September 2018


Best Of 2018 Blue Note Equipment Awards

PureAudioProject Quintet15 Horn1 Modular Open Baffle Loudspeakers
Price: $9990
Click here to read the complete review.

  Jeremy Kipnis has been interested in audio and particularly the qualities associated with really great stereophonic music reproduction for over 40 years. He says, I've often noted how there are many different ways to design a pair of speakers and still get a high quality sonic illusion -- transporting one's perception to the recorded event. Qualities such as three-dimensional imaging, spatiality, height, dynamics, frequency extension, immersion, and simple toe-tapping musicality are what get my heart pumping. And early on, I was lucky enough to attend quite a few recording sessions where my father, Igor Kipnis, would be playing keyboards: sometimes harpsichord, sometimes piano, organ, and even the very quiet clavichord. The producer(s) and engineer(s) would bring several different pairs of speakers to use as control room monitors -- their sonic window on the recording world. When we listen at home over our favorite speakers, they are our window back onto the musical event that was recorded and produced, in the first place for our delectation. So the closer our speakers come to sounding like those used during the recording efforts, the more likely we are to experience the same type of musical reproduction in our living rooms, etc.. B&W 801, Quad ESL-57, and KEF LS3-5a are a few legendary transducers that have served music and sound lovers alike on both sides of the microphone for decades. But none of them is new. And none offer up a new level of both technical brilliance and visual appeal to go along with spine tingling "you are there" sound quality. I speak of the new PureAudioProject Quintet15 Horn1 Modular Open Baffle Loudspeakers ($9995) -- a sonorous triumph of aesthetics and technique.

These tall and statuesque (72") two-way loudspeakers feature no less than four – 15" custom woofers / low midrange drivers (per side) with a custom compression midrange / tweeter attached to a 14" by 6" flared wood horn in the middle of each speaker array. Everything is made for PureAudioProject by Eminence Speakers LLC in the US to exacting and unique specifications Witness the high-end crossover with hand-wound coils by Mundorf, high resolution ceramic resistors by Mundorf /HP Audio, and capacitors by Mundorf /Rike Audio... all connected (point-to-point) on simple military grade boards with golden screw terminals. Naturally, internal connection wire (and also speaker cable) are custom made by Verastarr in either 26 mm wide pure Silver or 11mm 99.9997% (9N3) pure Copper flat ribbon cable (Reference AudioFoils) – both beautiful to behold and to touch. Pretty much state of the art, right?

While looking and sounding as big as real life! And in this special combination of unique design and first class materials and construction really make for repeated, mesmerizing, entrancing and amazing, musical, tactile listening sessions, again and again... and again. You'll hear things like ultra wide soundstaging, spot on timbre, pulsing rhythms, pinpoint imaging, heart pounding dynamics, live and realistic tone quality that all combine to create an intense, holographic, magical listening experience, rendered with unusually elegant and realistic verisimilitude to that of a live event. With there simple crossover and unique drivers, these speakers just get out of the way of the sound and music, altogether. They are immediately capable of intoxicating qualities of persuasion while drawing the listener directly into the performances.

So, if your desire is to connect directly with your music, whatever that may be, and to hear it each time like it was fresh, new, and alive? Then you probably already have a substantial amount invested in your audio (and perhaps video) system(s). And even if you don't, you might still know how obviously superior some speakers can sound versus others, even if you only give them a quick listen. That superiority can take many forms, including different sizes, shapes, sounds, and how they make you feel when you listen to your music on them. Well, with PureAudioProject's latest loudspeaker design, the Quintet15 Horn1 takes it's place among a cherished handful of great examples wherein certain loudspeakers are true musical instruments - a rare thing! And I suspect that anyone already committed to high-end sound will be more than thrilled to listen and even own the Quintet15's in a heartbeat!

One thing is for sure: some speakers sound good, others sound bad. But if you care about connecting with your music... on a really emotional gut level, then you're going to have to give the PureAudioProject Quintet15 Horn1 an audition because it can (quite possibly) transform your listening experience, forever. Whether it's Ella Fitzgerald or Frank Sinatra, Lady Gaga or Pink Floyd, David Bowie or John Williams, and just about anything else you might enjoy listening to either large or small in scale, the Quintet15 Horn1 Loudspeakers will lure you in seductively, accurately, and emotionally until you simply won't want to listen to anything else. Look, listen, and be immersed within a whole, vivid and sonically transformative illusion; like never before."

Click here to read the complete review.

Previous Annual Blue Note Awards

Product of the Year Awards 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013, 2012, 2011, 2010, 2009, 2008, 2007, 2006, 2005, 2004, 2003, 2002, and 2001.