Floorstanding loudspeakers — Graham Audio VOTU Mirama

The VOTU Mirama is a four-way, two-cabinet floorstanding loudspeaker from Graham Audio in Britain, designed by Derek Hughes. It succeeds the original VOTU of 2018, adding higher power handling and deeper bass extension, and Graham says it absorbed technology from the revised LS5/5 and LS5/5f. The design grows out of the SYSTEM3D professional speakers created for the Royal Opera House in London. In Australia the pair is listed at AUD 99,999, in oak or cherry veneer, with the grain running continuously from the upper cabinet into the lower one.

Key specs that matter

The lower cabinet holds an 18 inch (450 mm) sub-bass driver covering 25 Hz to 150 Hz. Above it, two 10 inch bass and lower-midrange units handle 150 Hz to 1 kHz. The separate head unit carries a polypropylene upper-midrange cone working from 1 kHz to 5 kHz and a 13 cm high-power ribbon tweeter that runs from 5 kHz to 20 kHz. Sensitivity is quoted at 90 dB. Graham asks for at least 250 W per channel and says amplifiers of up to 1000 W per channel can be used. The complete system stands 164 cm tall and weighs 110 kg.

Engineering and use context

The sub-bass section sits in a front-ported reflex chamber of about 283 litres. Its large driver has a vented motor and an anodised aluminium cone, and a shorting ring in the magnet system is used to reduce distortion. The head unit is a sealed box resting on rubber feet set into recesses, which locate it precisely and isolate it mechanically from the bass cabinet, and a Neutrik Speakon connector links the two parts. The crossover uses air-core inductors only, with no cored coils, together with polypropylene capacitors. Internal damping is rock wool to control standing waves. As in all Graham Audio models, the enclosures follow BBC thin-wall practice - relatively thin panels are damped so that their resonances fall outside the midrange, the band where the ear notices low-level panel resonance most readily.

Pairing

The high minimum power requirement rules out small valve amplifiers and points to powerful transistor designs, either stereo units or pairs of monoblocks. Two pairs of binding posts mean the system can be driven by a single amplifier or bi-amped. The front port keeps the rear of the bass cabinet free of an opening. Given the driver sizes and the overall mass, the system is aimed at large listening rooms rather than a typical 20 m2 space, and Graham presents it for home and professional use alike.

Alternatives

The Graham Audio VOTU is the original floorstanding model in the same Voice of the Universe family.