Полочная акустика — Castle Windsor Duke

The Windsor Duke is the bigger of two stand-mount designs in the Windsor series from Castle, the British brand that has been in business for around 50 years. Windsor was the first all-new Castle range since the Knights of 2010 and the first Castle speakers made in Britain for many years. Production takes place at the Huntingdon plant of parent company IAG, where a 9,000 sq ft production area and an anechoic chamber were added. The design came from Karl-Heinz Fink and his FinkTeam, who had earlier worked with Castle on the Richmond 3i. The UK price was GBP 4,500 per pair, or GBP 5,000 with the matching stands.

Key specs that matter

A 200 mm woven polypropylene bass-mid driver and a 28 mm microfibre dome tweeter share a ported 26 litre cabinet. Response is 52 Hz to 22 kHz within 3 dB, with the -6 dB point at 39 Hz. Sensitivity is 90 dB for 2.83 V at 1 m. Impedance is 8 ohm nominal and 4.2 ohm at its lowest. Castle recommends 30 to 150 W of amplification and gives a peak level of 95 dB. The cabinet is 470 mm tall, 280 mm wide and 310 mm deep, with 36 mm extra depth at the rear.

Engineering and use context

Each cabinet wall uses two layers of MDF joined by an engineered acoustic glue, and point-to-point bracing stiffens the box following principles from BBC research into low-resonance enclosures. Its reflex port vents through the rear. In the bass-mid unit, the woven and bonded polypropylene cone sits in a low-hysteresis rubber surround, the voice coil is wound on glass fibre bonded with high-temperature resin, and an aluminium compensation ring is fitted in the magnet system. The tweeter uses a pressure-equalised ferrite magnet, a copper cap on the pole piece and no ferrofluid, which keeps its resonance below 800 Hz. The fourth-order Linkwitz-Riley crossover hands over at 2.1 kHz with inductors wound on air rather than metal cores. Each pair is hand-built and finished in England in mirror-matched walnut or mahogany veneer from sustainable timber, which is sealed and waxed.

Pairing

The high rated efficiency lets the Duke reach normal levels with modest power, though its lowest impedance point requires an amplifier stable into 4 ohm. With the rear port, some clearance from the wall behind is useful, and the dedicated stands from Castle place the tweeter at seated ear height.

Alternatives

The Castle Windsor Earl is the smaller stand-mount in the same series, using a 165 mm bass-mid driver in a 15.8 litre cabinet.