With this short intro as guide, we also realized that it’d been a very long time since we reviewed anything truly inexpensive. Budget friendly is as close as we’ve gotten. This made us accept the review solicitation on the condition that we’d get a complete Reckhorn set. For Klaus that was no problem. He emailed that we could expect a shipment of the initially requested DSP-6 digital xover/DAC/amp augmented by an A-408 subwoofer amplifier, a pair of S-30 active satellites and an H-100 cornerhorn sub. All this including the DSP software is offered at a going price of—hold on to your hat—€1’350. Yes, that’s for the lot! After our acceptance almost by return mail, we received two large boxes. The smaller one contained the H-100 cornerhorn subwoofer below which at 11kg seemed quite light. Most subwoofers start at 20kg. Those which claim to really go down add lots more to prevent wandering around the room whilst creating proper enclosure inertia against the considerable mechanical forces unleashed.

Not so with the Reckhorn. Here the trick is in the horn design combined with a driver contrived by Herr Reck. The enclosure is a cylinder of bent MDF, 36.5cm in diameter and some 77cm high. Inside sits a baffle dividing the cylinder in half. That baffle is braced on the front by a triangular piece of MDF connecting baffle to curved wall. High on that baffle and close to the capped cylinder top sits the H-100 woofer. Together with the top plate, baffle and semicircular bottom plate, the H-100 woofer has its own enclosure. According to the formula ∏ x radius x radius x height)/2, the volume of the enclosure is around 40 litres. Another 40 litres form the front-loaded horn. But that’s not all. Remember how the full name of the H-100 is cornerhorn? In the wild ‘60s of the previous century, corner horns were quite popular. Low-output tube amps and a clever cornerhorn concept could deliver real low frequencies with decent sound pressure without having to rely on huge contraptions. A standalone horn able to hit 20Hz needs a length of 18 metres and a mouth of some 20m². Not practical when any room already has its own built-in horn facilities: the walls and floor! Wherever two walls meet in a corner, there’s a third boundary called the floor. That’s your horn. In this fashion, the H-100 is raised 5cm by means of a single pin to be screwed on. That pin rests in a provided glue-on rubber mount such that the cylinder leans against both walls in the corner whilst the floor pin keeps the cylinder pushed against the wall and provides the necessary air gap to let the horn breath. It’s as simple as that but just think of it.