Ambience SuperSlim 1800SE
Beschrijving / Description
Australian audio manufacturers have traditionally had a difficult time breaking into the crowded North American high-end market. Well known down under, companies like Duntech, Krix, Legend Acoustics, Symfonia and Whatmough have gone relatively unnoticed on this continent. While some have managed to eke out a review or two in the underground press, most have failed to secure a North American distributor with enough marketing savvy to shine a distinctive light on their products.
Enter Ambience Speaker Systems, an Australian manufacturer of hybrid ribbon loudspeakers. Headed by veteran speaker designer Tony Moore, who's been designing and manufacturing ribbon hybrids for the better part of 20 years, Ambience is just now making its way to these shores thanks to distributor NuView Audio and its affable owner, Karl Schaefer.
Description
On paper, at least, the Ambience Super Slim 1800, the top-of-the line model in the company's Super Slim series, is fairly mundane as "exotic" hybrid speaker systems go -- no complex active crossovers or equalizers, no electrostatic elements with impedance dips into sub-ohm territory, and no radical proprietary driver technology. Instead, the Super Slim 1800 utilizes a relatively simple crimped-aluminum-foil ribbon tweeter crossed over at 420Hz (at 18dB/octave) to a 6 1/2" doped-paper cone midbass driver custom made for Ambience by SEAS of Norway. The woofer enclosure is reflex loaded and rear ported, and it is tapered in an effort to eliminate the standing waves that occur in enclosures with parallel surfaces. The rear of the enclosure sports two pairs of plastic-capped five-way binding posts for easy biwiring. (I'm not fond of these type of posts, but I assume they've been used to conform with European regulations.) The rear panel is finished off with a gold-colored sticker (which continually came unglued, as did I) upon which is handwritten the speaker's model and serial numbers. At this price point, perhaps an engraved metal badge would be more appropriate.
Although a relatively tall speaker at just under six feet, the Super Slim 1800's svelte 9"-wide front baffle (hence the Super Slim designation) gives it a more compact appearance than competing speakers from MartinLogan, Magnepan and Innersound. Unlike the wafer-thin, all-ribbon Magnepans, however, the hybrid 1800s are fairly bulky due to their well-braced, 14"-deep woofer enclosure (made from a nicely finished black MDF), and tip the scales at about 75 pounds each. A nice aesthetic touch is the inclusion of attractive beveled wood endrails, made from exotic jarrah wood on the review sample, that run the full length of the speaker and lend it a well-finished, sophisticated appearance.
Specificaties / Specifications
See also link.