New gear from AudioKinesis and Resonessence Labs | T.H.E. SHOW 2019

AudioKinesis THE SHOW 2019

LOS ANGELES (PTA) — AudioKinesis (USA) were debuting their new Gina loudspeaker, along with Resonessence Labs (CDN) showing their newest FLUVIUS streamer. As simple looking and straightforward this speaker system might appear, it was not. A lot was going on behind those horns, baffles, and subsequently the stands as well.

AudioKinesis THE SHOW 2019

The Story

AudioKinesis’ new Gina loudspeaker (a beautiful name by the way) is at first a two-way horn loudspeaker, designed by Duke LeJeune. A well known protege, understudy, and former employee of the now retired Dr. Earl Geddes of GedLee LLC. For Mr. LeJeune, employing some of the philosophies learned under Dr. Geddes to the new Gina loudspeaker came without reservation. For instance, the horn of the Gina has matched the entrance angle of the horn to the exit angle of the compression driver. From there a Duke LeJeune proprietary design midbass takes over, or better yet under, from the horn in both frequency coverage and front baffle loading.

Here’s where things get weird in the good way. What looks to be a black definitely, and wooden possibly, speaker stand resides a 10-inch subwoofer in a compact sealed enclosure portion firing down-and-back into a 45-degree angle, along with a “proprietary space generator”, which is in this case a coaxial 8-inch driver which fires up-and-back into a 45-degree angle. The function of the subwoofer firing down-and-back matters little as it will load the room with frequencies that hardly care about direction. The function of the “space generator” firing up-and-back matters everything as it will use the distance and height of room boundaries behind the “augmentation stand” (my quote, not theirs) to create late arriving sound from the broader field created behind the soundstage. To me, this latency is intuitive, as I’ve been spending a lot of time at audio shows with open-baffle loudspeakers. The “space generator” is driven by the same amplifier as the loudspeaker (whatever that may be) sitting atop it. The 8-inch coaxial driver ranges from 24-to-18-Ohms so as to stay out of the way when paired with average-to-low impedance loudspeakers. Also, a blending L-Pad is included, to attain a target around -11dB. Whereas the sealed 10-inch subwoofer portion is powered by any external amplifier of your choosing.

AudioKinesis THE SHOW 2019

Where I find this new Gina loudspeaker (and sub-stand combination) extra-fascinating is that it takes various, if not all, the elements of popular loudspeaker design and crams them into a rather forgiving room footprint.

The full-rack of equipment (not ribs, sorry I’m hungry as I write this) is loaded with some seriously sweet looking and tasty lively sounding amplifiers, DACs and a new streamer.

The Resonessence Labs FLUVIUS is an audiophile-grade streamer that features gigabit Ethernet, dual USB 3.0 connections, HDMI output, and a mini-SD card reader for software and firmware updates. The built in Library feature organizes and indexes files from any connected hard-drive, network storage, or media server. The FLUVIUS does support Tidal Hifi streaming, as well as others (and growing). Formats supported include MP3, WAV, CUE, FLAC, AIF, DSF, DFF (Native DSD via Dop) and RIBS (Just kidding about the RIBS part, still hungry). Processor bits are the “Octacore Samsung Exynos5422 (ARM® Cortex™-A15 Quad 2.0GHz/Cortex™-A7 Quad 1.4GHz) Memory: 2GB LPDDR3 RAM – 12GB/s memory bandwidth, 2 x 32bit bus, 16GB eMMC 5.0 Flash Storage Ethernet: 10/100/1000 Mbps RJ-45, Auto-MDIX support USB: 2 x USB3.0, supports USB3.0 Hub for extension, 1 x USB2.0 Video: Mali™-T628 MP6 graphics processor, HD 1920x1080p, HDMI 1.4a Type-A connector OS: Android 7.1” — which I copied directly from the website for you. You’re welcome. Also, it does video.

AudioKinesis THE SHOW 2019

The Sound

Upstairs in this article I mentioned that the most extra-fascinating bit about this loudspeaker system is that it has crammed all the various bits of loudspeaker designs into one small footprint. Here’s the magic part, it did all of that, while making it work harmoniously. This loudspeaker system, including the top-and-bottom parts, does things few speaker designers even dare to consider about loading the room. For the longest time I’ve felt that most speaker designers look to tackle one or two problems out of five when it comes to loudspeaker design, and leave the rest to engineering compromise. This new Gina and Space Generator system aim to tackle them all, albeit with their own flare and flavor considering horn, efficiency and driver choice. It’s not the perfect loudspeaker, but damn if it doesn’t try to perfect the room.

AudioKinesis THE SHOW 2019

The System

Resonessence Labs

– FLUVIUS Streamer – $1.750 USD

– INVICTA MIRUS Signature PRO DAC – $7,850 USD

– PROJECTA Stereo Amplifier – (uncertain)

– along with a few more amps and preamps below.

AudioKinesis

– Gina Horn-Loudspeaker – (uncertain)

– Space Generator – (uncertain)