A Beauhorn Statement

Our aim is to produce music which sounds as natural as possible. We are not looking for excitement or to ‘move a lot of air’. We want to hear the music sound just as it did when the recording was made. We want the dynamics to sound real, not ‘impressive’. As the shaving soap ads used to say, “not too little, not too much, but just right”.

In the context of audio reproduction, simplicity is not merely a virtue, it brings very substantial benefits. We believe that ‘less equals more’; in the sense that the less you do to the signal as it passes through your system, the more closely it represents the original sound. For example, a shift in the signal phase degrades the stereo image (our brains use subtle phase differences to tell us where a sound is coming coming from – it’s not just a matter of loudness).

Since electronic crossovers in multiway speakers introduce just such phase shifts, they are to be avoided. That’s one good reason why our speakers use a single driver each and why the imaging is so good. A second reason is that to have midrange and treble sounds emanating from the same place, as we do, makes the image more precise, more focussed. You can hear the space between the instruments. Of course, if you use only one drive unit per speaker, it must cover the whole frequency range from bass to treble.

Lowther drive units are almost unique in having the bandwidth needed to do this. They are renowned not only for this, but also for the speed of their transient response. It is this which lends the extreme clarity and resolution of the finest detail to our speakers and which led a reviewer some years ago to attribute “…the finesse of an electrostatic and the timing of a Rehdeko…” to our Virtuoso Gold speakers. Of course, we now have the Virtuoso Reference models which are even faster.

Why do we choose to design horn loudspeakers? Because only a horn produces that fluid, open sound as though you were in the room where the musicians are playing. This is because a horn couples the drive unit cone to the air in the room so efficiently. And because they are so much more efficient than other loudspeakers,they need much less power from the amplifier to drive them. Their sensitivity is such that a CD player can happily feed a low powered valve amplifier without the need for a preamplifier, even. And the fewer stages you put the signal through, the better, we maintain.

Our products are designed for listeners who know what live music sounds like; discerning listeners who appreciate the highest quality. They are, we think, the organic, free range products of the audio world: not so cheap, not so easy to find, maybe, but don’t they taste a whole lot better!

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