• Huge sound for a standmount
• Irresistible enthusiasm for music
• Gorgeous finishes
• Midrange occasionally affected by bass
• Low efficiency
• No grille
$5,999.99
You wouldn’t know it from looking at them, but there are four reasons why March Audio’s most recent version of its Sointuva loudspeaker is very exciting. Firstly, the bass/midrange driver uses a new, highly innovative surround suspension. Secondly, it uses a motor with a unique design that enables higher performance than has been previously available. And thirdly, these two driver and motor innovations have allowed Australian speaker designer Allen March to replace the usual problematical bass reflex port with a passive radiator (or, to be precise, a pair of passive radiators) that use the same innovative suspension as the active bass/midrange drivers.
The fourth and final reason is that the Sointuva WG has improved high-frequency performance over the original Sointuva, due to the use of a new tweeter and new waveguide, hence the addition of the letters ‘WG’ after the model name. Although this new WG version uses the same bass/midrange driver as the original version (a Purifi PTT6.5X04-NFA-01), March says that this latest iteration now has better low-frequency performance as a result of minor technical improvements he has incorporated.
THE EQUIPMENT
The biggest problem for loudspeaker manufacturers is that it’s difficult for them to differentiate their products from those of others in order to influence consumer opinion for the simple reason that, with rare exceptions, most similarly sized loudspeakers look much the same.
This is not a universal law, of course; it’s something of a generalisation. Because if you’re building very, very expensive loudspeakers, you are able to design and build cabinets that are totally unique and look like no others on the planet. But doing this costs a lot of money. In fact, some manufacturers spend more money on building cabinets than they do on the drivers they put inside them – a misguided approach that inevitably skews the important performance/cost ratio in the wrong direction.
But if a brand intends to spend more money on the drivers (and crossover components) inside the cabinet than it does on the cabinet itself, then that manufacturer is pretty much stuck with a wooden box of some type. That box will be taller than some
