Frequently asked questions

My amplifier only gives 20 Watts will it be enough to drive your speakers?
The Virtuoso has a sensitivity of 106dB so loud orchestral music needs about 0.02W (yes, nought point zero two Watts), with loud crescendos sometimes exceeding 0.2W. The B2 while not quite as sensitive will play fine with only 5-10W; we regularly use our 3W mono blocks to good effect, so, it's really the quality of the amplifier, not its power output that you should consider.


Placement: My room has only one usable corner, will that matter?
It's true that the Virtuoso and B2 were designed as corner horn speakers, and that this does gain them a little more bass extension. But for some time now it has been our preference to place them so as to avoid sidewall reflections, which arrive at the ear a little late, and so confuse the sound somewhat. A metre from the side walls and ten or twelve feet apart gives an enhanced sense of space and authenticity to the music, at the expense of two or three notes of bass extension. But even if your Beauhorns are not sited for their optimal performance, they will still sound much better than the alternatives. We also advocate toeing them in so that their axes cross a little behind the listening position.

Do you have any tips on breaking in Lowther drivers? I know that these things can take a long time to break in fully, but how do the Beauhorns tend to sound right out of the box?
We have evolved a method treating the drivers which we use that very much enhances their performance, to the extent that you can now regard them as fully run in from the moment that you get them.

Why do you choose to design horn loudspeakers?
Because only a horn produces that fluid, open sound as though you were in the room where the musicians are playing. This is because a horn couples the drive unit cone to the air in the room so efficiently. And because they are so much more efficient than other loudspeakers, they need much less power from the amplifier to drive them. Their sensitivity is such that a CD player can happily feed a low powered valve amplifier without the need for a preamplifier, even. And the fewer stages you put the signal through, the better, we maintain.

Our products are designed for listeners who know what live music sounds like; discerning listeners who want their recordings to sound as if the performers are in the room with them. They are, we think, the organic, free range products of the audio world: not so cheap, not so easy to find, maybe, but don't they taste a whole lot better!

What is it about the design of Beauhorn products that make them sound so much more musical than other products I have tried?
Our aim is to produce music which sounds as natural as possible. We are not looking for excitement or to 'move a lot of air'. We want to hear the music sound just as it did when the recording was made. We want the dynamics to sound real, not 'impressive'.

In the context of audio reproduction, simplicity is not merely a virtue, it brings very substantial benefits. We believe that less equals more; in the sense that the less you do to the signal as it passes through your system, the more closely it represents the original sound. For example, a shift in the signal phase degrades the stereo image (our brains use subtle phase differences to tell us where a sound is coming coming from - it's not just a matter of loudness).

Since electronic crossovers in multiway speakers introduce just such phase shifts, they are to be avoided. That's one good reason why our speakers use a single driver each and why the imaging is so good.

A second reason is that to have midrange and treble sounds emanating from the same place, as we do, makes the image more precise, more focussed. You can hear the space between the instruments. Of course, if you use only one drive unit per speaker, it must cover the whole frequency range from bass to treble.
The drive units we have chosen are almost unique in having the bandwidth needed to do this. They are selected not only for this, but also for the speed of their transient response. It is this which lends the extreme clarity and resolution of the finest detail to our speakers and which led a reviewer some years ago to attribute "...the finesse of an electrostatic and the timing of a Rehdeko..." to our Virtuoso Gold speakers (at the time, our top model). Of course, we now have the Virtuoso Reference models and the B2 which are even faster.

FAQ abt Lowther drivers
We get a steady trickle of requests for advice, mainly from DIY enthusiasts but also from owners of branded speakers which employ Lowther drivers. The problem is usually the onset of audible distortion or rumbling noises, often intermittent, but enough to spoil their enjoyment. While they are mostly aware of the availability of Lowther's exchange service they often seek our help before adopting that course.. While we are happy to try and help them, our customers or not, it can be a very time consuming business and so we have posted what we hope will be helpful notes to this website. If you think that this advice might help you, click here: rehabilitating a Lowther driver


Why do horns suit SET amplifiers so well?
There are valid reasons for our insistence that single driver horn loudspeakers allow single ended triode amplifiers to deliver their best performances.
In case you want to know why, David Wright, the designer of Pure Music amplifiers, has written an explanatory article, just click here: why horns suit SET amplifiers




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