Floorstanding loudspeakers — Evolution Acoustics SYSTEM THREE

The SYSTEM THREE is a three-way reference loudspeaker built by Evolution Acoustics of San Diego, California, as the three-way arrangement of its SYSTEM platform, an acronym for Select Your Speaker Through Exact Modularity. The speaker is a concentric array in which a midrange, tweeter and midrange enclosure sits between two self-powered bass modules. It was introduced at T.H.E. SHOW SoCal in Costa Mesa in June 2024 at a price of USD 129,800 per pair, and a later North American listing shows USD 145,000. Production is on a build to order basis.

Key specs that matter

Each tower uses one silk AMT tweeter of 6 inches, a pair of ceramic CELL midrange drivers of 7 inches from Accuton and eight 7 inch Accuton aluminium CELL woofers. The maker quotes response from DC to 40 kHz on its specification page and 10 Hz to 40 kHz within 2 dB in the launch announcement. Sensitivity is 98 dB at 2.83 V and 1 m into a 4 ohm load, and peak output is given as more than 125 dB. Built-in amplification for the bass modules totals 1,200 W. Each speaker is about 2,134 mm high, 254 mm wide and 533 mm deep and weighs about 163 kg.

Engineering and use context

The passive upper section runs through a three-way EXACT series crossover of constant voltage design that contains about 32 kg of components. The tweeter is a proprietary pleated silk-textile AMT with a diaphragm area of about 323 cm2 and a thickness of about 0.013 mm. The bass modules offer adjustable crossover, level, quality and extension settings. Cabinets follow the CAMDAL non-resonant construction with up to 12 proprietary constrained layers. The sides are finished in high gloss carbon fibre, while front and rear panels combine matte black aluminium with ebony vegan leather. All modules share the SYSTEM CORE platform used across the range.

Pairing

Because the bass modules carry their own amplification, an external amplifier drives only the passive midrange and tweeter array. The high sensitivity and the maker's description of the load as easy to drive allow a wide choice of stereo or mono amplifiers for that section, and the listed amplifier range is 20 W at minimum up to 1,000 W. The woofers in the lower module can be tuned down to DC with the bass dial.

Alternatives

The Evolution Acoustics SYSTEM TWO is the two-way version of the same modular platform, with four aluminium CELL woofers, 600 W of bass amplification and a lower cabinet.