By mid February 2026, this particular micro niche had unexpected visitors from Børresen and Voxativ. In the Danish speaker portfolio, the M8 Gold had just usurped the top spot, bracketing a d'Appolito type central 5" twin-mid 2-way with the brand's signature thin-film tweeter between two passive RiPol arrays of three pairs of 8-inch woofers each. The surface area of a doozy dozen woofers per side adds up to triple 15-inchers, just with a lot more motor power applied to the combined moving mass. With the prior M6 model collecting a cool half mill, the M8 bags twice that to remain nothing but an ambitious design exercise for most but shows clear forward thinking. Not to be outdone, at €60K/pr Voxativ's Elektra from Berlin stacks a rear-horn loaded field-coil widebander atop a dual 12" active RiPol subwoofer goosed by 500 watts of in-house developed class D whilst the custom woofers are 96dB each to present as 99dB combined. Axel Ridthaler's concept of folded dipole bass of controlled directivity and extreme self damping was making the rounds. "I'm showing at Klangschloss Greifensee Zürich on March 27-29th and hope to have samples to you right after." From gestation tale to stork drop. Fox5 inbound? Given the long-necked stork, we better return to the proper name: Vox5.
By then my pair of Vox3awf had grown custom stilts to accommodate twin-pillow-raised half-lotus seating height against nearfield positioning and aim small widebanders at my ears not chest. A twin 9½" sealed Dynaudio sub augments the 1st+ octave.
Stone. Wood. Metal. Leather. Ceramic. What in such a materials palette stands out as absent are plastics; and saw dust set in glue commonly called MDF or HDF. As we know, Martin prefers solid woods, bronze, AlNiCo motors and paper-based drivers. Making no sonic judgment call, such choices reflect another aesthetic. We should certainly accord such building blocks more nobility than polyester lacquers, polypropylene cones and medium-density fibreboard. It shifts today's pair of speakers from mere appliances to something more luxo. Once luxury enters, so do extra reasons for ownership beyond basic utility fulfilment. For the latter, pro-sound industrial black freckle paint and steel-reinforced corners with parts easily and cheaply replaced would be the thing. With nobility, we move towards objects d'art. Beyond functionality, those hold intangibles.
How those speak to us is intensely personal. One woman's Rothko is another's Picasso.
Whatever calls us insistently enough to want in our personal space becomes valuable. We treasure it for its deeper value, not because we acquired it cheaply. It's not the commodity think of value like, a good deal or high resale guarantee. Nor is it synonymous with being far pricier than a commodity equivalent. Expense alone doesn't secure this deeper value though what does, exactly, differs from person to person. Here it's enough to reiterate that apart from noble materials, the Vox5 adds the think-different dimension to transcend cookie-cutter solutions.
As such and quite apart from needing a willing wallet, it's unlikely to be anyone's first even second speaker. Never mind the widebander angle. To fully appreciate the Vox5's unique bass system is virtually predicated upon having lost all faith in conventional ported/sealed omnipolar bass. That needs prior experience followed by profound dissatisfaction followed by clear cause/effect thinking and how to finally stack the speaker/room interaction in our favour if copious traditional passive room treatments aren't in our future. If that lands us on classic open-baffle bass¹—already a fine choice—this review by Warsaw correspondent Dawid Grzyb shows what ~30Hz extension now entails for required woofage and resultant size. Do I hear a lady of the house cry "over my dead body"?
For a brief Instagram video on the Klangschloss Greifensee Vox5 showing, click on the linked image at left.
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¹ For repetition's sake, the Vox5's bass array is dipole. It simply folds its baffle in a clever way then rotates its woofers 90° so we face their narrow sides not frontal diameters. Another take on this idea which faces its twin woofers up and down to get wider again is Daudio's W1 shown here. Either way, we're starting to see more options for non-conventional bass systems that offer clear advantages for the type untreated rooms which are home audio's understandable default.
Getting the scoop happened a week after the show. Here we just saw Martin's scoop, a unique combination of flared port and rear horn to only lightly load the widebander.
Here is the new AlNiCo widebander in its basket cast from Swiss bell bronze. Such supportive extravagance I've otherwise only read about with DeVore and Living Voice though the late Eduardo de Lima of Brazilian brand Audiopax too used bell bronze for his amplifier enclosure disguised beneath a thick layer of chrome. To him his tube circuit sounded clearly better enclosed in bronze than aluminium or steel.
