treuben

This is the Kantu page from 2004. They list the Kantu 3 as the model - with aerogel drivers and perhaps a Morel tweeter if I was to guess from the images - though it's also mentioned to have the wavelet (pointy/ring radiator) Vifa XT25 in some reviews so perhaps there are different versions from that era. https://web.archive.org/web/20040225013252/http://www.legendspeakers.com.au/kantuspe.htm It's very hard to find anyone saying anything bad about them! 😎 They sound like crackers.

My mistake. I'm sorry to cloud the issue by mentioning the crossover. I see a 2.1 and 2.2 output in my linux ALSA devices when using this machine and I must have misread the combined ADI-PRO and ADI2-DAC forum at some stage leading me to make some erroneous assumptions. It does everything I need it to do certainly.. and more.

A very flexible unit whose eq is superb (and you can control the profiles from the remote) and whose volume control is both stated and verified independently to be inaudible. You can even, easily, program it to implement a proper loudness curve to make your system more accurate in frequency response than anyone's without such a device. (Fletcher-Munsen curves ftw.) There's just nothing for this kind of money that comes close. Last time I checked street-price was around $1700 in Oz. Oh, and you get a very very good headphone amp (with a separate input that will even drive high sensitivity IEMs without noise) thrown in for free. For those of us who like to listen to a broad range of music I can't understate the value of a selectable eq. If you have capable speakers (the Crown Princes are a great example) you might like the tightness and sparkle of some Yamaha NS1000s for acoustic guitar and small ensemble jazz but prefer a a response closer to the Harman curve for Movies or rock. With the RME you can have that at the touch of a button and with zero sonic penalty. It makes you that much more likely to be happy with your speakers over the long term and not yearn for a change - that much of the time at the high end, amounts to a little more than a tonal adjustment. What's not to like! edit :- does not do 2-way crossover - my error - removed, for those that might not read any more. Thank you to musicbee for the correction.

Nice! Excellent price too. 😎

There's also an HA160D which is a bit different.. and includes a DAC and more inputs. I have one and it has the stepped attenuator but I'm unsure if they were all identical.

How long ago was it purchased roughly (in respect of possible warranty and given the low hours) and is the wavy font panel top an artifact of the picture taking or something else?

The RRP of these translates to a shade under $17k AUD now (even before "Australian price-gouging tax") so this would seem like a steal - and it's a pretty big step up in output from the A35 - from 30 to 45W Class A into 8 ohms. GLWTS. p.s. I love the mosfet speaker switching too. Relays (specifically at speaker level signals) have great potential to go wrong and also to degrade the sound without special care and few people exercise that IME. The brochure is here: http://www.accuphase.com/pdf/a-46_e.pdf

The SEs were made with proper wood veneer and diecast midwoofer frames so they were a useful upgrade over the rest of the Audience range which were vinyl covered and had pressed steel baskets for the most part (I can't think of an exception but there may be one). Nice buying here. GLWTS

One area I'm personally fond of that is currently being intensively researched is that of the acoustic properties of various conglomerates/aggregates and the like. Matrices of things like sintered silicon carbide or loose composites of things like coconut fiber and cork having very specific, frequency-dependent characteristics. These weird engineering creations are used for stuff like acoustic dampening/insulation in automobiles and construction and around plant like air-conditioning and the like. Reading some of the experiments made me wonder about their potential application in tuning add-ons for speakers - for example, tunable/custom versions of the felt strips and panels that some of us use around our speaker drivers - perhaps even to be used over them. I'll stop now since my enthusiasm seems to have taken me somewhat off-topic.. I'll add one last interesting phenomenon that has potential for hifi use I think. Sick of boundary reflections anyone?

ULF generators have been sold for quite a while with various things being attributed to them - and several of them have been quite widely reviewed in audio magazines at various times too (the Acoustic Revive products spring to mind). This is the first one that I've seen described simply as an ULF pulse generator though. Normally they mention Shumann resonance as that's a significant (ie measurable) ULF resonance present in nature - though swamped in level by the RF that surrounds us from everything now. The main difficulty is that ULF wavelengths are hundreds of kilometers long - and so an ULF antenna is going to have to be *very* large to have any hope of transmitting any significant power. This doesn't stop people making them of course. You might, more commonly, have seen things like this for example: https://www.ebay.com/itm/Schumann-Resonator-CHARTRES-SE-4-Layers-audiophile-tweak-WITH-CASE-ENCLOSURE-/253895425846 Being sold for audiophile and/or health benefits. Pairing these with ultrasonic resonators (are they Hemholtz style? I can't tell from the pictures) is new to me too...though such resonators are normally used to damp resonances rather than encourage them - they seem to first have been used in the walls of churches (though larger and operating in the audible range) - perhaps to improve intelligibility by damping excessive reverberation. I note though that "tuning" via cups and bells and crystals and matrix resonators has been a things now for a while. The 6moons article containing the SR FEQ etc compares several such products. https://6moons.com/audioreviews2/synergistic/1.html The problems with ULF antennas needing to be incredibly large is an interesting subject in fact - there is a neat paper here about using magnetic pendulums (ie a mechanically resonant model) rather than dealing with trying to produce an e/m resonance with a vastly undersized antenna. Ignoring the rather complex math it nonetheless makes interesting reading (it essentially uses spinning magnets to achieve a much smaller "antenna" than would be achievable with a traditional coil model. Maybe we'll see such rotating magnet antenna arrays in future ULF audio-tweaking products. I can imagine this resulting in some very confused pigeons. 😎 I found this approach to be especially impressive thinking as it reminded me of perhaps the seminal acoustical engineering pioneer Jens Blauert's response to the problem of early tube amplifiers not having sufficient low frequency extension for his experiments on low-frequency's effects in hearing and localisation - he made mechanically resonant systems of tubes of mercury to produce those audio frequencies directly; genius. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6744482/

Wow, nice amp at a killer price. GLWTS.

Nicely made with through-hole components and a single main board rather than the usual Rotel habit of individual boards bolted to the sinks. GLWTS.

Is it possible to see through (maybe with a torch) or remove the grill to determine the state of the aerogel drivers? The flash photo at the top makes it look like it may be possible - at least to an extent.

Great speakers! GLWTS. 😎 I have fond memories of these.

I can't see you being unhappy with those. If I didn't have a bunch of extra speakers I've have picked them up myself. Great value.