Напольная акустика — Einstein Audio Components THE VOICE

THE VOICE is a passive floorstanding loudspeaker built by Einstein Audio Components, a German manufacturer based in Bochum. The idea came from one of the company's partners, and Einstein at first saw a tower as a poor fit for its principles, because the larger wooden panels of a floorstanding cabinet resonate more than those of a compact box. Instead of declining, the company kept the closed enclosure it uses for all its loudspeakers and designed a tall cabinet around it.

Key specs that matter

Einstein arranges it as a two-way, in which one high-frequency unit works with a pair of mid/bass drivers. The tweeter is a 30 mm unit mounted in a waveguide, and the two woofers each measure 210 mm (8 3/4 inch). Einstein quotes a response of 42 Hz to 28 kHz at -3 dB, a sensitivity of 92 dB and a nominal impedance of 4 ohms, and recommends amplifiers from 6 W to 200 W.

Engineering and use context

Einstein chose a sealed box because it reacts less to the standing waves found in most rooms, whereas a bass reflex design gains bass level at the cost of stability, especially close to a wall. The designers spent a long time looking for an 8-inch driver that works well in a closed box and then doubled it to reach their dynamic range targets. Drivers are divided by a first-order filter with a 6 dB slope. The company explains that complex networks with many parts can flatten the frequency response but also burden low-power amplifiers, so it kept the filter simple and relied on the wide usable range of the tweeter to allow a low crossover point with very low distortion. So that every driver's output arrives at the listening seat together, the tweeter sits lower in the cabinet than the two woofers, and the whole enclosure is tilted by 6 degrees for time alignment. A felt pad around the waveguide shapes the dispersion of the tweeter. The cabinet is built from solid multi-layer plywood with internal braces and a strut to raise stiffness, and the final tuning of the midrange was done with long-fibre natural wool as the damping material.

Pairing

Within Einstein's own catalogue the obvious partners are its valve and hybrid electronics - The Amp Ultimate, a symmetrical Circlotron hybrid integrated amplifier, its Circlotron hybrid power amplifier The Poweramp, plus the Silver Bullet OTL valve monoblocks, and the company lists its turntable, cartridge, tonearm cable and phono amplifier as matching products for the speaker.

Alternatives

Einstein's other floorstander is the four-way Shadow Speaker, sold in wood veneer or in black as the Black Shadow Speaker.