Dhe good sound returns: The High End in Munich, the favorite fair of all hi-fi fans, opens its doors again on May 19th after a two-year Corona break. Not only the clairaudient in the country are looking forward to this. We, too, got in the mood – with a loudspeaker that actually made its first public appearance in Munich in 2019, but has since undergone so many smaller and larger changes that we decided to listen to the budding classic again.
He goes by the name of Karlos and is the smallest model in a whole family of loudspeakers, led by Karl the greatest, and complemented by two graces named Karlotta and Karlina. The sounding K group, which will be arriving at the High End with other young talents, comes from the Hamburg manufacturer Lyravox and reveals a common design language. All models are in rather flat, no-frills housing blocks with wide baffles and preferably appear in white, in the timeless Bauhaus style. The delicate Karlos rests its body on a frame made of black wooden runners, which give it a slight backward tilt – a detail with an acoustic meaning. This setup favors the matching of high and low frequency delays so that all sounds arrive at the listener’s ear at the same time.
Karlos is a two-way system with an additional tweeter branch. The bass is handled by a powerful, 26-centimetre aluminum woofer cone. In two-way constructs, such calibers need high-frequency partners that can also take over part of the upper mids. To do this, Lyravox uses a model with a three-centimeter dome membrane made of extremely stiff, feather-light ceramic. Accuton, a manufacturer from the Rhineland, has specialized in such sound transducers. The relatively large membrane diameter favors an ever stronger directivity towards the upper frequencies. This is not an unappealing effect, as it contributes to the localization of the sound image. But precision is not everything in the musical life. The soul of the listener also demands a certain diffusely distributed proportion of the highest tones in order to feel embedded in the virtual space. Karlos wants to ensure this with an additional tweeter that sits on top of the housing and radiates in the direction of the ceiling. It produces sound using a delicate, folded foil membrane called an Air Motion Transformer.
Karlos, like his K relatives, is an active speaker. In each box there are switching power amplifiers with a total output of 500 watts, which control each chassis individually. Digital signal processors serve as crossovers, and an opulent input stage accepts audio signals of all kinds via digital and analog interfaces. The pre-stage accepts all common digital formats, including those with the highest resolutions. And if you like, you can have Karlos measured exactly for your living space by the manufacturer for an extra charge. The results can be switched on and off at any time via two memory locations. Without a tuning procedure, the speaker pair is available for 12,900 euros – a high-end price. But high end is also what Karlos achieves.
Sensitivity and localization accuracy are among his core competencies. Every tender flute note, every timid guitar chord floats in the room like in a hologram. But when Mars, the god of war, blows a furious attack in Gustav Holst’s orchestral suite The Planets, Karlos pulls out all the dynamic stops to the pain limit, primed with a furious deep bass, but without ever losing track of the torrential flood of timbres. You can hardly ask for more from a speaker of this delicate caliber.
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