February 2020 | Newsletter No. 10
HRS-130 Loudspeakers win The Absolute Sound Editors’ Choice Award
Welcome to our February newsletter. Our thanks to our long term readers and a warm welcome to new subscribers.
The big news in this issue is our HRS-130 loudspeaker receiving its second Editors’ Choice award from The Absolute Sound.
Our HRS-130 loudspeaker has just received its second Editors’ Choice award from the top US audio magazine The Absolute Sound. That makes a total of three awards that the HRS-130 has received from this magazine: we must be doing something right.
Dick Olsher, the reviewer who nominated the HRS-130 for the award, has designed several loudspeakers himself and consequently probably knows more than most reviewers about what makes a good loudspeaker. He is especially an admirer of our DDD driver, as he appreciates the advantages its wide-bandwidth has over conventional drivers.
Dick’s original review of the HRS-130 is full of great quotes. Here are just a few.
On the advantages of a wide-bandwidth driver:
“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.”
On the DDD driver’s excellent dynamic capabilities:
“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.”
His concluding comments:
“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. 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. No wonder the German Physiks HRS-130 is currently my favorite speaker under $25k.”
Our thanks to Dick Olsher and to Robert Harley, editor of The Absolute Sound, for their support.
