Now this is a very interesting speaker coming from German designer Lansche. A three-way (nothing weird), 0.3” plasma tweeter (not common) with a 2” horn loaded tweeter taking care of frequencies from 400Hz to 2,5KHz (getting weirder) and an 18” minimum excursion, bass reflex loaded woofer (at this point I would call it Frankenstein).
I know, you are probably trying to visualize this speaker. Check the pictures; they will be of some help.
Lansche uses the corona plasma tweeter in all his designs and up to here nothing new. If you put aside the smell which the plasma releases in the air what you have is a super-fast responding tweeter, there is no inertial mass at all so blazing fast is more like it. Extension is a blistering 150Khz-3dBs. Respect to the rest of the Lansche line of speakers the difference here lays in the mid-range which is horn loaded but not in the classic way, meaning there is no compression chamber. This pattern allegedly lowers colorations and ends up being used for less than three octaves of frequency response, thus assuring optimal conditions for the driver and higher efficiency at the same time.
Finally the 18” woofer which only works up to 400Hz so as to let the huge driver work easily down to a neat 30HZ-3dB. Serious full range speaker at 60.000 euros in the high polish white finish shown here. Having a horn mid and huge woofer also translates into more than “canonical” sensitivity, at 95db/1W/1m you would expect maybe a single ended triode or a class A solid state amplifier to be the best match. During the show and just like last year Lansche presented his creations with Bruno Putzeys Mola Mola notorious Kaluga class D amplifiers with matching Makua pre-amplifier while sources came from EMM labs, the TSDX SACD transport and the new DA2 DAC ($25.000). All cables were by Graditech, racks by Finite Elemente and acoustic treatment by Inoffusor for a system that did quite a few things right, at least when listening to Patricia Barber’s “Inchworm” were here voice was clear without being aggressive and the acoustical space was well rendered, especially for show conditions. The high efficiency – class D combination might not be the best possible pairing on paper but during the show it seemed to work pretty fine.
First, let me say: I’m affiliated with Lansche in a friendly (non-business) way. Second: Did you really smell anything coming from the speakers that you wouldn’t smell coming from a tube amplifier…? In my opinion (and from my experience after > 1 year of listening and living with a Lansche speaker in my listening room) nowadays the “ozone” smell is a myth rather than reality.
Well..yes, the smell is there. Nothing serious, definitely not a deal breaker for me but it is there.