Напольная акустика — BAYZ audio Courante

The Courante is a floorstanding loudspeaker made by BAYZ audio, a Hungarian firm founded in 1997 by Zoltan Bay, who has designed preamplifiers, amplifiers, media players, cables and loudspeakers for more than 35 years. High End Munich 2018 saw its public debut as the first product built around his patented Bay Radial Speaker, or BRS, and later continued as the Courante 2.0. A pair costs EUR 55,000 with VAT.

Key specs that matter

The Courante works as a passive two-way system with a first-order crossover, 6 dB per octave, set at about 2 kHz. Two mid-woofers flank the BRS unit, which handles the treble. Stated frequency range is 27 Hz to 22 kHz, sensitivity is 90 dB, nominal impedance is 4 ohm, continuous power handling is 140 W and maximum output reaches 111 dB SPL under anechoic conditions. The speaker stands 1.4 m tall and weighs 30 kg complete, of which the carbon fibre cabinet without its granite base accounts for 13 kg. Warranty cover runs for five years.

Engineering and use context

The BRS is a dynamic driver whose cylindrical membrane, made from a proprietary ultralight material, expands and contracts like a breathing cylinder, so it radiates across 360 degrees instead of projecting forward from a dome. BAYZ describes it as an omnidirectional tweeter with a bandwidth of 1 to 50 kHz free of breakup modes, developed to deliver a single phase-coherent pulse with very low distortion. Inside the column it is placed between two inside-out mid-woofers designed from the ground up by Frank Nielsen of SB Acoustics, based on the Satori series and fitted with cones of Egyptian papyrus. The enclosure was developed with Andras Voloscsuk of Composite Project Kft - it combines carbon fibre with a painted glass-fibre composite and a proprietary damping compound, and is cured in a custom autoclave so that it ends up light and very rigid. Cabinets are hand-made in Hungary, while final assembly and testing take place in Denmark under the R&D team of Danesian Audio ApS.

Pairing

The low nominal impedance, moderate sensitivity and continuous power rating are the figures to check against any amplifier considered for the Courante. Zoltan Bay states that the system is linear on its own and neither has nor requires DSP, meaning no processor has to be placed between the amplifier and the speaker.

Alternatives

BAYZ audio also builds the Counterpoint 2.0, described as the bigger of its two current loudspeakers with the same BRS radial tweeter technology.