A complete system featuring The Note loudspeakers will be: the speakers, The Memory Player transport version as the digital source, a DAC of choice, Benchmark amplification - one or two Benchmark AHB2 amplifiers (the AHB2 can be run 'bridged' as a monoblock), Liquid Cables speaker cable, a DEQX digital equalisation and room correction solution and one or two SVS SB-3000 subwoofers.

We recommend to have the speakers as far into the room as possible, whilst still allowing 8 feet from them to the listening point. Some small toe in may be desirable but The Note is not a difficult speaker to position due to its wide dispersion. Please have a look at our article on soundstaging and imaging blog - imaging and positioning

Please contact us via the contact form on this site to arrange a demo

You don't, necessarily. There are other digital equalisation systems out there that would work. We recommend DEQX because they are the masters. DEQX have been in the business of digital equalisation and room correction for a long time. The quality is outstanding. Additionally, with the DEQX, we provide an equalisation curve for The Note built in so it is, as much as possible, a plug and play experience.

Line arrays in the near field are affected by 'comb filtering', which simply means that phase cancellation effects occur with high frequencies because the drivers are at different distances from the ear. The wave forms are arriving out of time and can cancel each other if the crests of one waveform coincide with the troughs of another issuing from a different driver. It's worth remembering that all speakers with more than one driver have timing issues to some extent. In a standard two or three way speaker, say, the lower the frequency the more it is delayed as it passes through the crossover, so high and low frequency sounds are out of time compared to the sound issuing from a real instrument. There is no mechanical way to deal with this. Offsetting tweeters backwards relative to mids and woofers does not really address the problem because the acoustic centers of drivers change with frequency. Also a change in listening position – higher or lower, even by inches will reveal different timing imperfections.

With The Note we use a digital equalization system, such as that from DEQX to help flatten the frequency response at the high end. However, The Note is a wide dispersion loudspeaker system, designed to sound agreeable off-axis. Not being 'sweet spot locked' like many other loudspeakers vastly mitigates the effect of synchronisation imperfections. After all, timing anomalies are part and parcel of music, unless we only ever listen to soloists. If two violins in different parts of the orchestra play the same note at the same moment the sounds arrive at the ear at slightly different times, assuming we are not sitting bang in the center of the ensemble. It's not an issue in the concert hall because musical instruments project considerably and have wide dispersion, like our The Note loudspeaker. The Note is more like a fine acoustic instrument than most speakers.

We think The Note is one of the finest loudspeakers available, at any price; a truly musical instrument that will satisfy the most demanding audiophile for life. But there is a Grand Note, a bigger version of the concept with almost 300 drivers per pair. Also there are many different ways to tweak Memory Player - number of cores, memory, internal dac, power supply and so forth. Speak to us about these options if interested.