˻ WORLD PREMIERE ˼

⌈ LIPINSKI SOUND was founded in 2003 in the US town of Bethesda (a suburb of Washington DC) in the state of Maryland as Lipinski Sound Corporation. Its founder and chief designer is, living in the USA since 1981, Polish sound director Prof. Dr. ANDRZEJ LIPINSKI. His speakers can be found in the best recording and mastering studios in the world, as well as in the best universities. We are testing the smallest speakers in its lineup, the active L-50 model. ⌋

ONE OF THE MAIN THINGS that differentiates Rzeszow's audio showroom LINE OF SOUNDfrom many other such places is cleanliness, orderliness, and a well-adapted acoustic listening room, but most of all a well-thought-out way of doing business. The place was established as a used equipment showroom. Its owner and spiritus movens, Marcin Ślenzak, had a nose for interesting products, and knew how to find a new home for them well enough that he quickly became one of the most important personas approached by people in the region for help with audio systems.

I know this first-hand, as I heard it from many of the interviewees I had the opportunity to meet with during one of the stops of the Pylon Audio Tour de Pologne, during which I told the assembled guests about digital recording technology; more about this initiative → HERE «PL». There were plenty of, very interesting products from the past on display, but also many new devices and speakers - an ever-growing part of the showroom's offer. My attention, however, was immediately caught by the speakers of one company - LIPINSKI SOUND.

They are there for a reason. After all, the owner of Line of Sound is a long-time fan, admirer and owner of the brand's speakers. So much so that some time ago he bought himself, privately, a top-of-the-line L-707A Signature set, consisting of L-707A monitors and two low-midrange modules. A second such set stands in his living room, and the cost of each pair is an impressive 198,000 zlotys. So it should come as no surprise if I say that Marcin Ślenzak is an ambassador and representative of Lipinski Sound in Poland.

▌ Lipinski Sound

THE PROFESSIONAL HISTORY OF Mr. ANDRZEJ LIPINSKI is like story of a good movie. A graduate of the music school of the second degree, graduated summa cum laude from the Department of Sound Engineering at the Academy of Music in Warsaw in 1976. He was a member of the Fryderyk Chopin Society in Warsaw. Later he worked in the studios of Polish Radio, recording albums for Veriton, Vifon, Tonpress and the Polish Jazz Association, working with such artists as Luigi Alva, Buddy Rich, Kenny Drew, Tomasz Stanko, Ewa Demarczyk, Joachim Grubich, Janusz Olejniczak, Andrzej Chorosiński and the best Polish choirs and orchestras. As a teenager, he was fortunate, as a spectator and listener, to take part in the recording session of the Komeda Quintet's Astigmatic album. As he writes:

After the official concert at the National Philharmonic Hall (as a part of the Jazz Jamboree festival - ed.), I noticed that preparations for some further musical event had begun on the stage. The audience left the auditorium and I, having no idea how to spend the night and not arousing anyone's anxiety with my presence, stayed in the Philharmonic hall to see what was going to happen there next.

It turned out that there was a recording session taking place there, which I initially listened to in the audience, but in the middle of the night I dared to look into the director's office. The recording session was an event that decided my further professional life, especially since what I was lucky enough to participate in, had tremendous artistic value (...).

⸜ ANDRZEJ LIPIŃSKI, All the way professional, p. 1, see → HERE, accessed 19.01.2024.

In 1974, two years before receiving his degree, he traveled to the US, where he first encountered quadrophony. Using these experiences, he wrote a master's thesis entitled Achievements and Prospects for the Development of Quadrophony on the Phono Record, with a description of the technology, the comparative tests, and an assessment of the quality of the three main quadrophonic recording systems on the LP. Surround sound would remain one of the dominant features of his later work, to the point where he would propose his own six-channel (SACD) and later eight-channel (Blu-ray) system in which the bass (LFE) channel carried the pitch signal from the rear of the soundstage.

On the first anniversary of Solidarity, in August 1981, the First Festival of True Songs "Forbidden Songs" was organized at the Olivia Hall in Gdansk. Recording Jacek Kaczmarski at the time, as well as other performers, a total of eighteen hours of material, he did not know that music would once again change his life. Maciej Zembaty helped him edit the material, and the two-disc album was titled Piosenki Solidarności, Songs of Solidarity. Zembaty sent the tapes via diplomatic mail to the US, and Lipinski himself followed. He was still there when The Martial Law was declared in Poland, and the fact that these albums were released prevented him from returning to the country for many years.

The founder of Lipinski Sound thus became an expatriate. He took a job at a recording studio in Hollywood, resulting in a number of business contacts. At that time, he met, as he recalls, George Massenburg, sound director, designer of electro-acoustic equipment and owner of The Complex studio, where the band Earth Wind & Fire, among others, recorded, as well as Marvin Ceasar, owner of Aphex and designer of the then-famous Aural Exciter device.

After moving to Washington, D.C., he became technical director of a local radio station and set up his own recording studio, Tonmeister Recording, recording, among other things, in Baltimore's acoustically perfect concert hall, Meyerhoff Hall. Another considerable achievement at the time was his participation in the US National Bureau of Standads hearing evaluation tests, where he was the only one among the professionals to achieve a score of100%, demonstrating, it reads, phenomenal hearing, which was described as a one-in-a-thousand case.

Today, Andrew Lipinski, in an email to us, says:

With the current state of sound quality measurement technology, we are still not able to measure everything we can hear. One such parameter that I consider most important in assessing sound fidelity is micro-dynamics. It's like hearing how rosin works on a bow: once it holds and stretches the string to let it go a moment later and stretch it again....

His first arrivals in Poland for professional purposes date back to the mid-1990s, and from then on he continued his phonographic activity in Poland, making recordings with Krzysztof Penderecki, Wojciech Kilar and Peter Jablonski. Throughout this time, in addition to sound, he was also fascinated by image. At the end of 1995, he founded the GALI film studio in Warsaw with his colleague, cinematographer Ryszard Gajewski, which prepared all the programming for Poland's first music television channel Atomic TV (later bought by MTV).

In recording, he experimented with various configurations of surround systems (today they are referred to as immersive), and it was a revelation for him to see the advent of the SACD format and then Blu-ray. In addition to sound production and film-making, he also began experimenting with audio equipment very early on. His first attempt was a complete rebuilding of the famous AKG C-12 tube microphone, but using semiconductors. The result of these experiments was the modification of the equipment he had, followed by the creation of a whole range of electronics. And yet:

What has hindered me the most throughout my life, when making music recordings as well as subjectively verifying electroacoustic equipment, is the lack of true reference monitors for listening. I literally spent years searching for neutral loudspeakers for my work - no matter the price - and was never quite sure whether a particular loudspeaker was coloring the sound in one way or another, and my recordings were not compatible with other playback equipment because of it.

⸜ op. cit., p. 13

However, the Lipinski Sound company, he is perhaps best known for, was not immediately born. Its founder was unsure of his abilities in this regard, and it was only the encouragement and help he received from John Dunlavy, owner of Dunlavy Audio Lab, that once again changed the direction of his career. This company, a distinguished name in audio, went out of business in the early 2000s, not long after Mr. Lipinski discovered its products for himself. At the time, he bought cabinets, and speaker components from a liquidated warehouse and, with Dunlavy's help, assembled his first speakers. So I guess you could say that in a way Lipinski Sound is a continuation of Dunlavy Audio Lab's design thought and techniques.

▌ In the studio

LIPINSKI SOUND SPEAKERS are used in many prestigious locations. For example, at Universal's mastering studio, the fantastic Avatar Studios in New York City. Also the album by Randy Brecker and the Wlodek Pawlik Trio Night in Calisia was mixed and mastered on them, and Jacek Gawlowski received a Grammy award in 2014 (more about Gawlowski's studio → HERE) for the mix, and the album as such received another one.

It should also be important to us audiophiles that these speakers are the foundation of the mastering system at the Mobile Fidelity Audio Lab studio. All of the label's albums of the last dozen years were created with the help of the L-707 with the L-150G subwoofer and the L-707SE Grand - also for LP cutting.

The basis of all these systems is the L-707 module, a tweeter with two woofers in a d'Apollito-like arrangement. The former is recessed to time-align all drivers and surrounded by a foam to minimize refraction at the edges of the cabinet. The L-707, now in its latest version, the L-707A, can be upgraded with a woofer module, or two, to create a tall speaker with inward facing bass woofers.

This type of solution, aimed at, on the one hand, equalizing the phase of the drivers, on the other hand, protecting the treble from distortion due to the proximity of the cabinet, is directly carried over from the Dunlavy speakers. But they are also used by other companies, in different ways. We should mention Focal and Wilson Audio loudspeakers, trying to align the drivers in time domain, as well as Wilson Audio and especially Bowers & Wilkins when it comes to preventing refraction. The cabinet contouring in Dynaudio and Estelon designs also serves this purpose.

You can learn more about the secrets of Lipinski Sound's newest speakers, the L-50 model from their designer.

»«

| A few simple words...

ANDRZEJ LIPIŃSKI
owner, designer

⸜ Mr. ANDRZEJ LIPIŃSKI, and behind him, the measurement system he uses - photo by Tadeusz Fidecki.

FOR A LONG TIME I WAS ENCOURAGED to build a small and inexpensive speaker. Making some compromises, the L-7 (with a 7" midwoofer) was developed first. Along with other products, we took the L-7 prototype to the Musikmesse show in Frankfurt in 2016. After setting up a booth and launching these speakers before the show opened, I decided that I won't sign off on it after all, and the L-7 went into cardboard boxes. Work continued until 2023, until the L-50 was created. Unfortunately, making cheap speakers did not work out, but I can proudly put my name on this product.

In general, the philosophy behind building this speaker is - as with any of our products - total sonic neutrality. As I keep repeating, there are no speakers that are better for classical music, or better for jazz or for pop music - there are only two types of speakers: good and bad - the latter being those that color (distort) the sound in a certain way.

⸜ Measurements of top system in anechoic chamber - photo by Noel Coquet.

As for the L-50 design, I used a 5" midwoofer in it, while the tweeter had to be the same as used in our reference L-707SE speakers. Although it is similar in appearance to Scan Speak's serial tweeters, a special not commercially available version is custom-made for us, and sonically it offers a colossal difference.

The cabinet is sealed and to achieve a low, undistorted lower end we used our best equalizer built for studio applications. It is built in pure Class A using the smallest possible number of transistors. It is worth noting that the overall maximum boost is less than 5 dB. The entire audio path in the L-50 is built from discrete components. No integrated circuit there. All stages operate in class A. The connections between the individual gain stages are galvanic (no interstage capacitors).

⸜ Recent recording session with Tomasz Stańko (album awaiting release) - photo by Marek Dusza.

In addition, the L-50 employs adjustment of the tweeter’s phase to achieve ideal, flat frequency response. This adjustment makes it possible to correct phase shifts resulting from the sub-optimal physical positioning of the recessed tweeter relative to the midwoofer. This adjustment is selected permanently for this type of loudspeaker enclosure. The only selectable equalization on the L-50 is clipping the lowest bass for possible use with a subwoofer - a choice of 4 positions: 1 - without clipping and 3 clipping characteristics (characteristics in the appendix).

A complementary active subwoofer, based on a single 8" speaker, has just been completed for the L-50. This will be the Model L-8, and together with the L-50 it will constitute Model L-508. The L-50s are available in pearl gray matte, or pearl white matte. For the L-50 there will also be a limited number of exclusive cabinets made of the stone from which masterpieces of Italian architecture were built.

⸜ Demonstration at the Warsaw University of Technology during AVS 23' a room of 50 m2 and 7 m high; as the designer writes, "according to the general opinion, the L-50s were impressive and 'stood their ground'." - photo by Noel Coquet

The L-50 is driven by two power amplifiers - a separate one is used for the midwoofer and a separate one for the tweeter, each under load delivering 40 watts continuous power (2 x 65 watts of musical power) without distortion. These amplifiers operate in our patented class which the manufacturer calls AAB. What this means is that they run much longer in a differential Class A and switch to Class AB only at higher power levels. This allows the signal to transition smoothly from one half of the waveform to the other without generating audible distortion. Practically, this means that the transistors work much longer in class A and switch to class AB only at high powers, practically when acoustic distortion in the ear already starts to come into play. AL

»«

▌ L-50

THE MODEL L-50 THAT WE TEST is different. These are, first of all, active speakers. And the smallest in the range. Like the larger model in the range, the L-70, it is a two-way, closed-cabinet design and is driven by two class-A amplifiers. The amplifiers were designed by Mr. Andrew. The manufacturer says on its website that these are the only studio monitors with electronics of this type. We should add that all circuits were made with transistors and nowhere in the audio signal path was an integrated circuit used. The power supply uses a small custom-made transformer and two pairs of complementary bipolar transistors (TIP 41, 42 CG + BD 911, 912), per speaker.

The speakers use the Scan-Speak ring neodymium tweeter, proven in all the company's other designs, and a low-midrange driver with a glass-fiber-reinforced paper cone. Both drivers are custom-made with Lipinski Sound modifications and are not available commercially. Around the dome you can see rectangular foam, suppressing reflections and refraction of the sound wave. The manufacturer declares that each amplifier achieves distortion-free continuous power under a 40-watt load (2 x 65 watts of musical power). He also declares "absolutely flat," as it reads, frequency response from 60 Hz to 40 kHz, with a -3 dB drop at 35 Hz. This is interesting, since for the larger L,-70 model the manufacturer claims 63 Hz - 20 kHz ±1 dB and 40 Hz - 40 kHz ±3 dB; as we learn, the latest L-70SE model is to use a different modified woofer with an elaborate phase cone.

The side panels are made of specially treated plywood, 20 mm thick, and are reinforced internally with a screw that fastens the two side panels together. The front panel, where drivers are mounted, is 25 mm high-density MDF. At the rear, the cabinet rigidness is further enhanced using a thick aluminum plate - this is the heat sink for the amplification circuitry and active crossover, and the place where the input and output jacks are mounted. There are balanced XLR and unbalanced RCA inputs, and the same outputs, the so-called "bypasses". With their help we can send the same signal to subwoofers. All sockets are sturdy, very good Neutrik products. There is almost no damping, except for a patch of experimentally chosen, special type of foam covering the front panel and speaker baskets.

On the sides of the L-50 you can see circular holes - this is the place where standard 5/8" nuts can be screwed in, holding the speakers on a bracket. This is because these speakers have been conceived as near/mid-field monitors that can be hung from a wall or ceiling. To accommodate the speakers' ability to be used with subwoofers, there are microswitches on the rear panel that cut off bass below 70, 100 or 140 Hz. The speakers have no standby mode and must be turned on and off with a mechanical switch. They also have no operation indicator like other active monitors, albeit in the form of an LED.

Let's add that we can cover the woofer with a white-colored cone with a black grille, held in place by magnets. On the manufacturer's website we can find a manual for using the speakers, which describes in great detail how to set them up, mainly for multi-channel systems. The speakers are assembled in Poland.

▌ SOUND

HOW WE LISTENED • The Lipinski Sound L-50 speakers were tested in the HIGH FIDELITY reference system. The sound sources were an Ayon Audio CD-35 HF Edition SACD player and a Lumin T3 file player. The signal between the source and the speakers was sent via Acoustic Revive Absolute XLR cables, fed by power cables of the same brand, also from the same series.

The speakers stood at a distance of 200 cm from the listening spot and 150 cm from each other, counting from their vertical axis, closer to each other than, standing there every day, the Harbeth M40.1. They were placed 100 cm from the rear wall, also from their axis and top edge. The speakers were directed at the listening position. They stood on the old Sonus Faber stands, and those on Acoustic Revive RST-38H platforms. The tweeter was at a height of 95 cm from the floor.

I determined the distance between the speakers and their leveling using Bosch PLR 50 C . For more on loudspeaker positioning, see the article Mikrodostrajanie. Czyli ustawiamy głośniki, HIGH FIDELITY № 177, 1 stycznia 2019, → HERE. For more on HF listening room acoustics, see the article Pomieszczenie odsłuchowe „High Fidelity” w oczach Mariusza Zielmachowicza, HIGH FIDELITY № 189, 1st January 2020, → HERE.

⸜ ALBUMS USED FOR THE TEST ⸜ a selection

⸜ BILLIE EILISH, When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go?, Darkroom | Interscope Records/Universal International UICS-9161, “7” mini LP”, CD (2019).
⸜ CHET BAKER, Baker's Holiday, Verve Records B0003279-16/SUHD 009960, Test Press SACD (1965/2004).
⸜ SANTANA, Santana, Columbia/Sony Records Int'l SICP-10134, „7-inch papersleeve”, SACD/CD (1969/2020).
⸜ DEVADIP CARLOS SANTANA & TURIYA ALICE COLTRANE, Illuminations, CBS/Vocalion CDSML 8530, SACD/CD (1974/2017).
⸜ TERUMASA HINO Swing Journal Jazz Workshop 1. Terumasa Hino Concert, Nippon Columbia COCY-80505, „Takt Jazz Series”, „CD On Demand”, CD-R (1969/1997).

»«

RECENTLY, THE FOURTH SEASON of the True Detective series (Nic Pizzolatto, 2014-), was launched on Polish HBO. This time we move to Alaska, in the middle of the Arctic night, hence the subtitle: Night Country. I found the first season a revelation, the second a disappointment, and the third a pleasant surprise. The latest, starring Jodie Foster and Keli Reis, promises to be very good, to say the least (I'm after the second episode).

However, regardless of whether I liked a particular series or not, the thing that stays in my mind is the opening song of successive episodes. First it was the incredible song THE HANDSOM FAMILY, then sung by LEONARD COHEN, in the third it was reigned by CASSANDRA WILSON, and this time we return to BILLIE EILISH's debut album entitled When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go? (more → HERE «PL»). It was brilliantly and phenomenally recorded by Finneas, the artist's brother. Let me remind you that the guy recorded the vocals in her tiny bedroom.

I don't know if this is what the series creators had in mind, but the power of the ˻ 10 ˺ Burry a Friend recording can only be felt with large, full-range speakers. The peculiarly treated voice, with many low subtones, and then, entering somewhere around 0:56 a low, steady sound (actually a generator frequency), have no chance of resounding from TV speakers, or even from a good soundbar.

That's why I couldn’t move on my couch when I heard the L-50 speakers play this piece. The Harbeths show a much higher volume of sound, they go much lower. And yet, somehow, it was as if these babies cut a window in my reality in which they presented a whole new reality. This is the type of design that brings the acoustics of the recording to us, not the sound source to our acoustics.

This delivered a fantastically tight, sound-filled picture in which the congruence of all elements mattered most. This is an excellent production and a very good recording, but it was with these inconspicuous speakers that I could hear that Eilish's microphone was standing close to her, that the air accompanying the "f" and "s" sounds was not cleared, that I got it all together, a bit like from a stage microphone. And yet, this we know, Finneas records his sister with a large-diaphragm, very good TLM 103 microphone. So clearly he was going for just that effect, an intimate presence, not a sterile presentation.

The speakers are very open, in the sense that you can hear plenty of detail with them. However, this is, hallelujah!, example of those designs where the details come from the resolution. And the latter is above average. I think that the speakers owe it, in part, to the perfect timing of the drivers, but the speakers and their partnering electronics must work under the best possible conditions. Listen to the excerpt that begins ˻ 12 ˺ Listen Before I Go, and you should hear a police siren, somewhere far in the background, almost inaudible. With Mr. Lipinski's speakers, it is clear and distinct.

The L-50s grab listener’s attention. These are not speakers for listening to "background" music, at least I don't think so. I played 1 Traveling Light performed by CHET BAKER from the Baker's Holiday album and immediately focused on his vocals. Big, powerful, filling the space between the speakers. It was with him that I heard something that I noticed already with the Eilish, namely that the speakers gently emphasize the upper midrange and low treble, somewhere around 6-8 kHz.

Hissing voices (sibilants), in their lower part, were stronger than I'm used to when listening to the Harbeths, which are BBC listening monitors, stronger also than what I'm familiar with from JBL's "Monitor" series loudspeakers, that is, having their pedigree in designs intended for recording studios. In the American speakers the higher treble is more strongly exposed, in the Harbeths this whole range is creamier.

At the same time, the L-50s do not play brightly. This is interesting, because their precision is above average, and their insight into the recording is exceptional. You can, on the one hand, hear hum accompanying the recording that begins the ˻ 2 ˺ Easy Living track, and on the other, the clearly demonstrated effect of the piano's distance from the microphones and the powerful trumpet solo in ˻ 3 That Ole Devil Called Love. The tested speakers, despite their small size, showed both a difference in the size of the instruments and signaled a change in the focus of the sound - the closer to the microphone, the more energetic it is.

And it's an energy that will also carry densely realized, multi-track rock recordings like SANTANA's 1969 debut. The album, released in 2020 on SACD, with a new remaster, with a gorgeous seven-inch cover, played through the speakers quickly and densely. But it was here that I heard that these were ultimately small speakers. For the sound lacked filling, and all the energy was concentrated in the midrange. And yet, despite this, again the stereo panorama filled the window in front of me in a tight way. Everything in the "center" of this presentation was coherent and clear . It was ultra-precise on the one hand, and smooth and coherent on the other.

After Santana, I couldn't help but listen to the Illuminations album, recorded with ALICE COLTRANE. Its opening chant of "oummm" in ˻ 1 Guru Sri Chinmoy Aphorism was shown in a large space. The producers made sure it was set in long reverb, as was the flute, by the way, and immediately afterwards the guitar from the next track ˻ 2 Angel of Air/Angel of Water. I like this album a lot, but the L-50 momentarily showed that it's a pretty dirty sound, that the multi-track recordings from the 70s witnessed a lot of production procedures and that they were often born spontaneously in not exactly hygienic conditions, so to speak.

What I mean is that while in jazz music and well-realized electronics the sound had a low base, here it was hit harder at the top of the band. And now - this is how these recordings sound, this is how the compression "sounds". This can be shown in several ways, each will be an interpretation of this process, and Mr. Lipinski's speakers were tuned not to emphasize the sharpness, but also not to close the upper midrange, so as not to "lose" information of the true nature of this recording.

This is because the speakers in question are geared towards high fidelity in delivering literal information, so to speak. It is possible to achieve equally good resolution and differentiation differently, as with my Harbeths, for example, and both ways seem equivalent to me, although they produce different results. But it is with the L-50 that we will hear so many things we had no idea about, that - it's a cliché, but still true - many recordings will be rediscovered as if we were listening to them for the first time.

For example, TERUMASA HINO's album Swing Journal Jazz Workshop 1. Terumasa Hino Concert. Recorded on November 22nd 1968, during a workshop organized by Asia's most important monthly jazz magazine, it begins with the leader's trumpet, captured slightly off-axis of the microphone, thus also heard by other microphones (˻ 1 ˺ The Shadow of Your Smile). We perceive it as a shift in phase. With the Lipinski Sound speakers, however, I've heard clearly that it's precisely about the musician's side-to-side shift in relation to his microphone.

▌ Summary

ULTIMATELY, THE L-50 SPEAKERS ARE A TOOL. They are used to listen to music, that's one, and you listen to music with them in excellent conditions, that's two. They are at the same time very sensitive to the class and quality of the recording. This is the kind of sound that grabs your attention and draws you into its world - it's impossible to listen to them indifferently while doing something else. Intensity, sonority, energy, excellent rendering of the leading edge of the sound - all of these are as good, if not better, than in most, even very expensive, passive designs for home systems.

Non-musical elements are as important with them as the music itself, because they are part of it - a recording is a creation and is built by all the elements and events that occurred during the production process. These are speakers that excel at high sound levels, but they will bring much more pleasure when listened to with medium levels, quite close, rather in a damped room.

They will then repay you with a powerful soundstage with above-average well-presented layers, as well as exceptional sound scale. These are compact mini-monitors with a tiny woofer in a closed enclosure, playing like much larger designs, but better than them by their precision, smoothness and compatibility of all elements. All you need is a good CD or file player with adjustable output and you’ll have a high-end system with scale like that of large speakers. These are exceptional speakers. ●

THIS TEST HAS BEEN DESIGNED ACCORDING TO THE GUIDELINES adopted by the Association of International Audiophile Publications, an international audio press association concerned with ethical and professional standards in our industry, of which HIGH FIDELITY is a founding member. More about the association and its constituent titles → HERE.

→ www.AIAP-online.org