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His Euphony 140 can be had in natural and stained oak, sapele, walnut and zebrano. The latter covered the immaculately finished loaners and is the only finish to demand a small €100 surcharge over the standard price of €2’500/pr. Now what did the man say? That 70% of the final result is our room’s acoustic profile and how a speaker responds to it? Grant him a bonus for honesty and plain speaking which aren’t exactly common in this racket. The room’s impact on the final sound is significant, albeit beyond the control of a speaker designer. Yes one can give the buyer a bit of adjustment flexibility which particularly with active speakers works well but nothing eliminates potential scenarios where a speaker works brilliantly in one space and sounds utterly off in another. With bass-reflex designs the port tuning frequencies shouldn’t coincide with a room’s standing wave or chances of uncontrolled boomy bass are rather high.
That danger seems pretty low with the Euphony 140. Its bass registers were unusually clean and wonderfully articulated. Gaidelis added that his bass tuning doesn’t go after maximal output but cleanliness. I suspect the technical reasons for that are similar to my own speakers, ATC’s SCM25ASL and JBL’s LSR6332. No wonder I really cottoned to AudioSolutions’ bass quality.
This included extension. Roll-off in my room didn’t kick in until slightly below 40Hz. Articulation with good dynamics followed this descent to where the speaker also on rhythm fulfills steeper demands. "Malegria" from Manu Chaos’ Clandestino album can sound like sonic wallpaper but over the AudioSolutions invited me to dance.
My present favorite album is Yasmine Hamdan’s Ya Nass, a Lebanese Arab production with exciting crossover into Western sounds. Marc Collin produced most of it and with Nouvelle Vague he already proved that intelligent Pop needn’t be all earnest to cross of demanding expectations.
The drivers were mounted with wood screws, not bolts and T nuts.
This disc experiments with different reverb mixes which the Euphony 140 clearly parlayed. Soundstaging happened at a high level, localization of the performers asked for no effort. Her vocals were very open with a very minor drift into the nasal which could have been a function of a slight dip in the transition of mid to treble units. Small dynamic accents which Mrs. Hamdan applies with the beat or sometimes against it were clearly worked out. In general the Euphony 140 dealt with both macro and microdynamics at an elevated plateau.
Max output levels are always limited by woofer cone surface. Turning the volume control too far will logically incur eventual unpleasantness but for domestic needs this speakers plays plenty loud. And the treble? Voiced more for long-term comfort than short-term wowie effects. I heard no resonance modes, no artificial hiss. High tones were free of sharpness and showed most praiseworthy resolving power for this price class. Did you notice that I’ve not yet mentioned anything on tonal balance? That was deliberate.
I’m sure you know the type of review where the writer had initial issues which due to ingenious solutions and heroic persistence were overcome with this or that component swap or placement change until the tester on loan finally crossed off personal taste and satisfaction.
I could have written this report in similar fashion since I did have a small initial problem with the Euphony 140’s voicing. That’s because she put out more bass than I thought natural. This was not over a particular limited band but as a broader wholesale emphasis below the lower mids. [Publisher’s comment: This tracks perfectly with our two prior reviews of this brand. All our writers struggled with what appeared to be deliberately underdamped ported alignments for their respective loaner models. Those produced too much bass unless sited just so and driven with ultra low-output impedance amplifiers for extreme damping.]
