Auditorium 23 Solovox
another project of our hearts



After the Rondo project A23 had a break in speaker developing. It was not resulting in a lack of further ideas, rather the contrary is true. A two-way project was planned and the ideas were transposed into prototypes. We learned that we are getting more this and that in different aspects, but it was payed with the loss of the intoxicating coherent sound picture the Rondo is able to paint. So we continued the widerange-road and focussed another project of our hearts.

Long before music reproduction was considered an aspect of entertainment electronics, reproducing music involved the use of high efficiency speakers and low output power amplifiers. This was all that was available at the beginning of Highfidelity, which predated stereo. Anyone who has heard these distinctive components from the early history of our field has no difficulty understanding our passion to find or develop products today that exemplify the same, all too rare qualities of design and sound. That is our quest: not to recreate the past, but to find current implementations of the spirit, insight and genius of the original creative giants when it really was all about the music.

Our commitment to these ideals and values is now realized in the SoloVox loudspeaker. The first in a new, and unique line of loudspeakers under the appropriate name "Hommage" SoloVox, as does the entire Hommage line, represents a modern implementation of the principles and standards that defined the greatness of audio reproduction in the first half of the previous century. SoloVox loudspeakers are produced in limited numbers reflecting a commitment to produce the very best possible component and to highlight their uniqueness. These are not loudspeakers intended for everyone, and they do not represent a mass market effort to make yet another loudspeaker. The SoloVox is anything but just another loudspeaker.

Though a new breakthrough product, the SoloVox is the result of years of design work. We at Auditorium 23 have been engaged with the French company PHY-HP since 1997. Until now, most our speakers have been based on the PHY-HP model H21 LB15 driver. Judging by the success among music lovers and the press of our various speaker models all employing this driver Appassionata, Provence and RA 605 - it's certainly no overstatement to imply that Auditorium 23 has created with its different widerange concepts the rising popularity of full-range drivers in dipole transducer cabinets.

These speakers display the technical and sonic advantages of the open baffled design while overcoming a number of problems normally associated with this approach. However good these designs were, they were not without their limitations and distinctive problems - as any other concepts in the trade. All of these models were relatively large and when placed close to the wall in smaller rooms, they sometimes had difficulty sounding as free and airy in their musical presentation as they are otherwise capable of. Nor could we offer a useful solution or recommendation to this problem at the time. Instead of the airy, open, relaxed sound that these speakers were capable of in most rooms, the 21cm driver could sound a bit caged and closed in.

Attempts to circumvent these problems ultimately led to the development of the SoloVox, a loudspeaker whose unique and legally registered rear radiation flow-pattern creates an increasingly airy and open presentation even when placed close to the rear wall: previously unheard of performance in an open baffle design.

The SoloVox is capable of the most extraordinary, life-like, natural and unforced music reproduction with the amplifiers of the most modest output power and they can do this with an ease of placement in moderate sized rooms that is was only recently taken to be unthinkable in an open baffle design. The SoloVox brings all the distinctive virtues of the open baffle to all listening rooms.

• The uniqueness of the SoloVox extends beyond this major breakthrough in ease of placement in reasonable listening rooms.

• The SoloVox cabinet design unites the advantages of acoustic baffle and closed housings and achieves optimal utilization of the sound energy radiated to the rear.

• Ordinarily troublesome diffraction effects of the sound waves radiated forward are reduced by the shape of the acoustic baffle

• The proportions of energy radiated rearward are dispersed by specially formed elements allowing a positioning near the wall in smaller rooms.

• The laterally radiated sound waves join the forward ones in ways that literally make the enclosure disappear. Music is played as if in space before you and not from speakers: the ultimate "disappearing" act.

For further reading please see also the review about SoloVox by Jules Coleman, USA: "Paying Hommage"

Another review about SoloVox you find on 6moons, written by Michael Lavorgna,
January 2007.

Image Hi-Fi, Roland Strength, No. 59, 5/2004