Floorstanding loudspeakers — Spendor D7.2

The D7.2 is a 2.5-way floorstanding loudspeaker in the D-Line from Spendor, the British maker that designs and builds all its loudspeakers in the UK and assembles them in South Yorkshire. The company traces back to the late 1960s, when Spencer Hughes, formerly an engineer in the sound engineering department of the BBC, created his first loudspeaker, the BC1. Spendor says that building a D7.2 takes six days and designing a new loudspeaker takes a whole year. The current D7.2 data sheet is dated 8 February 2023.

Key specs that matter

Its driver complement is an LPZ 22 mm polyamide dome tweeter, an 18 cm EP77 polymer cone bass and midrange unit and an 18 cm Kevlar composite cone bass unit. The lower crossover frequency is 900 Hz. Typical in-room response is 29 Hz to 25 kHz, sensitivity is 90 dB for 1 watt at 1 metre, and the nominal impedance is 8 ohm with a minimum of 5.0 ohm. Power handling is 200 watts of unclipped programme with a recommended amplifier range of 25 to 200 watts. The cabinet measures 980 mm high, 192 mm wide and 333 mm deep and weighs 21.2 kg net.

Engineering and use context

In a 2.5-way layout both bass cones share the bass, while only the EP77 unit also covers the midrange band up to the point where the tweeter enters at 3.2 kHz. The LPZ tweeter is designed to equalise sound-wave path lengths and create a symmetrical pressure environment, so that the unit operates in a balanced linear mode. Spendor Dynamic Damping is applied inside the rigid, asymmetrically braced enclosure to keep panel resonance low. Bass is vented through the fifth generation Spendor linear flow port, a tapered twin-venturi design. The D-Line draws on Spendor research into cabinet damping, advanced polymers, the amplifier and loudspeaker interface and low-frequency airflow. Height-adjustable spike feet fit into a satin black plinth, and a magnetic grille is supplied. Buyers choose between black oak, walnut, oak, satin white and cherry.

Pairing

Spendor describes the D7.2 as easy to drive and explicitly includes low-powered tube amplifiers and powerful solid state amplifiers alike among its suitable partners. Connection is via a single recessed pair of precision binding posts, so each D7.2 takes just a single speaker cable. For a multichannel system the DC1 centre speaker was designed to partner it.

Alternatives

In the same D-Line Spendor also builds the D9.2, a full 3-way floorstander with a dedicated EP77 midrange unit and two Kevlar composite bass units.