German Physiks February 2024 Newsletter͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ 
German Physiks

February 2024 | Newsletter No. 52

Two more top awards

Welcome to the February 2024 German Physiks newsletter.

We are pleased to announce that both our HRS-130 and Borderland Mk IV loudspeakers have been given Editors’ Choice awards from the leading US audiophile magazine, The Absolute Sound.

HRS-130 receives 6th
Editors’ Choice award

German Physiks HRS-130 in black high polish polyester

Our HRS-130 loudspeakers recently received their sixth Editors’ Choice award from The Absolute Sound. This is a testament to how impressed their senior reviewer Dick Olsher was when he originally reviewed them. Dick is a scientist by training and he also has experience in loudspeaker design. This gives him a useful insight into the physics of loudspeaker drivers like our own DDD driver. Dick’s original review was full of great quotes. Here are just a few:

“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.”

“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, delivering the coherent phase and uniform power response first envisioned by Lincoln Walsh.”

"Expect an exceptionally wide sweet spot coupled with palpable image outlines. The HRS-130 is almost perfect for a small-to-medium size room, providing that the room is acoustically tuned along the lines of live-end/dead-end to sharpen image focus. Midrange textures are capable of exceptional purity, characterized by low levels of distortion through the upper midrange.”

“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 Absolute Sound, Issue 276



Read the full review here.

Visit the HRS-130 web page

Read about the advantages of the DDD driver here

Borderland Mk IV receives 3rd Editors’ Choice award

German Physiks Borderland Mk IV in black high polish polyester

Our Borderland Mk IV loudspeakers have just received their third Editors’ Choice award from The Absolute Sound. When they were originally reviewed by Matt Clott, he wrote:

“…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.”  

The award citation in the latest issue of the magazine reads:

“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”

The Absolute Sound, Issue 347

Read the full review here

Visit the Borderland Mk IV web page

How does the Borderland compare to the HRS-130?

The Borderland Mk IV and HRS-130 are visually very similar. This is because the HRS-130 was developed from the Borderland Mk IV. The main points of similarity are:

  • They both use the same carbon fibre DDD driver: as do all German Physiks loudspeakers.

  • They both use the same octagonal style cabinet. This has smaller and therefore stiffer panels than an equivalent volume square-section cabinet. These smaller panels are therefore less likely to resonate.

  • They both use a Helmholtz resonator in the bass system to smooth out the low level bass response.

The main difference is that the HRS-130 uses a 10-inch woofer, while the Borderland uses a 12-inch woofer. This gives the Borderland a bass that is more extended and more powerful. The Borderland also has a more sophisticated crossover, which gives it better dynamics, imaging and resolution. The improvement is quite significant. This should not be seen to detract from the fact that the HRS-130 is in its own right an excellent loudspeaker. It is more a reflection that with a bigger budget, a loudspeaker designer can do more.

In the pipeline

News items coming in the near future include:

  • Another award for the Borderland Mk IV

  • A video review of the Borderland Mk IV

  • A report on our US distributor’s room at the SouthWest Audio Fest

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, Instagram and LinkedIn 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

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DDD-MANUFACTUR GMBH, GUTENBERGSTRASSE 4, 63477, MAINTAL, Germany

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