Review

Equinox Complete Review - Australian Hi-Fi - Australia

01 Jun 1996

Last time we counted, there were more than 300 different brands of speakers available in Australia, so it's a very tough and a very competitive market. And there is no tougher arena than the small two way sector, so you have to be making something pretty special to make any type of impact at all. Krix's new Equinox is just that something special.

The Equipment

The Equinox is a rarity amongst small two-way speakers, almost all of which use plastic veneers over thin, 10 mm thick chipboard. Take a look at the Krix and you'll find the lacquered veneer is real wood, beautifully applied. What's more, the veneer is on both sides of the 17 mm thick customwood used to make the cabinets. The only real economy in construction is the black painted finish of the rear panel.

Because of the small size of the cabinet (175 x 244 x 295 mm W x D x H) bracing isn't necessary, but Krix has still reinforced the joints between the side and top panels. Internally, the bottom half of the cabinet is taken up by a U-shaped wedge of expanded foam, which acts to dampen standing waves inside the cabinet. A bass reflex design, like most Krix models, the vent for the Equinox exits from the rear panel. The result of this is that the Equinoxes are not suited for wall mounting (at least not unless you can obtain a bracket that holds the cabinets well clear of the wall) or for mounting in a bookcase or wall unit.

Inside the Equinox you'll find something else that's pretty special, and that's a real crossover. By 'real' we mean a properly designed crossover using high quality components. The crossover inside the Krix Equinox has eight elements, including three inductors, two of which are air cored, (the third is ferrite cored). All three inductors use heavy gauge wire, and all are cross mounted to avoid mutual interaction. The entire crossover is hard wired, and all components are secured and damped with epoxy, to prevent vibration from affecting the electrical signals passing through. This is particularly important with capacitors (Krix uses Bennic bi-polar electrolytics, rated at 50 volts). We can't emphasise too greatly how unusual it is to find a crossover of this quality in a speaker at this price. The crossovers in most local and imported loudspeakers selling for the same price even the big name brands use fewer and inferior components.

As if the crossover wasn't enough of a surprise, we then caught a glimpse of the drivers themselves, and discovered they were totally shielded, so the Equinox can be pushed up right alongside a TV. This led us to inquire whether the Equinox was one of those speakers which is also sold singly, or in 'triples' rather than in pairs, so three could be used (LCR) as the front channels in a home theatre system. According to Krix, the company normally doesn't sell the speakers singly or even in triples but apparently if you're a keen buyer, anything can be arranged.. which, we suppose, is one of the advantages of dealing with a local manufacturer.

Although the driver frame diameter is quite large, the bass driver itself is quite small, measuring only 97mm across the cone, resulting in an effective cone area of 73.9cm2. (Even if you include the whole roll surround in that diameter figure, it still increases to only 115mm). The cone is made of doped paper, and the roll surround from rubber, so both materials will be quite stable under Australia's unique climatic conditions. (That is, the roll surround won't rot!) The basket is cast from magnesium; the voice coil is 26mm in diameter, and the voice coil former is aluminium, so the driver is designed to handle high power. The driver is rebated into the cabinet and, although it appears to be fixed with four star headed bolts, the 'bolts' are in fact ordinary wood screws. Terminations to the crossover are via good quality, plated multi-strand wires that are not a centimetre too long. Soldered at the crossover, the wires attach to the driver by spade lugs.

The tweeter is a 25mm doped fabric dome that is assisted by a small amount of horn loading, thanks to the design of the mounting assembly. Its 25mm diameter voice coil is damped and cooled by ferrofluid, which also increases efficiency. The magnets (there are two) are fully shielded. Like the bass driver, the tweeter is recessed so that it's flush with the front baffle. It too is secured by four star-headed wood screws.

Specifications

Krix rates the Equinox as having a 'usable response' that extends from 45Hz to 20kHz, so the response appears to depend on your definition of the word 'usable'. Sensitivity is rated at 88 dBSPL at one metre for a 2.83V input, and the impedance at a 'nominal' 6 ohms. (It would be helpful for consumers if manufacturers were to start quoting minimum impedances, which they need to know anyway, as it's a prerequisite for quoting the nominal impedance).

The internal volume of each cabinet is seven litres and the crossover point is nominally 1.9kHz (Third order slopes). The port is 79mm long and has a diameter of 42mm.

Listening Sessions

We set the Krix Equinoxes up on sturdy locally built stands so the speakers were perfectly horizontal, the tweeters at ear level and the cabinets 450mm from a rear wall and around a metre from the side walls.

This and the listening position were basically that predicted by The Listening Room speaker placement computer program, but of course the final fine-tuning adjustments were made during the initial listening sessions. Although we first aimed the speakers directly up the room, parallel with the side walls, we eventually concluded, after repeated trials, that they sounded better when they were toed in so they aimed at the listening position.

To this reviewer's ears, the sound quality was absolutely superb. Although the bass extension was somewhat restricted (and could not be otherwise, given the relative sizes of the bass driver and the cabinet), the quality of the bass was remarkable. A part of this is no doubt down to the quality of the bass driver itself, but I have no doubt that the solid cabinet is also a crucial factor. When a bass driver is working from a flimsy enclosure, the movement of the front baffle and the sympathetic vibrations in the panels must inevitably colour the final sound.

Midrange was clear and life-like, with a monitor-like sound quality, in that it was neither 'polite' nor 'forward', just clear, accurate and precise. The rendition was unfailingly natural. Spoken voice recordings sounded as if the person was right there in the room and both male and female vocalists voices were rendered with an etched realism that had us listening to tracks over and over again, marveling at nuances previously unheard, that were now made clear. (Try k.d. lang's All You Can Eat and listen for the Disclavier DC-7, for example.)

High frequencies were ringingly true and crisp, and yet this crispness never became a hardness, even after lengthy listening sessions. I was particularly impressed by the jazz on Unanimity (Move MD3 155) and the Celtic folk on Under The Moon (Green Linnett GLCD 1155).

However, if you want this level of performance, you will need to think hard about your amplifier, because the Equinoxes are not efficient, and it takes a few watts to get them sounding at their best. This reviewer's opinion is that a minimum of 60 watts RMS per channel would be desirable, unless you live in a home unit or listen in a small room and do not require overly high sound pressure levels.

With such amplification, I was taken aback by just how well the Equinoxes performed, even when fed a diet of complex instrumental/choral material recorded in rich ambient environments, such as Helmuth Rilling's version of Bach's St Matthew Passion (Hanssler Classic CD 98.925).

Conclusion

Could the Krix Equinox be the best sub $600 loudspeaker available in Australia? I believe so. I certainly don't think you are going to get better sound from any other speaker in this category. A very special speaker, that I highly recommend to your attention.

- Australian HiFi - Australia , Greg Borrowman

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