Напольная акустика — Kudos TITAN 808

The Titan 808 is the flagship of Kudos Audio, the British loudspeaker company whose drivers are built exclusively for it by the Norwegian specialist SEAS. It is a two-and-a-half-way floorstander with an isobaric bass section, split into two independent cabinets so that the bass and the upper range do not disturb each other. It sits above the Titan 707 in the range.

Key specs that matter

The drivers are a SEAS-Kudos Crescendo K3 29 mm fabric dome tweeter, a 220 mm SEAS-Kudos mid/bass with a Nextel-coated paper cone, 39 mm voice coil, copper shorting ring and aluminium phase plug, and two 220 mm bass drivers with double-coated hard paper cones and 39 mm voice coils. Average in-room response spans 20 Hz to 30 kHz, sensitivity reaches 91 dB and nominal impedance is 8 ohms, with 25 W to 300 W recommended. Each speaker is 1168 mm tall, 348 mm wide and 404 mm deep, weighing 75 kg, and stands on a plinth 350 mm wide at the front, 320 mm at the rear and 415 mm deep.

Engineering and use context

Each speaker has an upper cabinet for the tweeter and mid/bass and a lower cabinet for the two bass drivers, separated by precision-machined spacers and a port resonance guide. The bass drivers work in an isobaric arrangement, with the second driver mounted internally back-to-back with the first. The pair acts as a single driver with lower resonance, which allows deep bass from a smaller volume and reduces bass distortion. The bass cabinet uses fixed boundary reflex loading, with the port firing into a defined gap rather than the room. The K3 tweeter is a further redesign of the SEAS Crescendo developed with SEAS for the Titans, and the mid/bass was re-engineered to match it. The bass cones are double-coated hard paper for stiffness with the natural damping of paper, and a long voice coil with an injection-moulded alloy frame maximises linear excursion. The crossover is low order, with Mundorf MResist Supreme resistors, air-core foil inductors and ClarityCap CopperConnect capacitors. Bypassing it allows active drive from Linn, Exposure or Naim electronics or the Kudos SIGAO DRIVE external crossover. Kudos builds the speaker in the UK and backs it for five years. Finishes include black and white gloss lacquer, black oak, natural oak, tineo and walnut.

Pairing

The sensitivity and the 8 ohm nominal load suit both valve and solid-state amplifiers, and the deep in-room extension suits rooms of 25 to 50 m2.

Alternatives

Kudos Audio's Titan 707 is the smaller isobaric floorstander of the Titan range with two 220 mm drivers.