Not just the same-old, same old…
By Roy Gregory
I have an abiding (and possibly unhealthy) interest in small speakers that actually deliver the musical goods. It’s partly because they are so rare, partly because the most popular models so seldom actually deliver and partly because for all their challenges, small, stand-mount speakers enjoy several serious, inherent advantages. For starters, they seldom get beyond two-way topology, thus minimising the impact of the crossover (and giving the designer less opportunity to screw it up); they have smaller cabinet panels that are less inclined to sing along with the music; if you put them on stands then their bass drivers are placed well away from the nearest boundary. It all adds up to the potential for an articulate and engaging musical experience – even if dynamic range and bandwidth are going to suffer. Yet so many compact speakers sacrifice that articulation in the self-destructive pursuit of ever more bass from even smaller boxes. Anybody would think it was a competitive category, the amount of energy, money and hot air that’s been expended on the subject.
When it comes to musically effective miniatures, my own preferences are well outside the norm. You can forget mini-Magicos, most of the Sonus Fabers and the Acoustic Energy AE1s. I dearly wish we could forget the LS 3/5a. Instead, bring on the Ensemble PA1, KEF’s C15 and R101 or, most recently, the now sadly defunct Spendor D1, a speaker that certainly tells a story. Despite its remarkable performance and approachable price, Spendor couldn’t sell enough of this superb little speaker to keep it in production. Instead, the public prefers the greater perceived value of equivalently priced floorstanders – at the expense of musical clarity, communication and expressive range. Fortunately, a couple of new alternatives have just arrived, of which the least conventional and in many ways most intriguing is the EJ Jordan Greenwich, a speaker I first talked about in an earlier article <https://gy8.eu/blog/natural-selection/>.
On the surface, the Greenwich is about as traditional a speaker as you are likely to see, from its classical, wider than it is deep proportions and walnut veneer to its inset black grille and open frame stand. It couldn’t scream ‘British’ any louder if it tried and could disappear effortlessly into any crowd of Rogers, Spendor and Harbeth stand-mounts. But as soon as you start to look a little closer, it becomes apparent that this as anything other than a ‘me-too’ product. First clue is the massive (and somewhat impractical) TEAD pure copper binding posts on the rear panel: not exactly standard issue. After that, it’s a case of removing the grille, as there are no other external features to mark the speaker apart. But once the retro black-fabric cover, with its bluff-sided plywood frame is pulled free of its Velcro pads (no careful profiling or invisible, magnetic fixings here) the true and somewhat surprising nature of the Greenwich is revealed…
