The Facette is a floorstanding loudspeaker with extremely well-behaved sound dispersion and other very good sonic properties at a low price. Bernd Timmermanns has developed this bass reflex speaker. The Facette is home to a Wavecor dome, the TW030WA10, and the low-distortion 18 cm mid-woofer Wavecor WF182BD10.
We warmly recommend this loudspeaker.
Its crossover consists of a low-pass and a high-pass branch each of third order, i.e. with a slope of 18 dB per octave. A resistor sits in series to the tweeter as a voltage divider. To give a slight lifting to the highest treble, a capacitor is wired parallel to that resistor. No components were needed for eliminating any resonances or bulges in the frequency response.
We see a very even on-axis frequency response from 30 Hz to 26,000 Hz. The decay spectrum (waterfall diagram over frequency) is exemplary, free of any disturbing resonance. At 90 dB and 1 m, non-linear distortions remain below 0.4 % almost everywhere above 300 Hz.
... "In our listening test we compared the Facette with the WaveMon 182 from Hobby HiFi no. 4/ 2013. The WaveMon uses the same dome tweeter, though with four ohms nominal impedance. And as a mid-woofer, it employs the almost identical driver, the WF182BD03 with a pure, untreated paper cone. It's in the crossover concept that the two boxes differ extremely. In contrast to the Facette's 18 dB filters, the WaveMon 182 boasts a 6 dB crossover plus three RLC notch filters. We may describe the difference between these two constructions thus: Honesty meets beauty. WaveMon 182 plays in a gorgeous, natural way. It delicately resolves fine-spun sounds and it carries a true feelgood atmosphere. One could leave it at that. Until one switches to the Facette. Yes, in its basic voicing it matches the WaveMon, but it brings even more information from the depths of the music to the surface. The Facette makes good use of its advantage when it comes to vocal music. Voices sound more authentic and more direct, just more honest. There is not a world of difference between them, but nuances, rather. The nuances are clear. WaveMon 182 is the aesthete, Facette is the workhorse which, remarkably, digs out even more details from the music. As far as deep bass is concerned, the Facette trumps the WaveMon, too. Taking into account its bigger cabinet, this comes as no suprrise.
When there's demand for the very deepest registers like in the overture to Richard Strauss' "Also sprach Zarathustra", and the pipe organ rumbles in abysmally low depths, the WaveMon 182 will capitulate. The Facette happily descends ever lower into the deep basement, if we may say so. The spatial illusion of the Facette surpasses the WaveMon 182 in the depth dimension. At conjuring the left-to-right dimension, both speakers perform equally superior. Facette draws solo voices closer to the listener. And simultaneously it casts the sonic picture of the space in greater depth. "
"Considering the components it contains, the Facette provides a downright shocking degree of sonic perfection. It combines untouchable tonality with pinpoint rendering of details and a large-scale spatial image. With its sound pressure capability it won't even wave the white flag too soon. The parts cost amounts to some 300 Euros for each box, in a decidedly popular range. Well, with its sonic performance the Facette need not hide from ready-to-use loudspeakers at several thousand Euros. Wouldn't that be just the right project for the vacation around Christmas!"
Kit without cabinet, price per speaker EUR 432,00 excl. VAT: € 363.03 / $ 392.07
The high-end kit contains Mundorf MCAP EVO capacitors of which 3 are oil capacitors. The coils are baked varnished coils for diminishing the microphonics effect. Current flowing through the coil creates a magnetic field which on itself sets the reel of wire in motion. That motion induces a voltage in the coil which adds itself to the original signal.
Kit with high-end-crossover without cabinet, price per speaker EUR 524,00 excl. VAT: € 440.34 / $ 475.56
If you want to use a valve amplifier with this speaker an impedance correction should be employed. In this case the component quality is less important. Therefore, we offer only one kit. Upon request, higher quality components are available.
If you prefer to mount the crossover components on a 159 x 127 mm universal PCB instead on wood: Universal PCB RA160, order no.. str-RA160, price per unit: EUR 5,90 excl. VAT: € 4.96 / $ 5.35 We recommend one board per kit (two boards for a speaker pair)
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