Elegantly formed, musically able and attractively priced…
By Roy Gregory
They say that beauty is only skin deep, but that’s never been the case with high-end audio components, a realm in which what’s on the inside is always more important than what’s on the outside. Of course, that doesn’t stop audiophiles ‘drinking by the label’ or the vagaries of audiophile fashion sweeping the market: just think metal dome tweeters or single-ended triodes… But as with all such popular movements, buyers soon discovered that not all metal dome tweeters were created equal. What they didn’t seem to learn is the most important lesson of all – it ain’t what you do, it’s the way that you do it. As FBT were want to point out, “that’s what gets results!”
In a world where few speaker manufacturers make their own drivers and there are more speaker manufacturers than there are factories making drive units, there’s an almost inevitable tendency to judge loudspeakers on their most obvious features – the number and type of drivers – rather than recognising that any speaker is a complex, interlocking system of parts: cabinet, drivers, crossover, acoustic design and execution. No one of those constituent parts can guarantee success – but any of them can fatally flaw the end result.
What’s all that got to do with Vimberg’s Mino? In fact, what’s all that got to do with the Vimberg brand, full-stop? After all, isn’t the Mino one of the most elegantly stylish and musically impressive speakers on the market – especially at its astonishingly approachable price. Okay, so €29,000 isn’t exactly beer budget, but for that you are getting a large yet graceful, fully composite cabinet, machined from solid hardware, a flawless lacquer finish and a full suite of five Accuton ceramic drivers! Anyway you slice it, that’s an awful lot of speaker for the money, not least in comparison to the all too obvious competition. That competition – and those Accuton drivers – is where this story starts and, if pride comes before a fall, in this case we can all be glad that hubris played its part.
Reality bites…
The genesis of this particular tale lies with Vimberg’s parent company, the highly respected Tidal Audio – whose loudspeakers also feature Accuton drivers – besides a whole lot of other, less obvious stuff… In fact, Tidal use more Accuton drivers than anybody else, almost all of them built specifically to the company’s requirements and built into products of such astonishing quality and exacting execution that they set standards that most high-end manufacturers aren’t even aware of. Such attention to detail and flawless finishing, premium parts and materials and such unrelentingly rigorous design costs: in this case it costs a lot – but get up close and personal with any of Tidal’s speakers and you can see (and hear) exactly where that money has gone. But that didn’t stop a constant stream of wannabe customers and audio tire-kickers pointing out that you could buy speakers that looked sort of similar and used what appeared to be the same drivers for around 25% less if you shopped with the completion. Tidal’s owner, JörnJanczak got tired of pointing out the physical, material and philosophical differences between his speakers and those competitors, differences that actually made the competition actually look relatively expensive, when you considered what went into them. Saying it is one thing, but in order to really make the point, the only response was to build a speaker using those ’lesser’ ingredients, but build it the Tidal way. The result was the Vimberg line, a range of speakers, including the Mino, that not only outperform the competition but significantly undercut it in terms of price! JörnJanczak might have been spectacularly successful in making his point, but we can all profit from his victory, with music lovers who might never be able to afford or justify Tidal loudspeakers, suddenly finding the Vimberg range tantalisingly within reach…
