A little bird told me to check these out. Actually, a couple of little birds. In fact I can't remember the last time I've heard this much of a believable buzz--I guess I should say believable twitter--about an affordable hi-fi product. Don't be shocked to learn I followed through. And so the first thing I want to tell you is how refreshingly pleasant these folks are to deal with. Speaking with Meadowlark's head honcho Patrick McGinty in the middle of one particularly rotten day was like opening the car window after the dog sicks up on the back seat; McGinty was candid about his products' pros and cons, humble about his place in the hi-fi universe, and he didn't get rabid about any pet technical issues, Hey, let's face it guys and gals, we're only human--and while I try not to let personal issues affect what I write in a negative way (contrast McGinty with, say, the creep who runs stateside operations for a certain pseudo-high end mass market electronics firm, and you'll begin to appreciate that accomplishment), I admit that I can't help it when nice people make me want to view products in a positive light. Average this into our review findings if you feel you must... Next is the astonishment I felt when I learned what this product is really all about. Meadowlark Audio was formed around this, their first commercial offering, after a number of friends and friends of friends' friends pestered McGinty into building speakers for them. The result is the Kestrel, a $1250 per pair floorstanding, two-way loudspeaker based on a vented transmission line, and with high quality European drivers, a minimalist crossover, and rosewood veneer. And, no--we've gone over that paragraph fix or six times, and there isn't a single typo in sight. Arguably the most astonishing thing of all is the Kestrels bass loading scheme: A transmission line loudspeaker for under a thousand dollars is all but unheard-of, given the woodwork involved. And here's why: A transmission line is one of several ways of making a woofer act like it's operating in free space. That's a good thing to do, because only in free space will the woofer exhibit the lowest resonant frequency it possibly can and thus deliver its full acoustic power at low frequencies, (If you put that same driver in a box, the spring of enclosed air behind it will raise the resonant frequency quite high, making the system hard to drive at full acoustic power at low frequencies.) But the problem with free space is that the front wave and rear wave of a driver can cancel each other out before they reach the listener--not a problem at high frequencies, but a real bear in the bass, What's a mother to do? Well, you could build a transmission line; a tunnel into which the woofer's rear wave can travel until it's spent - Big space, low resonant frequency, and no contribution to the acoustic output from that rear wave--which, if you could hear it, would be so delayed by the time it reached you that the music would be screwed up in a big way. But what we have in mind isn't really a tunnel. it's a sort of a wooden maze--a path that's been folded onto itself so that it fits within a reasonably sized cabinet, The goals in designing such a thing are: The longer the path, the better; the deader/more acoustically absorbent the path, the better; the more rigid the cabinet, the better; and the less chance for that rear wave to contribute to the sound, the better. As you can see, the ideal transmission line would be an enormously large, structurally complex, internally damped, and completely sealed cabinet. That ideal is seldom achieved, though, for reasons of reasonability, and so most practical transmission lines are studies in compromise. So it goes with the Meadowlark Kestrel. This cabinet isn't sealed (to do so in a transmission line cabinet of limited size is a no-no), and the line could perhaps benefit from an increase in size (what couldn't?). But it works, and it's an amazing--astounding, actually--achievement for what- is essentially budget/perfectionist product. And here's some more grist for the technical mill; The tweeter is a 1-inch fabric dome from Peerless. The 6-inch woofer, from Vifa, is plastic cone built onto a cast frame. Both are fastened to a beautifully machined MDF baffle with wood screws, and said baffle is resiliently mounted to the MDF cabinet, to aid in isolating small driver excursions from energy stored in the line. A frameless grille stretches, Linn-like, over the baffle for protection. The crossover is a minimalist first-order design (a single choke on the woofer, and one cap and one resistor on the tweeter) in order to preserve complex waveform integrity and not just pass test-bench frequencies and amplitudes. Those parts are mounted in a little chamber below the cabinet proper, making this one well isolated (quasi-outboard?) crossover. The baffle is angled slightly for physical time alignment. The hookup wire is Kimber 4PR (good stuff), and the binding posts are also quite decent. (For $60 extra, bi-wire enthusiasts can have a pair of Kestrels with four binding posts each. Yes, that's eight total!) And the sound? There's a lot of good news to report, but before I do, I'd like to get the Kestrels' two most apparent shortcomings out of the way. First, and perhaps most noticeable, these speakers are a bit colored, quite possibly owing to that 6-inch woofer getting into a little trouble toward the top of its operating range (say, in the octave between 2kHz and 4kHz). Whatever the cause, the result is a bit of a cupped-hands-around-the-mouth quality audible on vocals. (Actually, everything else--acoustic guitars and violins, for example--sounds just a bit timbrally off up there, too, but the problem is most obvious on voices, and besides, the whole cupped hands thing doesn't really apply to fiddling, does it?) The effect is more apparent with tube as than solid state, though not drastically so; it was audible to a greater or lesser degree with every amp I tried. And I wasn't terribly troubled by it. Yes, I appreciate and enjoy the comparatively greater tonal neutrality of my big Spendors. But I also recognize that they cost over three times as must as the Meadowlarks--and besides, this coloration never really impeded my enjoyment on a fundamental, musical level. The other problem is that the Meadowlark Kestrels won't play as loudly without audible strain as those big Spendors do. The problem is most obvious in the highs, actually: Fundamentals and lower partials of loudly hit orchestral drums sound okay--but not so very loud brass, which get raucous a little sooner than I'd wish. Can't have everything. Okay, that's that. Now what do these speakers do right? Imaging? Soundstaging? No problem. Which is, to say, virtually no shortcomings. You'd have to spend about twice as much to hear a better-balanced package of spatial performance (by which I mean good depth, and good precision, and good scale, and a good sense of that hear-around, sculpted quality--all in the same speaker) . Just set these up well away from your walls (their bass extension is satisfying enough that you needn't use room boundaries for reinforcement) and toe them in toward the listening area--but only very slightly, not so much that all you can see are their front surfaces. Put on the new Naim CD of the Allegri Quartet playing the Schubert Quartettsatz and you'll hear four musicians take over the end of your room, Put on the new Speakers Corner reissue of Solti's Mahler First and you'll hear distinctions between the rows of woodwind players like you've seldom heard before. Put on the Everly Brothers doing "So Sad" (from the Warner Brothers era) and you'll hear Don and Phil front and center (Phil's actually a little to the right), a piano behind them and off to the left, a tremolo-happy electric guitar well to the right, and lots of air. Put on Carl Perkins doing "Honky Tonk Gal" from Rare & Unissued Sun Masters and you'll hear--really good mono. (So what did you expect?) Among the other records I spent time with recently was the Dead's Workingman's Dead, in particular the song "Black Peter". There was all the engaging spatial information I'd come to expect of the Kestrels by now: the brushed drums spread believably behind the other players, Garcia's voice anchored in the center and surrounded--as were the two acoustic guitars--by lots of air. But this was not your typical boring, salon-approved, room-treatment strangled, high-end audio experience. The music held together melodically (or at least as well as it could given the vagaries of Jerry's own pitch ambiguities), the drumming had tremendous meaning and temporal precision, the organ sent shivers down my spine every time it entered... Hey--this wasn't just good sound, This was excellent music making, The new London release of the Knappertsbusch Bruckner Fifth (Schalk version, and I don't care what anybody says, I like it) was also killer. From the downright jaunty swells in the strings in the opening bars to the terrifying brass interjections throughout, these speakers didn't miss a trick, I've long believed that the best hi-fi products tend to distinguish themselves in much the same way as this or that performer: Forget colorations and air and watts and just think ideas. Think structure. Think passion. That the Meadowlark Kestrels invite such appraisals speaks volumes: The Berlin players and their beloved ""Kna" would have recognized their own musical accomplishments through these, I'm sure. When you have that, you can't help but view all other sonic considerations as minor, And I gotta tell you: Janet liked these from the word go, and I sit up and take notice when she does that - Honestly, I think women tend to kid themselves less than men when it comes to hi-fi -- they're better at cutting through the bullshit and saying either "this plays music" or "this doesn't". So to all the women in our audience: Proceed with caution! If you go to your local Meadowlark dealer to hear the Kestrels, be sure to bring enough dosh, lest you wind up playing How-much-is-that-doggie-in-the-window with somebody's credit card, maybe even your own. And a further note; Meaning nothing in the way of condescension toward McGinty or his product, this loudspeaker strikes me as a near-perfect platform for home upgrading--perfect due to its affordability, the accessibility of its parts, and the simplicity of its design. I wonder what these would sound like if their mounting hardware were replaced with hex-head bolts and T-nuts? Or if they were re-wired with Kimber silver? Or if a more stable base were fitted? Or if the crossover components were upgraded to insane levels of quality and expense? Or how about: I wonder what these would sound like with their crossovers bypassed altogether, driven by a fully active system? Jeepers, Mister Wilson, you sure know how to have fun. Well, I'm not going to tell you what to do. But if it were me, and I had a grand, max, to spend on a pair of speakers, these would be at or near the top of my list. And if I had more than that, I'd still consider these--and maybe a couple of really good Audio Note or Hovland capacitors for the crossovers... Notwithstanding their flaws, the Meadowlark Kestrels play music, bottom line. They're also very well made (there's that pride-of ownership thing for you) and I think they're good looking, too. And they come from a company that's small in the good, we-love-what-we-do sense, not the obnoxious, whiny, I've-made-an-amp-in-my-basment-so-now-you've-got-to-review-it-and-tell-the-world-it's-the-best-there-is sense. Thankfully. Recommended? You bet, I think these might actually be the greatest bargain in American hi-fi today.
Quality: 3/4 (5=best attainable regardless of price) Value: 3 plus (out of possible 3 !!) -Art Dudley
KEY TO LISTENER RATINGS: QUALITY : NO STARS - Unacceptable. Cannot be recommended. Crapzilla.
TWO STARS - Decent. Okay. May mix very appealing qualities with flaws, or may simply be fairly good overall. THREE STARS - A good, solid performer. Hey, this product will get youcloser to the music. FOUR STARS - Well above average performance. Would delight anybody. You may never want to leave the house. FIVE STARS - Performance at the limits of what seems possible. As far as we know, this is the best you can buy. VALUE : NO CHECKS - Poor value for money. Unless you have your heart set on it, you should really try for something else ONE CHECK - Acceptable value for money, but can perhaps be equalled or excelled for the price. TWO CHECKS - Good, decent value. Buy without embarrassment. Brag about it. Keep its picture in your wallet. THREE CHECKS - Extraordinary value for the money, A gol-dang steal. To subscribe to Listener Magazine: Credit cards accepted 607 433 0808
(this is a REALLY GOOD magazine! Pat)
142 Main Street Oneonta NY 13820
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