Harman Kardon Citation Towers: In the future the speaker will do everything....

[BillG]

We've been headed in this direction for some time now, and it's nice to see another manufacturer take wireless speakers seriously:

https://www.harmankardon.co.uk/new-speakers/CITATION+TOWER.html?cgid=new-speakers&dwvar_CITATION

Kind regards...

 

[Cosmik]

I wonder how many they'll sell. To me, the whole concept of big speakers in the living room is looking like a 20th century phenomenon that not many people are into anymore. It's not that the wives would object (they would) but that even most blokes these days wouldn't see the point.

And this 'whole house' thing? Music piped to any room in the house is like saying 'A computer terminal in every room!'. Maybe it would have been exciting in 1968.

And anyway, the first time a member of the family finds they need a password or special app to use it with their new phone or tablet is also the last time they'll try to use it.

 

[Wombat]

The design of these 'Me Too' products appear to come out of the 'Jetsons' and a Bose style omnidirectional room filler philosophy.

 

[Wayne A. Pflughaupt]

We've been headed in this direction for some time now, and it's nice to see another manufacturer take wireless speakers seriously:

“Wireless seriously?” Has anyone checked the specs for that thing?

I understand that standard things like power output, frequency response, and THD are somewhat irrelevant with an active speaker, but a noise spec of only 80 dB? With no weighting qualifier? Which means it’s probably A-weighted, which means unweighted S/N is probably 5-to 10 dB worse.

Am I the only one who finds that unacceptable?

This is actually "part and parcel" with wireless systems. They will never have the S/N you get with hardwired systems.

Regards,
Wayne A. Pflughaupt

 

[atlel]

Have anyone tested these now? How can they compare to hardwires system (speakers connected to stereo amps)?

 

[andreasmaaan]

I'm not aware of any tests but at the end of the day these are small tower speakers with an 8" "subwoofer" and what would are presumably 2 x 4" midwoofers and a 25mm dome tweeter in an MTM configuration. If they're done well, they will be nice mid-fi speakers with average levels of nonlinear distortion, quite wide horizontal dispersion, and a somewhat narrow vertical sweet spot due to the MTM configuration. Could range from terrible to very good, but would be very unlikely to be competitive with the best active speakers in their price range, to which one could easily add a bluetooth receiver if one wished. They do weigh 19Kg though, so if the cabinets are well-engineered they should be pretty inert and non-resonant. They also seem to be a nice shape for minimising baffle edge diffraction, although it's hard to know for sure since the true baffle is hidden behind the grill cover and may or may not contain edges/discontinuities that are not visible without pulling the thing apart.

Personally at that price I'd go for something measured and verified to perform excellently.

 

[atlel]

I'm personally considering Dali Oberon 5 (at 1/3 of the price of Citation Tower) since I already have a Marantz stereo amplifier, but like the Google integration of the Citation. But if the sound of the Tower is considerable less good that the Dali speakers with my Marantz Pearl Lite amplifier, then ...

 

[andreasmaaan]

@atlel I’d have no idea how these compare to Dali Oberon 5. Don’t think measurements of either have been published unfortunately. The Oberon 5 published specs don’t say a lot, so it’s really hard to know. I wouldn’t assume they’ll be superior to these Harmans, however. Have you listened to either speaker? If you’re planning on spending $800-$2500 on a pair of speakers it would be better to know they measure well, or at least to have listened to them first IMHO.

 

[Kal Rubinson]

I am holding out for Harman to follow through on this one: https://www.stereophile.com/content/soundsteer-technology-lexicon#dr6MsM7ZkaEmvVD3.97