Germany is the homeland of great engineers and German Physiks is the home of great loudspeakers. We are not talking here about speakers, we are talking about The Speakers. Let us introduce The Loreley MK III.
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Loreley loudspeakers are made for audiophiles without a huge listening room and millions on a bank account. Now, we don't say they are cheap, the price is between $165,000 and $200,000, but you don't have to be a sheik to buy them.
Each Loreley loudspeaker has two large bass enclosures mounted one on top of the other and held together by an interlocking collar arrangement. That reduces resonances and do something more: that makes the column very difficult to topple. A useful safety feature for customers who live in earthquake regions. You see, Germans are thinking about things that wouldn't cross yours or our minds. Regarding sound quality, distortion is typically a tenth of conventional 18-inch sub woofers, acceleration and transient responses are far superior thanks to huge rare earth magnets. All that gives a very clean low frequency response with the level exceeding 110dB at 18Hz.
All German Physiks loudspeakers have DDD Driver and Loreley employs four of them per side. The result is a fantastic fidelity and "fantastic" is not used here because we needed an adjective. The DDD driver has very low moving mass and that enables it to operate linearly over a wide frequency range. On the Loreley it covers the entire range from 180Hz upwards, a characteristic that the conventional design can't match, and that means very realistic stereo images. A clear advantage of the DDD driver is that stereo can be heard from a wide range of positions, so you don't have to be tied to one place where the music sounds the best.
The Loreley MK III should be bi-amped and used with the German Physiks electronic crossover designed specifically for use with their speaker systems. The design is dual mono design with dual mains transformers, rectifiers and capacitor banks. Add to that great operational amplifiers, separate potentiometers for both the high and low pass sections in each channel, and the phase of the subwoofer continuously adjustable over ±180 degrees and you'll get see there was no compromise in design. Every single detail is the best the technology can offer at the moment.
The Loreley cabinets are finished to the very high standard . They are available in the choice of select, hand matched hardwood veneers carefully applied to the MDF panels. Indeed, that results in some material waste but the result is the furniture grade finish. A high gloss lacquer coat is available if you want it. You can also order a laminated carbon fibre cabinet. In that case MDF panels are reinforced with multiple layers of impregnated carbon fibre and that gives that immense strength and, even more important, a cabinet free from resonances at all frequencies. Impressive.
Loreley loudspeakers are able to deliver 950W or 1,050W at 3 ohms with the frequency response 21 - 21,500Hz. To use them in all their glory you'll need two power amplifiers per channel with minimum power for DDD section of 200W/4ohms, and minimum 350W/4ohms for sub-woofer section. In medium size listening rooms, Loreley will give you a fantastic sound that is hard to match with other systems. ■
