This is an IAR Best Buy in a modestly priced speaker system. As with the Samadhi Ichiban, this is a two way mini-tower, whose overall sonic capability has caused it to be ranked up with the big guys. The main difference between the Kestrel and all the other exhibited floor standing systems above is its price, $1250, which is a mere fraction of the price of the others.

Most modestly priced speakers fall into one of two categories. Half of them have an aggressive, attention-getting sonic gimmick, a non-neutral coloration such as boomy bass, overly bright or spitty upper frequencies, or both. The other half are reticently murky and muddy, so they don't bring you enough musical information to qualify as true high fidelity speakers. Many speakers combine both vices, aggressive colorations plus murkiness, so they literally deliver the worst of both worlds (this also is true of some very expensive speaker systems, as we'll see below).

The Meadowlark Kestrel is an ideal compromise between aggressiveness and reticence, bringing you the best of both these worlds. Its transparency is very good, so it brings you a lot of honest musical information. But it doesn't aggressively shout at you while bringing you this information. Its colorations are generally very low. Music just seems to naturally flow out of the Kestrel. The Kestrel is not a hi-fi showoff speaker; it is a music lover's speaker. Like the Voce Divina Tenore ($8000), the Kestrel is an exquisite and intimate speaker. It sounds very clean, yet it is not surgically analytical. Like the very best speakers above, the Kestrel has a relaxed ease about its musical presentation that draws you into the music, and makes long term music listening a pleasure.

The Kestrel's absolute transparency might not be the equal of the bigger, more expensive systems above. But the Kestrel invites you to open your ears, and savor every bit of musical transparency that it does offer. Moreover, whatever transparency limitations the Kestrel does have are not immediately obvious, but rather only become apparent when compared with a larger, more expensive system that is indeed more transparent. In other words, the Kestrel's transparency losses are benign and passive losses, and do not interfere with music or musical enjoyment when the Kestrel is installed in a home system on its own.

Colorations from the drivers and cabinet seem very low, which is important, since such colorations are mechanical and foreign to the music, hence inevitably obnoxious in the long run, when heard in other speaker systems (they also blur whatever transparency the system might have).

The Kestrel does seem to have some slight tonal colorations related to its crossover, but these are gentle and more benign, sounding like electrical tone controls rather than foreign mechanical colorations (note that live music also has such tonal balance colorations, when heard in different concert halls or from different seats in the same hall). Specifically, the Kestrel's upper midrange is slightly laid back (this actually contributes positively to the easy listening sound of the system, and to its forgiving tolerance of less than perfect program source material). Also, if you listen to the Kestrel while standing, there is a slight hollow coloration in the lower midrange, which goes away and becomes neutral at lower (or higher) listening axes. The Kestrel employs first order (6dB per octave) crossovers, which do tend to produce lobing effects from the overlapping drivers, so this might be responsible for the slight tonal coloration(s) heard.

The Kestrel is both temporally aligned and phase coherent. This surely helps the Kestrel to sound better than the necessarily modest price of its drivers might otherwise indicate. The simple first order crossover introduces fewer sonically degrading parts between your amplifier and the drivers, thus realizing the best transparency of which these drivers are capable. The temporal alignment and phase coherence of the system also improve the system's transparency and tactile coherence, again making the most of the drivers' capabilities. The temporal alignment and phase coherence doubtless also help stereo imaging, though this was only fairly good in the Meadowlark exhibit, possibly because the Meadowlark speakers have no anti-diffraction measures such as front baffle padding.

A modestly priced system like the Kestrel can only afford modestly priced drivers, yet these two drivers have obviously been chosen with care for low diaphragm coloration, which pays off in the natural musicality of the system. The admirably low cabinet coloration of the mini-tower is achieved by a number of measures, including decoupled drivers, durathane damping, and extensive bracing. A further clever design feature is the fact that the cabinet bracing does double duty. Since extensive cross bracing is needed anyway for low cabinet coloration, why not make a bass transmission line out of these cross braces, and kill two birds with one stone?

The Kestrel might be the least expensive speaker system available to use transmission line bass. This pays dividends in the quality of the Kestrel's bass, which is well defined and also integrates seamlessly with the rest of the music, without calling attention to itself as a separate entity. The Kestrel's bass is understandably limited in quantity (i.e. in power and extension), since it uses a modest size woofer/midrange driver in a modest size enclosure, so you shouldn't expect hi-fi showoff bass. But that's to the good, since hi-fi showoff bass usually has poor quality in any system of modest price and scale, and this would be antithetical to the musical naturalness evinced by the Kestrel over the rest of the musical spectrum. The transmission line chiefly helps the quality of bass, not the quantity, and it helps the Kestrel's bass to fit in perfectly with the rest of the system's musical presentation.

The Kestrel also boasts other refined features, unusual in a modestly priced system, which improve its sonics: good quality connectors and wiring, which is hand soldered point-to-point (no printed circuit boards). These features improve system transparency even further, again delivering the best sound possible from the drivers in this modestly priced system.

The Kestrel provides a welcome and very worthy alternative to other established speakers such as the $715 Vandersteen 1C, which similarly bring you a lot of music for the money with a presentation of relaxed ease. It's a speaker you must consider if you are shopping in this price range.

Meadowlark also played their Shearwater speaker system at CES. It is still a two way system – basically a scaled up Kestrel, in a slightly larger mini-tower enclosure, with more expensive drivers. It sells for twice as much, $2400.

Sonically, the Shearwater builds upon the Kestrel's strengths. It offers genuinely better transparency, immediately showing that the Kestrel is not the last word in transparency (though the Kestrel sounds fine on its own terms). Its tonal balance is slightly leaner, and there is a greater and more neutral amount of upper midrange energy. This provides a musical presentation that sounds clearer and more immediate than the Kestrel. Within this leaner, clearer, more up front context, the Shearwater still has the sense of relaxed ease that we found so engaging in the Kestrel. So the Shearwater is truly an even better speaker system than the Kestrel.

The only concern about the Shearwater is that it is double the price of the Kestrel. Is it twice as good? Probably not, but more to the point is all the competition priced between $1000 and $2000, including some three way systems with wider bandwidth and greater oomph, such as the very capable Vandersteen 2ce Signature at $1495.

Meadowlark Audio has nearly finished a prototype of a third system, their $8000 Blue Heron. This will be a three way system, with double woofers, in a yet larger cabinet. It is expected to employ Audax' new (and very expensive) gold elliptical piezo film tweeter, which we heard in another system at the show sounding very fast, extended, and sweet.

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