It's surely no coincidence that high-efficiency widebander houses like Ocellia, Rethm and Voxativ make their own amplifiers too. Nor is it accidental that those nearly invariably are of the valve persuasion (Rethm's Jacob George has one hybrid). Where they diverge is on bandwidth sufficiency for their shared widebander concept. Of these three, only Voxativ has kept faith with the single-driver religion. Ocellia's better models add one or two of their own piezo tweeters. All of Rethm's current models add active bass systems. Andreas Paul adds tweeters, woofers or both. Another point of differentiation in the pursuit of high efficiencies—which produce high output with little input signal and allow the use of low-power amps—is whether such drivers require unusual loading. Hornloading front or rear is one option. Rethm pursue folded rear horns, Avantgarde Acoustic popularized colourful front horns. Open baffles of various configurations are another. By not capturing 50% of the acoustic product inside a box, one adds about 3dB of output though some of it will cancel in antiphase. Ocellia adapt a quasi-boxed variation on this theme with open bottoms. Still related to the general topic of higher-efficiency speakers are John DeVore's two Orangutan models. They revisit classic 10-inch 2-way boxes with 93/96dB sensitivities respectively. Aside from loading schemes, speaker efficiencies rely on low moving mass for their drivers (the cone, voice coil and suspension components of surround and spider) plus ultra-powerful motors (the driver magnet and its concentration of magnetic flux in the voice coil).

Andreas loads his passive models with rear horns firing into their plinths. For the semi-active models, he exploits open baffles to eliminate cavity resonances aka box talk whilst their powered bass systems work against the cancellation of long wavelengths which are endemic to open baffles. As Trenner & Friedl in Austria and others in this sector do, Zugspitz widebanders are treated with a variety of special oils and violin lacquers. Now here's an interesting factoid. What is common to all of these brands? They all embrace a paper-cone driver for the majority of their bandwidth (and they all seem to dislike the MDF building block). Despite conceptual disagreements or diverging preferences elsewhere—how many drivers, with/without filters, what type of loading—all of them overlap in their choice of paper as the ideal material for an extended midrange transducer. In short, Magnesium, carbonfibre, ceramic-coated aluminium or other alloys seem total verboten for the vocal band. That's not to say that such widebanders don't exist. They do. It's simply that this particular group of manufacturers dismisses them. Finally, if Andreas had a long-lost uncle somewhere in the Americas, it would have to be Jonathan Weiss of Oswald's Mill Audio. Swap antique barn for antique mill, throw front horns into the mix, stick to vinyl and tubes and presto, a brother from another mother. Actually, OMA has since relocated to a historical building on NYC's Brooklyn waterfront. But there's still Croatia's Ring Audio below whose widebander path relies on far smaller drivers. With others in this particular sub genre, one can now find metal drivers from Ted Jordan or Mark Audio which most often get mated to folded rear horns. Either way, if you thought mainstream speakers had the last word, the hifi underground would rather disagree.

It appears that nearly every country hosts members of this informal hifi counter movement who very often overlap in an appreciation for what the photos of this page are on about. Without getting all radicalized or self-righteous about it, let's call it a quiet rebellion against the status quo. This is borne out of dissatisfaction with the prevailing sound aesthetic. Disenchanters look to the past as an era that had gotten certain basics right which contemporary executions have turned away from. In some quarters such folks are called anachrophiles. They have a fondness for the past. Before one writes them off as Corey Greenberg's infamous old goats, it's better etiquette to first familiarize oneself with the alternatives they pursue. At the very least, it would round out one's earducation. And that's what this assignment is about. Of course not owning any vinyl nor a single valve amp, you could wonder why me. Not only didn't it bother Mr. Zugspitz who solicited this review and also suggested the speaker model, it made for a far more interesting situation. Is preaching to the converted really that cracking? Having owned Avantgarde Duos early on in my reviewing career and later models from Rethm, Zu and Voxativ, I was no stranger to hi-eff speakers. Having owned numerous valve amps from Art Audio, Audiopax, Melody, Octave, Trafomatic and Yamamoto, I'd also lived with 2A3, 300B, 45, KT88, EL84 and 6550. I'd subsequently simply gone low-power solid-state—blame FirstWatt and Nelson Pass—but to this day retain and adore a pair of 93dB tonewood widebanders from Switzerland's soundkaos which mate a paper bi-cone 8-incher to a Raal ribbon.