Tweeter is a ’regulation’ 26mm coated-silk dome sourced from Scanspeak (why mess with success), and completing the image of a ‘classic’ 8” three-way is a 110mm midrange unit. These days, when 7”/175mm midrange drivers are more or less de rigeur, it looks like a saucer when you are expecting a soup-bowl! Crossover points are ultra-traditional too, at 450Hz and 3.1KHz, employing gentle 2nd order slopes and impedance compensation to arrive at a far from frightening impedance profile for the driving amplifier. Taken together, that’s a line up that might well have stepped straight out of the 80’s so, if customers start by looking at products long before they get to touching or hearing them, the Sinfonia could have some catching up to do – at least with the fashion conscious customer.
Peak’s specs list a bandwidth of 25Hz to 30kHz -3dB, with a 5Ω nominal impedance (±1Ω). Combined with a realistic 89dB sensitivity (in this case, Danes really don’t lie!) that makes the Sinfonia a seriously amp-friendly load, at least on paper. Maybe not the speaker for 15Watt tube amps, but it shouldn’t give your half-way competent power amp any trouble at all. However, as is so often the case and as will become clear, those numbers only tell part of the story.
Two other specifics are worthy of note. Firstly, the WBT binding-posts that graced older Peak speakers have been replaced with far superior Argento models. Sonically a very good move, it’s not without its associated challenges. The Sinfonias are bi-wirable. The Argento binding posts accept a 4mm banana plug OR a spade (but not both simultaneously). Nor, in my experience (and I own a few products that use them) do the Argento terminals like accepting two spades at once. Peak Consult are clearly serious about you bi-wiring or better, bi-amping their speakers, to the point where they don’t supply jumper cables. I concur wholeheartedly with the sentiment but, if you do want to run the speakers single-wired, fitting separate jumpers is a pain in the proverbial. Speaker cables fitted with short flying leads to bridge across the terminals are by far the best option. Failing that you can resort (like me) to a lot of frustration and not a little swearing.
In one of those ying/yang experiences, the Peak Consult outriggers and feet are amongst the best executed and operationally the easiest I’ve used. The outrigger beams are damped with inlaid strips of rubber that press against the cabinet plinth to prevent them resonating, while the footers run on smooth, large diameter threads, incorporate a captive ceramic ball for single-point contact and lock from above. You even get post-holes in the adjustable feet and a tool to turn them with – important because turning the ‘cone’ doesn’t necessarily adjust the foot. The blunt cones with their flat bases aren’t going to penetrate carpet, but with speakers this heavy and with this footprint, achieving stability shouldn’t be a challenge. Equal loading of all four feet is another matter…
One particularly nice touch is the supplied single-setting torque-driver, which fits the outrigger bolts and the bass and midrange driver fixings. Getting all of those driver bolts not just tight, but exactly the same tightness throughout makes a surprising contribution to the overall musical coherence of the speakers. Surprising that is, until you consider the affect that even, regular contact with the baffle will have on the resonant behaviour of the driver’s basket and surround. Other manufacturers (notably Wilson) do supply torque settings for their driver mounting bolts. Peak is the first I’ve come across that actually supplies a torque driver with each pair of speakers: A moral victory for the Viking invaders? Definitely.
Three steps forward…
Setting up the Sinfonias is either going to be simplicity itself or a prolonged, patient, gradual struggle. There doesn’t seem to be any middle ground. The deciding factors? Space and amplifier matching. Give the Sinfonias enough room to breath and enough power to grab a hold of their generous bottom-end and it should be plan sailing, helped enormously by the ease of adjustment of those excellent outrigger feet.
