A500 – Denmark's Buchardt bow their first active speaker based on the popular S400. To accommodate the electronics, the S400's passive oval radiator becomes an active 6" woofer to reinforce the frontal 6" driver below the ¾" wave-guided tweeter. There's quad-core DSP, a dual CS4398 DAC, room-correction ready, low-level listening EQ and a sealed alignment. The customer decides whether to configure DSP for 2.5-way or 3-way operation. With on-board processing power and 3x150w analog gain based on TI, claimed bandwidth is an ambitious 25Hz – 40kHz ±1.5dB. Filter points are 150Hz and 2'800Hz. There's lossless 24/96 wireless and a wired analog XLR input. All of it fits into a 365 x 180 x 280mm cabinet in black, white or walnut. Buchardt's optional stereo hub can drive 16 wireless speakers from its own hot spot and accepts USB, 3 x Toslink, coax, HDMI, standard RCA and 3.5mm stereo sources The hub will stream Tidal, Qobuz, Spotify, Apple Music, Deezer, vTuner, Amazon Music, Roon and YouTube. The hub also adds RF remote and Buchardt's room correction algorithms. Those work on a 1-minute data acquisition protocol which uses an Apple iPhone 6S or newer with the Buchardt app.
"Standard config is as 2.5-way set to 25Hz with variable bass. If you play at 100dB, don't expect 2 x 6" woofers to generate 25Hz. The system will then smoothly set the bass tuning higher so the woofers don’t break. But what if you rarely play loud? Download a different tuning from our website. Copy the file onto a USB key and upload to each speaker. Now it's a 3-way design set to 20Hz instead. What if deep bass isn't important but high SPL are? What if you want to use subs? Download a different master tuning. We are experimenting with cardioid, semi cardioid and optimized nearfield tunings for professional studio use and much more." All the hardware ships Denmark direct and a current pre-order campaign for June delivery offers discounts.
