Stenheim Alumine Two

Description

When you listen to the Stenheim Alumine Two, your ears will tell you that this is no ordinary compact 2-way monitor loudspeaker. However, your first glance won’t reveal why that is. You need to look a lot deeper – the same way Stenheim looked at loudspeaker design. This brilliance of this speaker is not immediately obvious. Aesthetically, it looks elegant and simple however once you look closely, evidence of ingenious design and execution begins to reveal itself.

Stenheim began by questioning the fundamental thinking, technological choices and materials used in conventional designs. That led them to some surprising conclusions that contradicted conventional thinking and fashionable theory. They decided that the measurable benefits of high-tech cone materials were less desirable than the obvious musical advantages of more traditional approaches. They implemented low-loss, phase-coherent crossovers with sophisticated out-of-band roll-off levels. They chose the low-storage energy signature of a critically damped aluminium cabinet using innovative, low-volume damping materials. They realised that if you design a speaker ‘in a lab’. It may test and measure perfectly but in the real world those designs were often lacking in emotional expression. Their determination to maintain the life and energy in the music, the essence of the original performance was behind every decision.

The Alumine Two is small in stature and footprint but it sounds much bigger than it looks. Despite its compact dimensions, it embodies all of Stenheim’s fundamental design principles:

• A larger than expected bass-mid driver with a sophisticated, treated paper cone.
• A fabric dome tweeter, carefully horn loaded for increased efficiency.
• A high order, phase-coherent crossover to preserve the fragile but all-important temporal and spatial information in the stereo signal.
• A thin-wall aluminium cabinet built with hidden fixings and golden ratio dimensions.
• Low-volume damping materials to kill cabinet resonance and internal standing waves without killing musical dynamics.

The thin-wall cabinet with its inherently low resonant signature maximises internal volume. In terms of the internal air volume, it is literally bigger than it seems – at least compared to thick-walled wooden cabinets. Add to that the classical combination of a reflex-loaded, 6.5” bass-midrange driver and a 1” soft-dome tweeter and you have a system that is both more efficient and has wider bandwidth than can be expected from such a compact speaker. Further extend the system sensitivity with subtle horn loading and a low-loss crossover and the loudspeaker becomes more responsive to input. This translates more of the signal into musical energy and it gives the amplifier an easier job to do, removing another potential bottleneck in the signal path.

The Alumine Two will bring your recordings to life, allowing the music and the musicians to breathe. It matches the expressive and dynamic demands of their performance, scale, presence and intimacy. It offers all the advantages of a small speaker, combined with many of the benefits that come from a larger cabinet. Its rigid, critically-damped enclosure is inherently low colouration and its overall efficiency makes the most of the incoming musical signal, preserving its energy and drama. This combination of traditional but highly developed drivers with an exactingly executed cabinet construction using the latest technology and materials strikes the perfect musical balance.

With its classical proportions and flawless finish, the Alumine Two blends seamlessly with both traditional and modern surroundings. We consider the Alumine Two as a connoisseur’s speaker because of its balance and beautiful attributes – it’s expressive, engaging, bold, delicate, dramatic and astonishingly versatile. It will breathe life into your recordings and music into your home.

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Road Trip Switzerland – Stenheim

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