Gclassical guitar shed drivers#

Whether you are lucky enough to have the original vinyl or one of the excellent reissues from Classic Records/Analogue Productions, simply give a listen to the “Habanera” on side two, and as the ROHO gradually works itself into a frenzy, ask yourself whether you can hear the plucked double basses marking the 2/4 meter with the same foot-tapping clarity and presence on tuttis at fortississimo levels that you can when they are spotlit on mezzo forte ones. Keasler ranked it high among the best-sounding RCAs). This is a disc that has long been celebrated for its sonics (those of you who go back that far will remember that TAS’ Carol B. Well, you can hear a large part of what’s up by simply putting on a good full-range orchestral LP, such as RCA’s (Decca’s, actually) famous Kingsway recording of the ballet music from Gounod’s Faust and Bizet’s Carmen Suite with Alexander Gibson conducting the Royal Opera House Orchestra. What’s up with this odd technological mix of past and present?

Gclassical guitar shed drivers#

And outside of horns, you almost never see very high-sensitivity dynamic drivers in a box, especially in a new-fangled aluminum box. In a world where carbon-fiber-, metal-, and ceramic-sandwich drivers have become the cutting-edge norm, you don’t see pulp and fabric-dome diaphragms with textile surrounds as often as you used to. Indeed, here is a speaker that could be (and purportedly sometimes is) powered by single-ended triodes, though I haven’t taken the SET leap. This is veering close to horn-like sensitivity, certainly Wilson-like, although with an impedance curve that never dips below 3 ohms, the Five SE is a lot easier to drive than most Wilsons and is several dB more efficient, to boot. Also very un-Magico-like is the Alumine Five SE’s lofty 94dB sensitivity and stable 8-ohm impedance. Neither are the drivers themselves (the two independently ported woofers that I just mentioned, the largish 6.5″ midrange, and the 1¼” dome tweeter), all of which use “old-fashioned” pulp or textile diaphragms and textile surrounds. However, the Five SE’s twin, slot-like, front-firing ports-one above and one below the pair of 10″ woofers on the bottom half of its facade-are anything but Magico-like.

Indeed, the Five SE’s aluminum enclosure, bulk, and squared-off good looks put one (or, at least, this one) in mind of earlier-gen Magicos, before Alon Wolf added curved carbon-fiber panels to the mix. Of course, at 220 pounds, it’s a hefty little box, but its weight is proportionally no greater than that of many of today’s other high-mass, ultra-high-end speakers. At less than a foot wide, just under four feet high, and a mere foot-and-a-quarter deep, its grille-less rectangular aluminum cabinet is fashionably compact. The three-way, four-driver Stenheim Alumine Five Special Edition (SE) loudspeaker from Switzerland is a unique combination of new and old.