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Easy peasey! And by small I'll assume mini-monitor sized

Leaving aside the B&W DM5 which IMO was a more neutral mini than the LS3/5A, which I still loved anyway, there is one other contender, which almost no-one else here will have heard.

Because they were made here in Australia and were only ever well known in NSW and Victoria.

Audiosphere Model 2's, which used a single Coral Flat 5 wide-range off-white paper-cone driver, with an R and C inductance rise EQ network across the terminals, in spherical reflex enclosures.

Excellent diffraction behaviour, and virtually no enclosure sound. Even without valves they disappeared completely on real-stereo recordings. Transparent, very. With valves? Yum yum!

Those with the paper dustcap are supposed to have sounded better than the ones with the shiny metal dustcap. Either were flat on axis out to 18k and smoooooth.

No they wouldn't do loud rock and roll, 3mm Xmax is the reason, but they were quite sensitive and let you hear as much or more as QUAD ELS 57's properly tweaked and up on stands can. Poor man's quads.

I'm not at all sure they weren't a bit better on voices, and at letting you hear expression, and from about 150hz on up one of the best spkrs for the piano. Fastest dynamic drivers I have heard.

I've heard the same driver in rectangular enclosures of the same Vb and Fb porting, even a dead multilayer example with rounded edges, and it was just NOT the same speaker. Much less clear, less nuanced, less detailed, less nice / a bit wearing or tiring.

I have one pair here, and may soon have another pair.


Warmest

Tim Bailey

Skeptical Measurer & Audio Scrounger

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