Classic Audio Reproductions

Several people have asked me about these speakers so I have started a new thread for them.

A long time ago we were looking at building an easy to drive subwoofer for use with other speakers. I mentioned the idea to John Wolfe of Classic Audio Reproductions and (coincidence?) a few months later, when I attended the Philadelphia Triode Show, John was showing a speaker he called the Project T-1. It was everything I had hoped for in a subwoofer, but this speaker used a midrange horn and tweeter as well. It was easy to drive (97db, 8 ohms) and full bandwidth, going from 20Hz to 20KHz. The subwoofer never did get built :)

Later he built a variant called the T-3, that had the same specs but used a different midrange horn, although the crossover and midrange driver were the same. The different horn allowed for a narrower cabinet that was a little taller- this one worked well for my room at home and so I bought a pair.

It has proven to be one of the better investments I've made in the audio world. I've had them a long time, since 1999 and they have never failed to please. They handle any type of music and can shake the entire house with a set of our M-60s, which run full-range on them. While not the last word in definition compared to finest ESLs, I've never had any qualms about putting them up against the 'finest' cone speakers. They are easy to set up; in my room they are 6" from the rear wall.

Newer versions are 16 ohms, employing a forward-firing woofer and a down-firing woofer. Sixteen ohms, BTW is a very simple means for getting more resolution out of your system, as nearly every amplifier made sounds better on 16 ohms than it will on 4 or 8 ohms. Speaker cables become far less critical too.

More recently John has been playing with field-coil powered drivers. I heard the new midrange driver at the 2008 T.H.E. Show, and if I had any reservations about resolution compared to ESLs they vanished at that show. The new driver is a bolt-in replacement for the original driver.

Some people have commented to me that they can't deal with 'that horn sound' or some such; I don't hear any horn 'artifact' at all. That is not to say that I've not heard other horn systems exhibit shouty, honky qualities that have been associated with horns. Instead I find this speaker to be tonally neutral, highly detailed, capable of excellent imaging and delicacy, while at the same time carrying on with impact and wallop, very much like real music. Quite a few people have commented to me: 'they sound like ESLs' ...or something... ESLs often don't have that kind of weight behind them.

Overall this is one of the finest speakers I've heard, and one of the easier ones to live with. Even after 9 years I come home from shows and audiophile's homes and never feel like I'm missing a thing. They're not cheap, but in terms of how long I will be able to run them without embarrassment :) they are dirt cheap.