⌈ AUDIOVECTOR is a Danish company, founded in 1979 by Ole Klifoth under the name F3 / LYD. Today, forty years later, Ole is involved in project management, and recently his son, Mads Klifoth, has become the owner and CEO of the company. Mid this year Audiovector introduced a completely new "R" series. We test the smallest speakers in the line, the R 1 SIGNATURE. ⌋

t is difficult to identify one person who contributed most to creation of an electroacoustic driver. Among those involved the most distinguished one was a German entrepreneur, Ernst von Siemens, who already on January 20th 1874 received an American patent for what he called "Magneto-electric apparatus". In Great Britain, a patent with a similar idea for converting modulated current into an acoustic wave was obtained in 1898 by Olivier Lodge, and in 1908 Anton Pollak obtained the patent for "improving a driver with a moving coil by using a coil centering spider".

We can easily point out the people who built the first working driver, that had almost exactly the same form as the ones made today. It took place in the US Nappa Valley in January 1915, and its "fathers" were two Danish engineers - Peter Laurits Jensen (1886-1961) and Edwin Pridham (1881-1963). For the first ever presentation of a loudspeaker performance they used microphones, bought in Germany back in 1910, a 12 V battery powering an electromagnet of the driver and an amplifying tube. All these elements combined established a 25-watt system.

They connected a phono tube to the driver and took it up to the roof - there, holding on to the chimney, Edwin Pridham kept it safe. After overcoming the problem associated with the so-called "coupling" (between the microphone and the speaker), the first words flowed through the speaker. Peter Jensen then ran to see how far their invention could been heard. After running one kilometer, Pridham's voice was still clear and only after two kilometers it began to weaken. According to Birger Shneider, author of the introduction to the Danish Loudspeakers: 100 years (1915-2015), "the rest of the day has passed [for them] in joy and celebration" (edited by Henriette S. Høyrup, Hanna Bastved, Søren Vase Legarth, Lyngby 2015, p. 10).

| R 1 SIGNATURE

Looking at any loudspeaker, we should know that it is primarily Danish inventors who were responsible for its invention, who were later helped by US engineers (horn cabinets, dome tweeter and closed cabinets) and others. It is no coincident that the most famous drivers come from Denmark and are manufactured by Scan-Speak.

AUDIOVECTOR is one of those manufacturers who made their hallmark of their "Danishness". The authors of the monograph on Ole Klifoth, the company's founder, write that he wanted to achieve linear dynamics, linear phase and low compression. The same assumptions guide Mads Klifoth, the son of the founder, who is now the director and chief designer. Audiovector today offers both, very expensive R 11 speakers and very affordable ones (manufacturers don't like it when someone calls them "cheap") from the QR series.

The new "R" series is the successor to the popular "SR" series from 2014. It includes: the floor-standing R 3 model, R 1 stand mount speaker that we review, as well as a home cinema supplements, i.e. a RC center speaker and R Sub subwoofer. As we read in the Audiovector White Paper , which is a technical document describing this series, we will find as many as 164 changes in the new speakers.

MADS KLIFOTH
CEO, owner

WOJCIECH PACUŁA: Who designed model R 1?
MADS KLIFOTH: We designed it together – my father and me. I have made the cosmetic changes throughout the complete series.

What's changed compared to previous model?
Almost everything but the cabinet. New damping material, improved crossovers, full carbon drivers (half the weight of the membrane compared to SR Series and much stronger), stronger and much better laminated baffles and plinth. New Audiovector terminals, cross overs, fascia plates, internal wiring, etc. A total of 93 changes. A mixture of tradition and v new advanced technology.

Our new drivers with Titanium technology are a further developed to R Series with new sandwich membranes made from cross woven carbon fiber, which is extremely strong, stiff and light. We laminate the front of the membrane with a artificial wood resin (a clear and airtight mass) to make it even stronger. The weight is 50% less than previous SR membranes. The filter is as always a phase linear Dynamic Feed Forward filter type with soft roll-off. Most of the roll-off is already adjusted in the drivers. The R 1 Signatures are easy to drive and easy to match with other equipment.

Who was your „target” customer?
Our target group has always been the enthusiastic music lover who loves wonderful bass dynamics and great details. A life loving person with good taste. ♦

The R 1 Signature are small, two-way stand mount speakers, with a bass-reflex cabinets. Their cabinets have the characteristic shape of a water drop - other companies call it a "lute" - which allows designers to minimize the standing waves inside the speakers and makes the whole construction more rigid. The rear panel is made of a properly profiled HDF board and an aluminum nameplate is screwed there, to which - from the inside - a crossover is attached. The latter features nice passive components, including carefully selected resistors, as well as polypropylene capacitors from Bennic Components and EVOX.

Both drivers are manufactured by Audiovector. The R Evotech tweeter has a silk membrane and a large metal front, reminiscent of what we know from the Dynaudio Esotar. On the back of the driver there is a profiled outlet that improves - as the company materials claim - the spatiality of the sound. This technique was called SEC, or Soundstage Enhancement Concept.

The 170 mm (6.5 ”) woofer features a carbon fiber braided diaphragm covered at the front - so this is not a classic sandwich – with a transparent synthetic resin. The coil is wound on a titanium coated carcass. Both drivers are mounted with three specially prepared screws. As the company materials say, only the three-point mount ensures that the basket is evenly pressed against the cabinet. This technique was called "three-point NES" (No Energy Storage).

The speakers are available in several finishes - they can be veneered with wooden veneer or covered with varnish. Similarly to other loudspeakers from the "R" series, the R 1 can be bought in three versions: Signature, Avantgarde and Arreté, which company materials call: "GOOD, BETTER, BEST." R 1 in the basic version, called Signature, cost PLN 11,490 per pair, in the more expensive version Avantgarde PLN 18,490 per pair, and in the top Aretté PLN 22,990 per pair. The difference is significant, but the differences in design are even greater.

With each version various elements change, including the tweeter, cabinet modules, cryogenic processing, etc. It is an easy and sensible way to upgrade speakers without having to sell them. The idea dates back to 1996 and the "M" series. What's more, each of these speakers can be converted into an active version. In turn, this version is called Active Discreet.

| HOW WE LISTENED TO IT

The R 1 Signature loudspeakers are small and require room assistance to fill in the lower midrange and upper bass range. So I placed them quite close to the wall behind them. I think the distance from 50 cm to 1 m will be optimal. They played best when their axes were crossed in front of me, at a distance of 50 cm to 1 m. In my system, they created an isosceles triangle with a listening spot, with a distance of 230 cm from the center of the tweeters. The loudspeakers were placed on old Sonus faber stands, but the company also offers its own stands. As always I used the Acoustic Revive SPU-8 under spikes.

Soundstage | From the very first moment I knew that the new Audiovector loudspeakers build an ultra-stable image. The Saxophone Collossus by Sonny Rollins I listened to first, in the SACD version prepared by the Analogue Productions label, offered a perfectly focused image right in front of me.

This is a mono recording, therefore any deviation from phase coherence, any change in tone cause blurring of the central image, and even moving individual elements to the left or right. With the R 1 Signature the whole picture was right in front of me, on the listening axis, anchored in a carefully selected place.

The foreground was placed slightly behind the line connecting the speakers. There were two reasons for this: one was the arrangement of the speakers in my room, in which their axes intersected in front of my head, and the other their tonal balance. And more precisely - extraordinary neutrality. These are one of the most transparent stand-mounted speakers from up to PLN 20,000 price range that I have ever heard. In which they resemble the best speakers of the Finnish Amphion, and in some extent also studio monitors. These are real monitors, in the sense, that they allow you to monitor your recordings and to accurately analyze them.

Therefore, these are speakers for an experienced music lover. In untrained hands - be it sellers or buyers - they may sound too light and lacking saturation. Let's put them quite close to the back wall, pair them up with a saturated, rich sounding amplifier, and we should get the best of both worlds, that is - color and precision.

And it's worth trying, because the R 1 Signature, in addition to other attributes, can also offer a deep, multidimensional sound stage. Where many other loudspeakers stop, bringing the rear of the stage closer, or expanding the width of the stage at the expense of its depth, the reviewed monitors present a real one. As with the Tapestry by Carol King on 7" SACD. The singer's voice was in the front and the rest of the instruments behind her, in a semi-circle. Usually she is shown as part of a group of instruments, and yet it is not so, the sound engineer clearly privileged her voice.

Tonality | This is a disc with a sound covered with a kind of patina. It is not very resolving or particularly selective, it seems as if its sound is muffled. It's just a "child" of its time, that is the 1970s , with multi-track recordings, Dolby system, compressors, solid-state electronics (the Disintegration by Cure from the first CD release also sounded the same), etc. The Danish speakers took some of this patina off it. For good and for bad. The Tapestry sounded more fresh, more open than with large, floor-standing speakers.

Because these are, let's not forget this simple truth, bookshelf speakers, quite small ones. This is one of the choices we make when entering the store - a choice that must be based on sensible arguments. The R 1 Signature will play best in a small or medium-sized room placed near the back wall. Every time I moved them back another 5 cm I heard an improvement in their sound richness. You can even put them on the shelf, where they will easily do their job too.

We will not get to the point with them where Silence by Aquavoice, Tricks of Life by Novika or Homeland by Laurie Anderson will be delivered with a full bass performance, let's not delude ourselves. However, we can easily find a compromise that will result in a nice, focused and precise bass, and at the same time which is the biggest advantage of these speakers, precision. The loudspeakers completely disappear from the field of view - this is one of the advantages of small designs with a rigid cabinets and with paired drivers.

Speaking of precision, I also mean color and dynamics. These are loudspeakers that can play loud without compression and without blurring the attack. They have excellent treble response and precise bass. The midrange is accurate rather than dense. These are loudspeakers for everyone for whom Harbeths and Spendors sound too “fat”. In combination with a good amplifier, maybe even a tube one, you will hear beautiful, well differentiated colors. But it will still be a fresher, more open sound at the top of the range.

Perhaps that is why the R 1 Signature differentiated the recordings so well, because not only Carole King, recorded on an analogue tape, had a distinct "sound" of its own, but also the digitally recorded and mixed Novika sounded as it should have, meaning in a clean, selective way - changing discs we will get a sound characteristic of every particular recording, not filtered by a "sonic character" of the speakers. Also in terms of placement on the stage - Novika's voice was once further away, as in the Tricks Feat. SQBASS, and once close, almost at my fingertips, as in the beautiful One Day Friend. The speakers give the recordings a polished feeling, enrich them with details, subtleties and relationships masked by other designs, even as good ones as the Falcon Acoustics LS5/3a.

On the other hand, their sound is not so saturated. With Nat 'King' Cole's vocal from the Love Songs I got a good picture, fullness and density. But if a disc was recorded brightly, harshly, it was not "masked" by the speakers, but rather everything was shown as it really was. And only with clearly warm amplifiers we will get a kind of lowering the timbre, because the R 1 Signature themselves are very neutral and have a well-balanced, even sound.

Pogorelich | Literally a day before handing over the Audiovector speakers to the distributor, a nice postman brought me another package, posted in Japan, from the online store CD JAPAN. It contained two CDs with Krautrock music on SHM-CD and the latest album by Ivo Pogorelich on BSCD2. This is his first, after more than twenty years of silence, album. It includes two Beethoven sonatas (nos. 22 and 24), recorded in September 2016, and Rachmaninov's second sonata, recorded in June 2018.

It just so happens that exactly a year before Pogorelich recorded Rachmaninov, on June 9, 2017, I heard the artist in a recital he gave at the ICE Congress Center in Krakow. In an interview for Gazeta Wyborcza, he said:

I love authentic folk music, native music, but also popular one, such as French chansons or Italian cansons. Listening to them, I think of Sicily and a terrace overlooking the sea ... The human voice touches me the most. I love to listen to someone singing really well - both popular music vocalists and master arias performances. I am also moved by subtle singing combined with a delicate guitar.

krakow.wyborcza.pl, 9th June 2017, accessed: 16.10.2019

It's hard to find a greater contrast between what he said and what I heard. Sitting in the second row, about three, maybe four meters from the instrument, directly opposite it, seeing its bottom, I experienced the concert with all my heart. Both because of the music and the performer. It was a devilish concert in the sense that the Ivo Pogorelich himself was as important as the music. He played in such an extremely dynamic, so - sometimes - furious way that during the break the piano, the powerful Steinway, had to be renovated - was disassembled, corrected, tightened and only then re-tuned.

The album I'm talking about shows the artist in exactly the same way. And probably that's why it is so low rated by many specialists. But it was with the Audiovectors that the real Pogorelich could be heard - and that's what we expect from the audio system, to show the artist and not itself. There was dynamics in his performance, and a hard, hard attack, and the speakers skillfully presented this extraordinary attack of sound. Nothing was softened, or covered with other sounds - I could “see” a large concert instrument in front of me, just without the lowest bass range.

| SUMMARY

The R 1 Signature are stand-mounted speakers offering an extraordinary precision of sound. It is very dynamic, extremely clean and fast. These are monitors, so the bass is not fully extended, hence they can't render large phantom images. But they do manage to paint real landscapes, not spots connected by a leitmotif. These are ones of the cleanest-sounding monitors I've ever heard. They require proper setup and a good amplifier. Without it they will sound too light and too shallow. In the right circumstances, however, they will show you the truth about discs, recordings and the music itself.

R 1 Signature are stand mount speakers from the Danish company Audiovector. They belong to the new "R" series replacing the "SR" series. Gentlemen Ole and Mads Klifoth worked together on this design. Ole is the company's founder and designer of the original SR series launched in 2014 and the father of Mads, who is currently the director and co-designer of Audiovector.

Front | These are small speakers with a lute shaped cabinets, which the company calls "droplets". The side walls were made of laminated HDF boards pressed under high pressure and veneered with natural veneer. Bottom, top, front and back are also elements made of MDF. Two drivers are mounted on the front - a silk dome tweeter with a very powerful magnet and a 170 mm woofer. The three-point mount - introduced with the SR series - has a proprietary name, but it is simply about a rigid, even fix of the drivers to the front panel.

Rear | The back is properly shaped and two holes were cut in it. One is a bass-reflex outlet, and the other is used to improve the spaciousness - the rear of the tweeter is open. Part of the rear panel is flat. It is there that the rigid aluminum anodized plate is screwed on. Very nice, solid and convenient to use speaker terminals were screwed into it. They are custom made only for Audiovector.

Inside | The crossover, assembled on the printed circuit board, is screwed directly to this plate, so the terminals are screwed into it. The crossover features polypropylene capacitors from Bennic Components and EVOX. You can also see precise (0.8% tolerance) low power resistors - it looks like they have been connected in such a way to achieve the right power without sacrificing tolerance. Manufacturer used air coil for the tweeter section, and one with the ferrite core for the woofer section. Interestingly, Bennic capacitors (the yellow ones) features rubber rings to dampen vibrations. The speakers feature magnetic fabric grills. ■

Technical specifications (according to manufacturer)

Frequency range: 42 Hz - 28 kHz
Tweeter: R Evotech
Woofer: 6.5” Carbon
Cabinet: bass-reflex
Crossover frequency: 3100 Hz
Sensitivity (2.83 V / 1 m): 87 dB
Power handling: 160 W
Nominal impedance: 8 Ω
Dimensions (H x W x D): 370 x 196 x 290 mm
Weight: 22.9 kg / pc.