CAPTURING THE DREAM: We all want fantastic sound quality from an unobtrusive source that blends in with our home. However there is a secret here that very few sales people and glossy advertising will ever mention. In fact most of them will deny that the problem even exists. You will be told that a speaker has great sound quality and that by some miracle this can be condensed into a minature cabinet with maybe a larger sub-woofer thrown in to beef up the bass. This approach ticks all the boxes for those of us who don't have the time to investigate more deeply and are not familiar with the fact that this approach is deeply flawed in terms of achieving high quality sound.

SOUND QUALITY FRONTIERS: If you want to hear your favorite music reproduced with complete freedom from the usual haze and distortion, then it is vital to compare systems to know what can be achieved. The equipment offered in most high street shops is a bit like going to buy a car and being told you can only buy from a selection of 2 door family hatchbacks. Thankfully a world of exciting alternatives actually exist - nothing wrong with family hatchbacks of course. The difference between HD, 3D Film and standard picture quality is generaly acknowledged as a significant advance. A great sound system is likewise, vastly superior to a mediocre one. Find access to audition a high end sound system so that you can appreciate the difference it makes. There are specialist dealers who carry more than just low budget equipment.

IDEAL SIZE CABINETS ARE IMPORTANT: The laws of physics are absolutely crystal clear about why non minature speakers deliver the best sound, Independent Hi Fi reviewers and designers have also always said (and still do) about speakers that " a good big un will always beat a good little one!" The reason is that larger speakers are ranked much higher than minature cabinets for dynamics, low distortion, bass depth and an entire catalogue of other benefits. We are not talking here of monstrous PA size cabinets. You do not have to increase the size much to massively improve performance. There is an ideal size to suit your particular room which can successfully deliver real sound quality and look good at the same time.

A NEW COMPREHENSIVE SOLUTION: The Astute Loudspeaker range is utterly extraordinary - It embodies a unique approach to complex technical aspects of sound reproduction along with a "form follows function" styling. Most importantly it has the supreme qualities that turn listening to music, video or television into a very special experience.

Because the Astute is designed for best possible sound quality on the basis of "form follows function", the resulting style is interesting and one that you can be proud of. A range of eye catching stand designs and cabinet finishes have been developed to enhance the look and feel of your home to your own individual taste.

There are 2 cabinet sizes tailored to suit small and large rooms, with styles and finishes to fit a variety of budgets.

WHY A "HANGING" DESIGN?
Origin Live have a great deal of experience in speaker and speaker stand design. For example our speakers have in the past won group comparison tests and our speaker stands came top in a comprehensive review of exactly 20 different stands. This is said so that the following explanation is not just thought to be some wild theory - it is born out of rock solid experience and experimentation.

Hanging a speaker is counter intuitive to the school of thought that imagines high rigidity and high mass is the way to go. When designing stands it became obvious that smaller speakers with 5 inch cones needed a completely different stand to larger cabinets. The rule for smaller cabinets is - "the heavier the stand the better it is". For larger boxes the opposite is true. Once this is discovered it is easy to see how sweeping generalizations are misleading.

Around 1993, we were testing between 2 slightly different stand designs using a larger cabinet. I was holding lifting the speaker between the 2 stands while someone else listened to the difference. On asking which sounded better the listener surprised me by stating that the best sound was not on the stands at all, but when I was lifting the cabinet in my hands. Years later it dawned on me to do what the PA industry had been doing for years at concerts and hang the speakers.

The best ideas are often desperately simple - how long did it take for the kite board to be invented? Hanging speakers is THE way to go for larger cabinets. No one would blame someone for thinking that you need a substantial solid base to produce a "stable" platform for sound. The logic is that if you fire a bullet from a gun you need weight for accuracy, the same argument applies to cameras of course. The truth is that sound does not quite work like this. For example some machine guns have no recoil because they do clever things with the gas from each firing explosion. Also do you see bass drums seated in cast iron weights?

Top designs are always a matter of knowing the heirarchy of influences in any particular situation. In this case the reflected vibrations from a solid speaker base are far more disruptive to the speaker than natural resonant decay inside a well damped cabinet.

POINT SOURCE & OTHER ASPECTS
The speakers use high grade co-axial drivers selected for their brilliant off axis response and the avoidance of phase issues that can plague conventional approaches. Other highlights include
A very special compression tweeter driver with an incredible 110dB efficiency
Large diameter voice coils to eliminate temperature compression effects
Rigid paper cone woofer (still considered the most natural sounding material by experts)
Low 980Hz cross-over point to minimize cone break of the woofer

Further aspects of the Astute range can be explored in the link:- features, benefits and specifications of the Astute loudspeaker range. You can download our pdf brochure here

ARRANGE FOR AN AUDITION
Please phone or e-mail us if you are interested in upgrading your listening experience. We can then arrange an audition either in your own home or at a local audio specialist shop.

TECHNICAL SPECIFICATIONS

	Astute 8 – all versions	Astute 10 – all versions
Standard Finish	Acrylic front and leather finish cabinet	Acrylic front and leather finish cabinet
Cabinet Size	300mm diameter x 300mm deep	400mm diameter x 460mm deep
Drivers	8” woofer and co-axial compression driver tweeter Crossover 1.1KHz	10” woofer and co-axial compression driver tweeter Crossover 1.1KHz
Frequency Response	+/- 3dB 49Hz to 20kHz	+/- 3dB 41Hz to 20kHz
Sensitivity passive (2.83V/1m) Sensitivity Active (2.83V/1m)	89dB HF: 110dB LF: 93dB	91dB HF: 110dB LF: 94dB
Nominal impedance	8 Ohms	8 Ohms
Power handling	190 Watts RMS	190 Watts RMS