Updates from the Inbox – New Speakers, MQA and More!

This week’s update starts with two brothers from Arizona (one is the designer and one is the engineer). With the incursion of fund raising into the public consciousness, many things both good and bad have come to fruition (or not) and the market of audio is no exception. The brothers VETR are going for it, have a Kickstarter and write a very nice email, so here it is.

At first glance the vowel-light PANL1 Speaker System appears to be a carbon fibre panel driver paired with a 60W subwoofer. According to the guys from AZ, the 1.5mm thick twill-weave drivers are rated down to 48 Hz and can output up to 115dB of sound with 48W of power per channel. While I’m sure you can derive some sort of audio from nearly any rigid surface, everyone loves carbon fiber, so why not? The complete PANL1 System starts at $299 for the earliest bird special, which includes the sub (and a built-in amplifier for the two panel speakers). Plenty more info (including a frequency chart) are located on the VETR Kickstarter page.

Although MarkAudio-SOTA loudspeakers have been batted around the review scene a little and made a few appearances within the audio show circuit, the “Dream Team” comprised of Mark Fenlon and Co. is now formally releasing 3 new speakers to the US market. Opting for a more direct approach, the trio of loudspeakers are exclusively available through the company site and come with a 30-day return policy. The line starts with two bookshelf entries called the Cesti B ($1,895/pair) and Viotti One ($2,995/pair). The former is a dubbed a “medium-sized two-way bookshelf” while the latter is “MarkAudio-SOTA’s flagship 2-way stand-mount”. The Cesti T floorstander ($3,495/pair) bumps up the low frequency extension with a pair of twin Sota 11 bass-mid drivers and comes in black, red or white.

More from the press release:

“MarkAudio-SOTA’s unique All-Range driver approach offers the rich midrange that is typical of a wide-range single speaker design, while providing a dynamic, full frequency range extending from 40Hz to 25kHz. The three dual driver speakers’ systems use different combinations of a custom-designed, 110mm (Sota 11) wide-range mid-bass driver mounted in a ported cabinet along with an acoustically isolated 50mm (Sota 5) tweeter. Both drivers use a low mass, mixed-alloy cone that generates exceedingly accurate audio transparency with incredible detail.

The company’s all-range drivers utilize a 2.4 kHz crossover frequency with gentle, 2nd order electrical and acoustic slopes that gradually blend the outputs, maximizing the advantages of their symmetric wide-dispersion drivers. The simple design, with few reactive components, also aids in amplifier matching, allowing MarkAudio-SOTA speakers to be easily driven by low-power designs. The result is a 2-way loudspeaker without any obvious crossover transition, and a smooth, transparent, yet dynamic and natural musical response especially apparent in vocal reproduction.”

More info: http://markaudio-sota.us