Полочная акустика — Castle Knight 1

The Knight 1 is the smaller stand-mount model in the Knight series from the British maker Castle. Knight was the last all-new Castle range before the Windsor models, launched in 2010 as the entry level of the catalogue. It keeps the hand-built cabinets with real wood veneer that Castle is known for, while value-engineered parts and simpler construction methods keep the cost down. The series has five models, and the Knight 1 and Knight 2 are the two designed for stands.

Key specs that matter

A 130 mm bass driver works with a 25 mm tweeter in a two-way reflex cabinet, with the crossover at 3 kHz. The nominal range given is 46 Hz to 24 kHz and a sensitivity of 88 dB for 1 W at 1 m. Nominal impedance is 8 ohm, and Castle suggests amplifiers of 15 to 100 W. The cabinet measures 290 x 165 x 265 mm (height, width, depth), and net weight is 4.5 kg per speaker. Reflex tuning, listed as Fb, sits at 55 Hz. In its carton the speaker measures 450 x 330 x 370 mm and weighs 10.2 kg.

Engineering and use context

Castle built the Knight stand-mounts with narrow, deep cabinets and ports on the rear panel. The floorstanding Knights use a quarter-wave transmission line instead, so the reflex loading of the Knight 1 is specific to the two compact models. Finishes are deep figured veneers sealed with a semi-matt clear lacquer, offered in cherry, walnut, mahogany and black oak. The rear panel has four screw binding posts linked by removable straps. The upper pair feeds the tweeter and the lower pair the bass unit, so the speaker can run with one cable, be bi-wired with two runs of twin-core cable, or be bi-amped with a separate amplifier on each section. Castle notes that the two amplifiers in a bi-amp setup need not be identical but must share the same phase characteristics. Bare wire or spade connectors can be used on the terminals. The speakers can go on rigid stands, rigid shelves or wall brackets, and Castle advises keeping them at least 0.5 m from TV sets and magnetic storage media.

Pairing

The easy load and modest power requirement make the Knight 1 an easy match for modest integrated amplifiers, and amplifiers with two pairs of speaker outputs make bi-wiring simple, though Castle notes that one pair per channel is enough. Castle wants the tweeter level with the ears of a seated listener, so stand height matters.

Alternatives

The Castle Knight 2 is the other stand-mount model in the Knight series and uses the same rear-ported reflex layout in a larger format.