Yet more awards!

Welcome to the February 2022 German Physiks newsletter.

We seem to be on something of a run at the moment with awards and good reviews. We are very happy to see this continue with the news that our HRS-130 and Borderland Mk IV loudspeakers have both received Editors’ Choice Awards from the leading US audiophile magazine, The Absolute Sound. This award is given to products that they have reviewed and regard as especially outstanding in their class.

HRS-130

Fourth Editors’ Choice Award

When Dick Olsher originally reviewed the HRS-130 in The Absolute Sound in October 2017, he was very impressed with what he heard. As someone who had for many years extolled the advantages of wide bandwidth drivers, he was especially impressed with our DDD driver. In the HRS-130, the DDD driver covers the range from 220Hz to 24kHz. Dick wrote:

“Slicing and dicing the music for consumption by several drivers has a major consequence, namely the loss of coherence since most instruments are reproduced by multiple sources of sound on a baffle. By contrast, the DDD sings with one voice—just like the real thing. The driver is literally positioned outside of a box, which allows for its 360-degree radiation pattern and is responsible for its outside-of-a-box spaciousness”.

In his summary he wrote:

“What you get here is a world-class wide-range driver that is exceptionally well engineered and superbly integrated into a speaker that is almost perfect for a small-to-medium-sized room. In my estimation, the carbon-fiber DDD is one of the top five driver innovations of the past 40 years …”

“Given the right amplifier and room setup, the HRS-130 ticks all the important sonic boxes and clearly edges out the competition when it comes to palpable imaging.” 

The fact that four years later, The Absolute Sound still regards the HRS-130 as worthy of their Editors’ Choice Award, shows how highly they rate this loudspeaker. This is the HRS-130’s fourth Editors’ Choice Award, which together with the Golden Ear Award it received the year it was reviewed, mark it out as a very special loudspeaker and one that can continue to more than hold its own against the competition.

Visit the HRS-130 web page

Read Dick Olsher’s review of the HRS-130

Borderland Mk IV

First Editors’ Choice Award

Our Borderland Mk IV loudspeakers have been given their first Absolute Sound Editors’ Choice Award. This is the result of an excellent review written by Matt Clott, that was published in their July 2021 issue.

In the review, the word natural was repeatedly used to describe the Borderland’s sound:

 … the Borderland is wonderfully coherent and natural, with deep bass that provides a solid foundation upon which the DDD driver blooms like Edelweiss in the Bavarian Alps.”

“Its natural presentation yielded a sense of scale that highlighted realism and nuance as opposed to gusto and bravado.” 

“It grows on you over time, as you become accustomed to its different and wonderfully natural presentation.” 

The award citation sums up why the Borderland Mk IV is such an outstanding loudspeaker:

“Finding an omni-directional speaker that works in real-world rooms can be a challenge. Finding one that is simple to set up, somewhat affordable, relatively easy to drive and sounds like music is near impossible. Yet German Physiks’ Borderland Mk IV, with its Dicks Dipole Driver (DDD) omnidirectional transducer mated to a 12" down-firing woofer in a sealed enclosure accomplishes just that. The Borderland offers a sense of live music that few other speakers convey. With a single driver reproducing the frequencies from 190Hz to 24kHz, the speaker represents a near acoustic point source, creating a holographic stage that is both palpable and believable. And that 12" sealed driver truly brings the goods while never losing its grip or unravelling”

Visit the Borderland Mk IV web page

Read Matt Clott’s review of the Borderland Mk IV

Some magic under
the bonnet

Both the HRS-130 and Borderland Mk IV use a downward firing woofer working into a sealed enclosure. If this was just a simple enclosure, a lift in the bass response would be created at the frequency where a standing wave was established between the enclosure ends. To prevent this, both loudspeakers use the same simple, but very effective technique.

There is an additional cavity at the top of the bass enclosure and the two are linked by a small opening. The upper cavity is filled with damping material and tuned to a harmonic of the main enclosure resonant frequency, thereby suppressing the main enclosure resonance and providing a smooth bass response.

• An online review of the Emperor integrated amplifier.