Review

Equinox Complete Review - Audio Magazine - Norway

01 Jul 2003

KRIX – Declaration From Down Under

Countless loudspeaker factories in England, Denmark, Germany, France, Italy, USA, Canada, Japan and so on, fight about the limited Norwegian market, and now Australia is also represented here with Krix, one of Australia’s largest loudspeaker factories with more than 30 years experience in the field.

Krix delivers loudspeakers for professional use, especially in cinemas, and for a number of years have had good progress on the international market.

A “Typical British” Monitor

Krix Equinox doesn’t separate itself much from the classical British recipe, which started with the BBC’s compact LS3/5A which I have had a lot of pleasure from for more than 20 years. A lot of manufacturers offer similar two way systems built on the same formula, for example: Celestion, ProAc, Mission, Tannoy, Wharfedale, Dynaudio, Sonus Faber – just to mention a few of the names that come to mind writing this. Just on the Australian market at the moment there is more than 300 different loudspeakers that Krix is in competition with!

The thought struck me with group testing monitors over the years, is how different, similar systems sound. And there is hardly any of them that manage to play as ‘natural and exact’ as the original BBC construction. Loudspeakers are the weakest component in every unit, with distortion and coloring, which we would never accept in any other component.

Technical Summary

When I started to listen to the Krix Equinox , it became necessary to ask if it was new and different and better than ‘most of it’s competitors’. On paper it is a normal two-way construction, with height, width and depth being 295mm x 175mm x 250mm respectively.

The cabinet walls are 17mm MDF and use beautiful Australian Jarrah wood. The cabinet by the way is finished in clear lacquer that is guaranteed for many years in warm and tropical climates. There are supports inside to make the cabinet even stiffer and more solid than normal. The middle tone bass element (5” of unknown brand) has a paper membrane and the treble element is a 25mm textile dome, luckily. Why so many designers swear by metal domes, particularly aluminium is a puzzle, especially when there is so many excellent textile domes on the market.

Both elements are well protected and can therefore be safely placed close to the TV. The simple crossover (6dB / octave), is hard wired and Krix haven’t been skimping on the price of the components. The three coils are mounted on a 90 degree angle to one another and all other components fastened to the mounting plate. This is all assembled like a much more expensive loudspeaker. The crossover point is said to be 1.9kHz. It is an advantage that the tweeter crosses over far enough down so as to make a more seamless and homogenous transmission from middle tone to treble.

A crossover of this simple type makes the least mistakes, even if we’d rather not live with crossovers and the drawbacks that comes with phase shift and other distortions. An impedance of 6 ohms and sensitivity of 88dB is the norm for this type of monitor. Whilst a higher sensitivity would have been an advantage such numbers mean very little. The only interest is in how the loudspeaker works in practice, and the Equinox shows itself immediately to be more skilled than the specifications suggest.

It behaves nicely compared on small receivers to larger amplifiers of several hundred watts. Unfortunately I did not get to try it with a small valve amplifier. Under the test we used a modified Marantz PM7000, that brought forward the loudspeakers good qualities. Pity we did not get to try it with my Graaf GM100 stereo amplifier, as this loudspeaker showed itself to have a much higher potential than is the norm for monitors of this size and price.

A Small Digression

This is a monitor in the true meaning of the word. It’s the opposite of the sterile, correct, and impersonal sound characteristics that often happens when engineers in white coats use measuring equipment to decide what the sound should be. When the BBC a long time ago, created its musical pearl, the LS3/5A, the project manager , Mr Harwood decided that one should
first construct the best possible loudspeaker from theory, and first use the measurement data to compare with real music. That is, human voices and acoustic instruments in the same room.

Recorded human voices should then be played through the loudspeakers simultaneously with the people present, and compared with the ‘live’ versions. So went the comparisons back and forth between the reproduced recordings and the original for ages and modifications were carried out on the loudspeaker so it became difficult for the panel to discern between the original and the recording.

Harwood understood that a loudspeaker is a little technology and mostly art. For listening is, and won’t be anything but, subjective. It’s a valuable experience, for often skilled and sensitive listeners are often surprised and united by what they hear. Disagreements arise mostly when one has had to account for sonic impressions under very different situations.

The BBC called its monitors neutral, because there was agreement among those who worked with the loudspeakers on what they had heard from the recordings. But what IS neutral?

Monitor In A Special Class

In danger of using a worn cliché, I’m still going to maintain that the Krix Equinox rise well above average in this class. It became clear after just minutes of listening during the first evening that they entertained us. Just the first few seconds after one starts listening, one will have an intuitive feeling whether the sound is right or if it grates. First impressions of the Krix Equinox is that it doesn’t seem to have it’s own distinctive sound.

As most two-way monitors, it disappears as a sound source and creates a large window in the recording, with dashing width, height and depth depending on the recording. The first hour indicated that this loudspeaker had a catchy signature, as one normally notices after a short time. And after enjoying ourselves with it in the three weeks since they came to the house, have found no reason to change our opinion.

The Equinox were placed on rather heavy metal stands of an unknown brand, and treble elements were placed at ear height, approximately 1.5 metres from the back wall. This gave a more open and deeper perspective, but at the expense of frequencies under approximately 100Hz. As mentioned, they let themselves integrate surprisingly well with a single (Norwegian) subwoofer from Patos.

Amenable And Easy To Live With

Luckily they showed themselves uncritical in regard to angling. Spreading characteristic is so good that they just can be placed to play, without having to be turned towards the listener. This gives a wider listener window, without the acoustic ‘hot spot’ that only gives one listener the pleasure of the stereo perspective. This placement friendliness makes it simple to get the best performance from the loudspeakers without having to use tape measures or undertake frequency measurements and other calculations to get the technically optimal placement.

This implies also that the loudspeaker is uncritical in regards to the room’s acoustics, as small monitors usually are. The Krix Equinox is musically omnivorous and doesn’t favor any special types of music. Reasonable monitors of British descent are often not very expansive, and usually get short winded when they have to stretch over large dynamic fluctuations.

The Krix showed itself to play effortlessly and flowed in large orchestral blasts without the necessity to turn up the volume. For me it’s important that a loudspeaker plays articulately and clearly, at low sound levels. Far too many loudspeakers are miserly at low levels and demand to be played loud before they finally give in and reveal the whole contents of the musical signal.

These type of loudspeakers are a strain to live with and don’t really deserve the description ‘monitor’.

During the test we didn’t need to connect heavier amplifiers than the strangely modified Marantz PM7000 as they Equinox appeared a lot more easier driven than it’s rated sensitivity of 88dB. Consequently dearer components could have been talked about, but the purpose was to test the loudspeakers with other components in a similar price class.

A modified Marantz CD6000 was paired with all sorts of music, for example “Classical Favorites” (Naxos KLA 003N), “Arild Andersen: Kristin Lavransdatter” (Kirkelig Kulturverksted FXCD v154), “Works of Art Audioquest Music” (AQ 1029), one of Harry Pearsons favorites: “Uncommon Ritual” (Sony SK 62891), “Jesper Thilo meets Jake Hanna” (Music Mecca CD 2075-2), and “Mads Vinding Trio – The Kingdom” (Stunt Records/STUCD 19703).

These records place exciting demands such as impulsiveness, willingness, speed, macro-dynamic dimensions and micro-dynamic sensitivity. Especially good recordings of acoustic instruments, makes it so much easier to value the loudspeakers ability to deliver uncolored credible renderings of known instruments, their overtone structure and ability to repeat complete recordings with countless sound sources that play simultaneously and on unequal levels.

Both ends of the frequency area were reproduced unusually detailed and smooth. To say it straight out: on frequency width, the Krix Equinox has more to offer than my Rogers LS3/5A’s. The treble is more refined and smoother, and in the bass region, it tells more about what happens. Double bass, bass guitars and the cello string sounds are far more shaded and meld well on the Equinox, than with the classical BBC monitor.

Likewise subtle level changes on voice and instruments sound quite creditable, and of a quality one would normally expect in a considerably higher price class to find an equal. This makes me assume that the loudspeakers can be used without a problem on much more advanced outfits than were used in this test.

Limitations

A small monitor with a modest volume and a middle tone / bass element, with a diameter of only 13cm and a corresponding modest membrane area is bound by the rules of physics. There are borders for how much air such small membranes can move – therefore there are borders set for how they can fill a large room with sound waves.

Even if the subjective impression is that these small Australians reproduce more and deeper bass, as is the case, so can, as mentioned a good separate sub-bass (for example the phenomenal Audio Physic Luna) give a seamless passage from monitors mid-bass all the way down to under 30 Hz. When the sub-bass level and crossover frequency is properly adjusted, will often give a better a full range solution than one gets with a larger floor model. The Krix Equinox allows such integration with a separate subwoofer, easier than is often the case with any other small loudspeaker.

A High End Loudspeaker For A Bargain Price

The question must be: what faults has this little boy? My skilled and experienced friend has also had problems to point out any serious faults in the three weeks while the Krix Equinox have played daily, both as a test object and purely and simply as a music promoter. Possible faults must lie in the limitations, which is the actual size. Facts are that this product must have been subject to a long, and at times laborious amount of tweaking and maturing with a producer who has gone to unusually professional lengths to make it work.

Last year we had another monitor to test in AUDIO, namely the Sonus Faber Electa Amator II. This two-way system is larger and can boast of a more solid and genuine cabinet. But I remember this Italian loudspeaker as somewhat more colored and with more audible personality than the small Australian chameleon. Briefly said, it’s incredibly flexible after the signals character, and is neither light or dark, nor fat or especially slim.

Merlin VSM “Millennium”

Merlin VSM Millennium has attracted attention in the USA on account of its quite uncompromising construction. This is a floor model with a price tag that is ten times as high as what is being asked for with the Krix Equinox. Merlin I know very well, and it doesn’t play ten times better (the law about diminishing returns) than the Krix, and it can not be said to be especially uncolored.

What Merlin does do is an even better version of both macro and micro-dynamics. It plays somewhat more open and has an even more dispersed treble. But these differences are a lot less than I had expected. The Krix Equinox does it better, at least to my personal tastes, a bit warmer. Merlin is so correct and neutral, that it reproduces a lot of recordings with a rather more cool distance, and it must be driven by components with some warmth. The Krixes natural, but not excessive warmth give a little more relaxed musical adventure, especially in connection with transistor amplifiers and digital sound sources.

Conclusion

Irrespective of how good a loudspeaker seems to be, it is, and always will be the weakest link in a hi-fi system, regardless of whether it is a multi channel or a standard two channel system. About this there is no disagreement. The Krix Equinox have given me a bit more faith that it’s actually possible for an ordinary consumer / music lover with an ordinary income to attain sound reproduction that only to a modest degree is limited by the weakest link in the chain.

I don’t know of a more honest and musical loudspeaker in this price class. Among the thousands of different loudspeaker manufacturers in the whole universe, you’d probably find other loudspeakers that deserve corresponding praise, but since Krix came on the market, it shouldn’t be necessary to use years of one’s life to search in the swarm of loudspeakers on all the worlds markets.

The Krix Equinox has a row of larger models for those with even larger wallets and ambitions. In the catalogue you will find four floorstanding models, two centre channel loudspeakers and two multi channel systems, plus three different subwoofers. My first meeting with Krix has been so positive, that I will insist on returning with a report on one of the larger models next year. In case Krix gets a well deserved market launch, and in case potential customers chance to hear the loudspeakers under the ideal conditions, or home in your own lounge, then this brand should be ensured entry in the difficult Norwegian loudspeaker market.

- Audio Magazine - Norway , Robert L.M. Amundsen

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