Stenheim Alumine Three loudspeaker

Description

The Alumine Three ( citation 1) is a slender, floorstanding speaker measuring41.3" high,9.8"wide, and just 13" deep. Because it contains four sturdy motorists bolted to a thick, nethermost-ported aluminum press, it weighs 154 lb each. Importer- dealer Walter Swanbon dragged them in on a hand truck with fancy curvaceous tires and set them on my bottom in the exact spots I refocused to. He said,"Herb, I promise you will like these speakers. They are a serious, top- end design. With paper cones. Voices sound mortal. Instruments sound natural. They're designed to contend with speakers like Magico and Wilson, but they're easier to drive. You can use all your low-powered amps."He added,"And they fit in nicely in regular people's living apartments. They are not as fat as the wide Harbeths or as altitudinous as the altitudinous Wilsons."As Walter pitched the Stenheims, I kept seesawing and repeating,"Wow, that is cool." I was skeptical. I seriously misdoubted they'd play well with 25 watts. I was still surprised and impressed by how tastefully acclimatized Euro-svelte the Alumine Threes looked in my room. Not swank or candescent. During my former interrogations (in audio show apartments and dealer showrooms), Stenheim speakers always did their obligatory Swiss- perfection thing, but their natural, nonmetallic tone kept the music and the humans making it at center stage.

As soon as Walter left, I connected the Alumine Threes to my 25Wpc Pass Labs XA25 stereo amplifier and played Cheikh Lô's Balbalou (24/96 FLAC, Chapter Two Records/ Qobuz) — and darn me if I did not suppose, yep, sure enough, these speakers do sound precious. (Expensive is a sound descriptor I have noway used ahead. Then, it means"exquisitely formed.") And Walter didn't lie about how easy they're to drive. At my normal, average 75 – 85dB listening situations (C- ladened at 2m), the Stenheims performed painlessly with 25 watts. The first thing I noticed about the Alumine Three's introductory sound character was how surprisingly smooth (frequency-wise) and well- articulated ( flash anddetail-wise) they were. Throughout my interrogations, the Alumine Three's most egregious and charming particularity was its well-structured, unevenly concentrated clarity. After a many arbitrary tracks, the Imp of the Perverse (aka Herb's shoulder demon, my constant companion) began prattling in my observance, averring I try the 10W into 8 ohms RAAL-needful HSA-1b speaker and headphone amp I am writing about in this month's Gramophone Dreams. The 3" altitudinous demon cried," Pass Labs prevaricated! The XA25 puts out further than 25 watts." (Which is true. John Atkinson's measures showed that the XA25 can deliver 80W into 8 ohms and 130W into 4 ohms.) The Imp was sure the$ Stenheims would suffocate trying to breathe with only 10 watts. When, as usual, I did what the Imp told me to do, the Alumine Three sounded relatively comfortable with 10 watts. Laying the RAAL amp would crop, the Imp kept chivying me to turn the volume up, but indeed at advanced-than-normal listening situations, the Alumine Threes breathed fluently, playing Evelyn Glennie's watt- stinking Concertos for Mallet Instruments (24/96 FLAC Naxos/ Qobuz) at 85dB with short, putatively undistorted 99dB peaks. The Imp lumbered indistinctly. Tall, handsome, and sensitive

.The pdf folder on the Stenheim website specifies the Alumine Three's perceptivity as"93dB, half- space."I honored that" half- space" expression from buying raw speaker motorists, but I wondered why Stenheim was stating it that way in its specifications. When I asked Walter Swanbon to clarify, he connected me with Jean-Pascal Panchard, Stenheim's proprietor, CEO, and principal developer."For this dimension, our loudspeakers are placed directly on the bottom, one boundary, and thus a half- space,"Panchard told me in an dispatch."The ceiling (and) hinder and lateral walls can have different impacts on the frequence-dependent perceptivity grounded on the loudspeaker position and the wall accoutrements ( spongy and/ or vibrant). The half- space value is also the minimal perceptivity a stoner can get in a well- damped monitoring room."Stenheim specifies the nominal impedance as 8 ohms with a minimum of 3 ohms. The Alumine Three's motorist lineup consists of two 8"woofers and a 5"midrange, all made of a" personalmulti-layer cone material"that Jean-Pascal describes as a" high- strength cellulose fiber saturated and carpetedon both sides with damped resins."Midrange and bass motorists are made by PHL Audio. Above the midrange cone is a 1"silk- pate tweeter with a neodymium attraction, from Overlook- Speak.

The bottom woofer employs a" high- excursion half-roll HBR rubber compass."The upper 8"woofer has a pleated cloth compass. According to Jean-Pascal,"the transducer with the rubber compass is used to achieve bass- extension, and the woofer with the fabric compass is for better flash reduplication." According to Panchard, the two bass transducers are tuned to partake the same low- frequence quadrangle volume, but the two motorists have different low-pass development points. Both motorists' reverse swells exit through a narrow niche- type harborage positioned along the front of the press's bottom. The Alumine Three's crossover uses Mundorf factors and is divided into two corridor the bass section ( mounted in the bass cube) with development points at 145Hz and 300Hz, and themid-tweeter part ( mounted in an upper cube) with a2.4 kHz crossover frequence. The Alumine Three's sheltered, internally armed press is erected from CNC-machined aluminum panels of consistence that varies between0.5"and 1". Setup The Stenheims will drop right in."Which they did, within elevation of where I refocused. After Walter left, I moved them a many elevation closer together and experimented by varying the distance from the frontal wall. As I moved them about, their tone character and concentrate changed slightly at all. Their" harkening window" sounded broad in the vertical aeroplane. What sounded to count utmost was toe- heft. I ended up with the Threes 6' piecemeal, with 33"between their frontal faces and the wall behind them. Image focus and high- frequence tone sounded stylish with the Stenheims toed in so that they crossed just behind my head.

Technical Specifications

3-way floor standing speaker with 4 high efficiency transducers 2 x 8-inch woofers, 1 x 5 1/4-inch neodymium medium drivers, 1 x neodymium tweeter Massive aluminum cabinet with 3 independents chambers, 2 closed /medium and tweeter) and 1 with laminar flow front port Passive 3 ways crossover, using audiophile high grade components Frequency response : 32 to 35 kHz Power handling : 150 W RMS, 300 W peak Minimum recommended amplifier: 10W Sensitivity : 93 dB Nominal impedance : 8 Ohms Dim : H 1050mm x W 250mm x D 330 mm (H 41,3in x W 9,8in x D 13in) Weight : approx. 70 kg (including adjustable feet) Warranty : 5 years