The Most Ingenious Japanese Speakers You Have Never Heard Of

Japanese loudspeakers are one more unique sector of audio equipment from the Land of the Rising Sun. While Western manufacturers rely on traditional solutions and avoid risk, small Japanese workshops and lone engineers let their imagination run free. Some make the cabinet sing like the soundboard of a guitar, others give up the conventional cone, and others again bring back cinema horns with field-coil drivers. We have gathered eleven rarities - they are hardly ever seen outside Japan, yet each of them qualifies as an engineering masterpiece. The ranking is sorted by increasing price, and all prices are given in yen.

11. M's System MS1001

Price - 141,900 yen

Type - omnidirectional "wave" speaker | Included - one speaker that plays both channels

The Japanese company M's System has been making speakers that it calls "wave" (hado) speakers since 2000. The M's System MS1001 is a cylinder 210 mm in diameter and 400 mm long on a wooden stand. It weighs 4.2 kg and connects to an amplifier like any ordinary passive speaker with an impedance of 8 ohms. A second speaker is not needed - one enclosure reproduces both channels and radiates sound through 360 degrees, and the manufacturer compares it not to a loudspeaker but to a musical instrument such as a drum. Do not expect a conventional stereo image focused between two speakers, but there is no single "correct" listening position either. The version finished in maple or walnut costs 141,900 yen, piano lacquer costs 198,000 yen, and Japanese urushi lacquer costs 264,000 yen.

10. Taguchi REX060-P

Price - 141,240 yen each (282,480 yen per pair)

Type - omnidirectional speaker with a flat diaphragm and a conical reflector | Included - one speaker

Taguchi is a small Japanese workshop, and the REX060-P is its most compact model - a cylinder 114 mm in diameter and 286 mm high that weighs less than a kilogram. The flat diaphragm faces a conical reflector made of Nordic birch, which spreads the sound through 360 degrees horizontally. As a result the speaker works not "at the listener" but for the whole room at once, and a single unit is enough where several ceiling speakers would normally be installed. Impedance is 8 ohms and rated input power is 10 W.

9. Timedomain Yoshii9 MK2

Price - 330,000 yen

Type - full-range tube-shaped speakers with a dedicated amplifier | Included - a pair of speakers and an amplifier

The Yoshii9 was created by Hiroyuki Yoshii, an engineer who developed loudspeakers at Onkyo and then founded Timedomain. The system is based on his theory - a loudspeaker must reproduce the shape of the signal accurately in the time domain rather than chase a flat frequency response. Each speaker is an aluminum pipe 100 mm in diameter and 1,097 mm high with a single 8 cm full-range driver mounted at the top and firing at the ceiling. There is no crossover and no second driver, and the pair weighs only 9.6 kg. The package includes the YA2 amplifier in a zinc-alloy enclosure - 12 W per channel, two inputs (mini jack and RCA) and an external power adapter. The MK2 is sold only as a complete set.

8. listude scenery

Price - 448,000 yen per pair

Type - omnidirectional two-way dodecahedron speaker | Included - a pair of speakers

Many know this workshop from Nara under its former name, sonihouse. Its main model, the listude scenery, is built on a regular dodecahedron - the most symmetrical solid and the one closest to a sphere. Eight 2.5-inch neodymium full-range drivers and three 1-inch tweeters are placed on its faces, so the sound spreads evenly in all directions, including up and down. The speaker can be placed on a stand or hung from the ceiling, and it does not need the classic triangle with the listener at the apex. The enclosure measures 286 x 292 x 268 mm and weighs 4.2 kg, frequency response is 71 Hz to 25 kHz, sensitivity is 84.8 dB and impedance is 8 ohms. The scenery is made to order in about three months. The standard birch finish costs 448,000 yen per pair, while cherry, walnut and white oak cost 458,000 yen.

7. Eclipse TD510ZMK2

Price - 528,000 yen per pair (264,000 yen each)

Type - full-range floorstanding speaker in an egg-shaped enclosure | Included - one speaker with stand

Eclipse is the audio brand of Denso Ten Corporation, and every speaker in its lineup resembles an egg. The shape was not chosen for the sake of design - such an enclosure has no two identical radii, so no standing waves build up inside, and the front has no edges on which sound diffracts. The TD510ZMK2 uses a single 10 cm full-range driver with a fiberglass cone - no crossover and no tweeter. Compared with its predecessor, internal volume has grown by 14% and magnetic flux density in the gap by 4.5%. The stand is part of the design - the slanted aluminum column is filled with dry sand, and the "egg" tilts from -10 to +15 degrees. Frequency response is 42 Hz to 22 kHz, sensitivity is 84 dB, impedance is 6 ohms, and the speaker weighs 19.5 kg including the stand.

6. Egretta TS1000F

Price - 539,000 yen per pair

Type - omnidirectional two-way floorstanding speaker | Included - a pair of speakers

Egretta is the in-house brand of Oasa Electronics from Hiroshima, a contract electronics manufacturer that turned to loudspeakers after the 2008 crisis. The Egretta TS1000F is a cylindrical tower 960 mm high whose enclosure is coated with shikkui, a traditional Japanese lime plaster. The drivers fire upward into a diffuser, and the sound spreads through 360 degrees. Low and midrange frequencies are handled by a 13 cm polypropylene woofer, and high frequencies by a Heil driver tweeter with a 5 x 5 cm diaphragm made of a clay-based polymer composite. Its pleated film does not push the air but squeezes it out of the folds. Frequency response is 44 Hz to 45 kHz, sensitivity is 87 dB, impedance is 8 ohms, and each speaker weighs 11.2 kg. A custom finish made to order costs 550,000 yen per pair.

5. Yamamoto Sound Craft YS-500

Price - 1,430,000 yen per pair (650,000 yen each excl. tax)

Type - two-way horn system with an open-back enclosure | Included - one speaker

Yamamoto Sound Craft is better known for its tube amplifiers, but since 2009 it has also offered a reference loudspeaker. The Yamamoto YS-500 combines a 38 cm woofer and a compression driver with a 1-inch throat (both with neodymium magnets), topped by the company's SS-500 horn machined from laminated solid cherry. The most unusual part is the enclosure made of 21 mm cherry laminate, open at the rear and at the bottom. The workshop believes that sealed and bass-reflex cabinets produce boomy, blurred bass, so it kept the character of a flat baffle while reducing the footprint. Sensitivity is 98 dB, impedance is 8 ohms, frequency response is 35 Hz to 18 kHz, and the crossover point is 1,200 Hz with a first-order filter. The manufacturer recommends tube amplifiers of 1 W or more.

4. Teragaki TERRA-SP3000

Price - 2,750,000 yen per pair

Type - panel speaker with a curved vibrating soundboard | Included - a pair of speakers

The author of this speaker, Takeshi Teragaki, is a mechanical engineer who served as a technical adviser to Canon and NEC and became deeply involved in audio in the 1980s. He started from his own theory - sound is carried not only by a compression wave in the air, so it should be radiated not by a moving diaphragm but by an elastic panel. The current version of the TERRA-SP3000 uses eight proprietary drive units that excite a curved soundboard 70 cm high and 29 cm wide. The frame is made of ash with teak veneer and coated with several layers of shellac. The speaker measures 44 x 80 x 48 cm and weighs 36 kg. The first version was shown in 2009 after thirty years of experiments and cost 2,940,000 yen at the time. Today the flagship of the TERRA series is built to order only.

3. Haniwa Real 3D Audio System

Price - about 4,000,000 yen (25,000 US dollars)

Type - full-range speakers with digital phase correction | Included - a pair of speakers and an amplifier-processor

Haniwa is the audio division of Kubotek from Osaka, an engineering company listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange. Its chief designer, Tetsuo Kubo, has pursued one goal for more than thirty years - a guarantee that the signal at the output of the system is the same as at the input, not only in frequency but also in phase. Haniwa speakers are supplied only with the company's own amplification and in no other way. The HSP-FR full-range driver is mounted in a cast aluminum enclosure whose sound output port works as a virtual point source - but note that the driver's impedance is under 1 ohm. So the dedicated amplification is justified - the HDSA100 with gallium nitride transistors delivers 100 W of output power and uses 1.5 MHz PWM with digital correction of frequency and phase response. The low end is extended by the sealed HSP-SW super woofers.

2. Kiso Acoustic HB-G1

Price - 5,060,000 yen per pair (4,600,000 yen excl. tax)

Type - three-way floorstanding speaker with a resonating cabinet | Included - a pair of speakers with external crossovers

Kiso is a mountainous region in central Japan where stringed instruments are made, so Toru Hara built his speakers on the same principle - the cabinet is not damped but tuned. Cabinets for Kiso Acoustic are built by the Takamine guitar factory, and the thin walls of mahogany veneer resonate in a controlled way, like a soundboard. The HB-G1 (2016) is the brand's first floorstanding speaker. The main section in the "guitar" cabinet has a 26 mm beryllium tweeter and a 10 cm driver, while the bass is handled by a separate sealed enclosure of two-layer carbon steel with four more 10 cm woofers. The crossovers, built with Mundorf parts, are housed in separate units weighing 7.4 kg so that vibration and magnetic fields do not affect them. Sensitivity is 86 dB, impedance is 4 ohms, and each speaker weighs 33.5 kg.

1. G.I.P. Laboratory GIP-9700A

Price - about 29,500,000 yen (167,000 euros)

Type - three-way horn loudspeaker system with field coils | Included - a pair of speakers with power supplies

G.I.P. Laboratory does what almost no one dares to do today - it builds new loudspeakers modeled on the Western Electric designs of the early sound cinema era. And not with permanent-magnet drivers, but with field coils! The GIP-9700A is the company's flagship. Each speaker uses two 18-inch GIP-9461 woofers, a GIP-9101 midrange driver in a wooden radial horn with a 120 Hz cutoff frequency, and a GIP-9501 tweeter. The enclosure and the horn are made of Japanese cherry - according to the designers, of all the woods they tried it delivers the most beautiful tone. The enclosure is semi-open at the rear and bolted together, so the sound can be tuned by the tightening force. The electromagnets are powered by the separate GIP-97EX unit. The speaker measures 1,240 x 1,800 x 1,210 mm and weighs about 260 (!) kg, and the crossover frequencies are 300 Hz and 3 kHz.