor 30.1 is at once a never-ending joy to listen to and highly revealing, its supremely natural tonal balance neither accentuating the unpleasant qualities of bad recordings nor enhancing the pleasant qualities of good ones. This is one speaker for which the cliché rings completely true: You can listen to it without fatigue for literally hours on end. 51 Guide to High-Performance Loudspeakers www.theabsolutesound.com previous page NEXT page
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