“The Waveform Mach Solo is a smaller version of the mighty Mach 17, with only one woofer, and a passive crossover. The 17 comes with an electronic crossover made for Waveform by Bryston, and costs $12,000. The egg midrange/tweeter module is the same in all models, though a different woofer/midrange driver is used in the MC. The Solo woofer is a 10″ treated paper cone driver with a rolled rubber surround. The crossover is a 4th order Linkwitz- Riley type (14-dB/Octave) at 575 and 1850 Hz. Low end response is said to extend to 35 Hz in a normal room…”

“It’s almost a year since we reviewed the Reference Active/40 (Wtr 99), and I thought it would make some sense to follow up with a look at its unpowered sibling, the Studio/40. This speaker uses the same drivers, but with a passive crossover, and it doesn’t have the flexibility of level and frequency contour adjustments. However, it does have the potential of sounding better when driven by a superior amplifier to that provided in the Active/40… “

“The 5.0s is a bookshelf speaker that has optional matching stands ($499), using a “5.25″ rigid poly fiber cone” and a “1.125″ double chamber, silk dome with unique proprietary coating applied by hand”, according to the brochure. Both drivers are magnetically shielded. Origin of these drivers is not revealed, though it appears they are custom made for Soliloquy, and are inverted, the tweeter below the woofer/midrange…”

“A veteran internet merchandiser, Newform Research’s John Meyer (pronounced Mayer; he’s of Norwegian background) has been selling his speakers without any dealer network for years. He has weathered the drop-step slam dunks of the courier known as “Oops!” to sell his ribbon loudspeakers all over the world; recently the first order came in from Australia…”

“Definitely designed to be a full range reproducer with very high dynamic capability, the Studio 100 uses a pair of 8″ polypropylene woofers with very large cast baskets, a 6 1/2″ woven Kevlar midrange, and for this second iteration of the Studio 100, a new aluminum dome tweeter identical to that used in the Active 40. All drivers are designed and made in-house, Paradigm, like API, a very vertically integrated company…”

“Perhaps it’s unfair to characterize the Totem Arro as the Kate Moss of speakers, but it is a thin little waif of a thing, with a 4 1/2″ woofer/midrange and a 1/2″ dome midrange. It’s also cute, nicely finished in rosewood, with just about the smallest footprint I’ve seen. It sits on a 7 3/4″ by 8 5/8″ base that fits spikes, and is rather tippy; I’m inclined to want to use some Bluetac to secure it to the base. The Arro should not go into houses with rambunctious children or dogs, not to forget exploratory cats…”

“Verity Audio is a Quebec City manufacturer that bases its claims to high quality loudspeakers on very fast, accurate drivers and extremely inert and solid cabinets. The Fidelio is quite heavy at close to 60 pounds. Though a single unit structure, the cabinet is in two parts joined by alternating layers of rigid and absorptive materials to keep bass energy away from the mid/treble unit on top…”

“This small monitor has been an unusual project for Mirage in that most of their flagship products are large, like the M-1si. But chief designer Ian Paisley took it upon himself to design and build a small monitor that was neither bipolar nor Omnipolar, and recruited young engineer Andrew Welker to work with him to complete the project. Both of their names are on the gold-plated plaque underneath the binding posts on the rear of each speaker…..”

“Now something of a pioneer in consumer active speakers, Paradigm is becoming very good at it, as the listening tests showed. Engineering a speaker from a line-level input onward gives the designers control of much more of the ultimate performance than when designing a speaker to work from an amplifier output. Of course, the amplifier(s) employed must be very good, or the design will be compromised…”

“Some speaker reviews are relatively short because there’s not much to say about yet another conventional or budget speaker; but others are so because the designer has done just about everything right, and has added to this synergy genuine creative intelligence. The latter is definitely the case here….”

“These monitor/subwoofer matched pairs come in a configuration that, as the width measurements suggest, stacks very neatly. And the neatness is augmented by the very nice veneered finish of the boxes, with their rounded corners and black front baffle. The subwoofer contains a high-pass filter, with an extra set of gold-plated 5-way posts to send it to the CHS-2. The speakers can also be bi-wired or amped…”

“The Oracle speaker project goes back quite a few years, and the Mentor Studio system is the culmination of that project, and its sleek finish reflects (quite literally) the tradition of craftsmanship associated with Oracle. Our review pair were finished in a shiny burgundy lacquer that looked as if it had been lovingly rubbed and polished by skilled hands…”

“A year ago the Mammoth subwoofer dominated the cover of our first A/V Almanac, and now we have son of, a smaller powered version that attempts to put essentially the same performance into a smaller package. The essence of the original design was an 18″ electromagnetic driver in an enclosure designed to fully vent the backwave and really move air…”

“This is our first PSB review in a few years, though AIG contributors have been aware of the Canadian brand’s growth and success. For example, contributing editor and columnist Gordon Brockhouse has been proud owner for years of Stratus Gold speakers, and has just upgraded to the newest iteration of these. The Century 300i comes at the other end of the price and size scale, a budget bookshelf model that is a 2-way rear-ported reflex design that uses a 6 1/2″ woofer/midrange and dome tweeter, both appearing to be made or polyproplylene….”

“Bob Carver’s unconventional approach to the subwoofer has been both derided and copied, but most important, it’s also sold like crazy, making a real mark for the little Snohomish, Washington company he founded several years ago after leaving Carver Corporation. The son of Sunfire sub is bigger, but uses the same amplifier and operating principle, with active and passive drivers, the latter mass-loaded…”

“You might think that this is the least expensive speaker model in the Paradigm Performance basic range, but, no it isn’t. The Atom ($199 pr) and the Micro ($169 pr) are below it in price. The last time we auditioned the Titan was in the Summer 93 issue, and then it was an all-wood box. The last time we auditioned the Titan was in the Summer 93 issue, and then it was an all-wood box. But Paradigm has had in-house injection moulding facilities…”

“Over the past few years Linn has become increasingly system-oriented, this trend accelerated by their strong move into high end home theatre. It was inevitable, therefore, that they would introduce an entry-level high end audio system, and here it is. Very cleverly, the product designers at the Glasgow company have combined a CD player based on the Mimik with an integrated amplifier based on the Magik I, and redesigned the Kann speakers to go with this new component…”

“I first heard these speakers at the Festival d Son et de L’Image in March after a recommendation from AAM; he’d been very impressed at what he heard from this particular model. Our review samples of the e:XL-25 came in the same attractive Northern Light Birch vinyl that graced the Sound Dynamics RTS-P100, much less of it covering this smaller, less expensive speaker…”

“As speakers, the 4 identical towers share a diminutive footprint and very narrow baffle, and all share the same drivers, a fabric dome tweeter, and 3 3 1/2″ cones for bass and midrange; the centre speaker is similarly slim laterally, with 4 of the 3 1/2″ drivers flanking the same tweeter. All of these are designed to operate down to a lower limit of 80 Hz. They are front-ported, but the real bass is reproduced by the subwoofer….”

“As part of the Synergy Series and the Premiere group of speakers, the Klipsch KSP-300 seems a little over identified, sort of like all those women going around with three names in the wake (and some wake, too) of Hilary Rodham Clinton (reminds me of Hickory Dickory Dock; I guess Monica’s problem is that she doesn’t have a middle name). Anyway, before I slide off into total irrelevance while hardly into this review at all, I should note that Klipsch’s Canadian distributor, Evolution Audio’s Saxe Brickendon..”