January 2021 | Newsletter No. 20

Two more top awards for German Physiks loudspeakers

Welcome to the first German Physiks newsletter of 2021. Last year was a tough year for everyone. We hope that this year will be a better one for all of us. Some news from the US is helping it to get off to a good start.

Since 2014, the top US audio magazine, The Absolute Sound, has given our loudspeakers eight major awards. This year they have given Editors’ Choice Awards to both our HRS-130 and Borderland Mk IV loudspeakers.

HRS-130 receives 3rd Absolute Sound
Editors’ Choice Award

“The HRS-130 was able to generate such a palpable soundstage that I felt at times that I could walk right into it.”

When The Absolute Sound’s senior reviewer, Dick Olsher, reviewed our HRS-130 loudspeaker, he was extremely complimentary about its DDD driver.

“In my estimation, the carbon-fiber DDD (driver) is one of the top five driver innovations of the past 40 years” 

“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.”

Dick also recognised the ability of the HRS-130 to create realistic stereo images.

“The HRS-130 was able to generate such a palpable soundstage that I felt at times that I could walk right into it. In fact, I did just that a couple of times—got out of my chair and walked into the soundstage. It was spooky getting behind one of the speakers while continuing to experience a realistic presentation.”

He also praised the DDD driver’s outstanding dynamic performance and the purity of its mid-range.

“Microdynamics popped right out of the fabric of the music, making it a breeze to connect with the music’s emotions and drama.”

“Transients benefited from the DDD’s coherence and phase fidelity, both the attack and decay portions being exceptionally well controlled.”

“Midrange textures were exceptional pure, due to low levels of distortion through the upper midrange—the frequency band that is problematic for so many speakers with a tweeter crossover around 3kHz.”

He concluded his review by saying.

“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.”

“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 three years later, The Absolute Sound still regards the HRS-130 as worthy of their Editors’ Choice award, shows how highly they rate this loudspeaker. Maybe the HRS-130 is a loudspeaker that would be worth your while to listen to. It might surprise you.
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Visit the HRS-130 web page

Read Dick Olsher’s review of the HRS-130

Borderland Mk IV receives Absolute Sound
Editors’ Choice Award

We had hoped to include some quotes from a new review of the Borderland Mk IV in The Absolute Sound, but unfortunately this newsletter has to go out before this review will be published. We can at least offer our sincere thanks to the editor of The Absolute Sound, Robert Harley and to Dick Olsher for his two excellent reviews of the HRS-130 and Unlimited and for the numerous awards he has nominated these loudspeakers for.

The Borderland is 29 years old this year. It was our first loudspeaker, the Mk I version being launched in 1992. Now in its Mk IV form, it has remained our top selling loudspeaker throughout this time. This is a testament to the excellence of the basic design. Over the years there have been a number of significant revisions, including:

• Replacing the original bass system using two 8-inch woofers in an isobaric arrangement, with a single 12-inch woofer in a sealed enclosure, coupled to a Helmholtz resonator to tune out the enclosure resonance. This gave a much more extended, cleaner and agile bass.
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• Replacing the titanium DDD driver with a design using a carbon fibre diaphragm. This gave better dynamics and extended the upper response limit from 21.5kHz to 24kHz. The carbon fibre DDD driver also has the advantage of being much more rugged and almost impossible to break. Follow this link to see what we mean.
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• A large number of crossover revisions that have progressively improved dynamics, resolution, imaging and the integration of the DDD driver and woofer.

Two other designs were developed from the Borderland: the HRS-120 and its successor the HRS-130. Work done on the Borderland crossover has also lead to improvements in the crossovers of several other German Physiks loudspeakers.

While it is too early to be able to quote from the forthcoming Borderland review in The Absolute Sound, we can conclude by cheating slightly and quoting from their sister magazine in the UK, HiFi+, who gave the Borderland one of their own Editor’s Choice awards last year. Their editor, Alan Sircom, wrote:

“… the German Physiks Borderland Mk IV represents an exciting, musically energetic and live-sounding experience, more like the real thing than many loudspeakers.”

If you get the opportunity, please give the Borderland a listen. We are in the process of expanding our US dealer network, so if you are in the US and would like to hear the Borderland, please contact our North American distributor, as we may be closer than you think. To find out more, please contact David Jensen at Red Leaf Audio.

Tel: 1 905 7469333
Email: sales@redleafaudiomarketing.ca
Web: www.redleafaudio.com

Visit the Borderland Mk IV web page

In the pipeline

• A review of the Borderland Mk IV loudspeakers.

• Print and video reviews of the Emperor integrated amplifiers.

• A video review of the HRS-130 loudspeakers.

Until next time…

Thank you again for signing up to our newsletter and thank you for your continued interest in our products. Please don’t forget to visit our Facebook and Instagram pages.

If we can be of help with anything at all, please do not hesitate to get in touch with us here. You can find your national distributor here.

Holger Mueller | German Physiks