PS Audio Aspen FR10 Review
Already in the last Loudspeaker Yearbook, I wrote enthusiastically about the large PS Audio Aspen FR30. Absolutely speaking, they are a high-end bargain. So where does the FR10, the smallest floor-standing speaker of the series, fit in?
In recent years, my colleagues and I have watched with dismay the developments in the high-end scene: ever more expensive products without necessarily any quality improvement are supposed to extract dollars from the pockets of willing high-enders. Wherever possible, we try to counteract this. The large FR30 is already an extremely competent big loudspeaker, highly competitive for the asking price and literally inexpensive. This hasn’t changed with the smaller FR10; on the contrary. Let’s take a closer look at it.
System
Turntable: Gold Note Mediterraneo X with B-7 Ceramic tonearm and Da Vinci cartridge
Phono preamplifier: Musical Fidelity NuVista Vinyl
Preamplifier: Luxman C-10
Power amplifier: Luxman M-10
Just Before
Paul McGowan, PS Audio’s founder and owner, has dreamed all his audio and development life of a loudspeaker like the legendary Infinity IRS. And he almost fulfilled this dream, specifically with the designer of those speakers, Arnie Nudell. But the project never really took off, and when Nudell died in 2017, it seemed there was no way to complete the latest, very well-received version of the existing speaker. Thus, McGowan’s lifelong dream seemed finally buried. But life was good to him, and I want to outline this story once more for those who didn’t read my article about the PS Audio Aspen FR30 in the last Loudspeaker Yearbook, because it’s so magnificent.
A Dream Coincidence
Paul McGowan runs a noteworthy YouTube channel, which perhaps was never more valuable to him than around the turn of the year 2018/2019. Around that time, he received a message from a certain Chris Brunhaver. At first, this was nothing special, because through such platforms, let’s say, the most diverse people get in touch, few of whom have anything meaningful to contribute to the topic. Not so with Chris, who quickly shone with his loudspeaker knowledge, because he’s an expert. What made things even better was that he had worked for Bohlender-Graebener, precisely the company that built the ribbons for Genesis, Arnie Nudell’s other company. So it began.
Optimizing Compromises
That’s the credo of Chris Brunhaver, and it’s so delightfully un-American. Why is that? Well, he doesn’t get lost in superlatives but acknowledges that a loudspeaker must always be a compromise. And that alone paves the way for something special. The first step was the drivers, because what Arnie Nudell had used in the end did not meet his requirements by far. That’s quite exciting, since Nudell is considered a legend—you have to have the nerve.
And I must quote Chris Brunhaver once again from my article on the FR30, because I find his comparison so apt and beautiful: “It’s like painting with pure color pigments. If you can start with something that is purer and better and performs much better, you can build on it perfectly.” Not surprisingly, Chris Brunhaver scaled down the FR10 from the large FR30. That can work, but it doesn’t have to. But I can reveal at this point that it has worked phenomenally well. One advantage of the FR10 is that it can be integrated much better into many different rooms than the big one. In addition, it has an iconic look that can be a real adornment.
Music
- Talk Talk – The Laughing Stock
- The Czars – Sorry I Made You Cry
- Gianmaria Testa – La valse d’un jour
- Maurice Ravel – Daphnis et Chloe
- Bill Evans – Portrait In Jazz
Measurements
The unusual design by PS Audio is a three-way system with crossover frequencies of just under 600 and just under 6000 Hz, where we tip our hat to the midrange ribbon, which so easily handles the low 600 Hz that even at high levels there are no increased distortions. The tweeter, in turn, runs easily up to 30 kHz and still reaches 20 kHz even at 30° off-axis. The “reflex” system is tuned to 36 Hz and works with three passive membranes—here PS Audio does it right and ensures a significantly larger membrane area in the passive radiators than in the active drivers to limit the excursion of the passive membranes.
The Truth Lies in the Mids
As with the larger models, Brunhaver uses the indispensable ribbons for midrange and treble. However, the rear-firing counterpart remained on the shelf; the price point simply didn’t allow for it. Since the radiation angle is very wide at almost 160 degrees—quite unusual for ribbons, which often tend to beam considerably—a stupendous spatial impression is given right from the start. Even the dispersion behavior is fantastic, and the ease of reproduction reminds one of pure planar speakers.
If you compare the magnetostats conceived by Chris Brunhaver with the classic Infinity EMIMs and EMITs, one can only marvel at the progress in loudspeaker construction. They require just a tenth of the power and are absolutely distortion-free, thus play significantly cleaner. They were completely newly developed with their own tools: feather-light “Teonex” voice coils are driven by neodymium magnets in a push-pull configuration. As there is no steel in the magnetic circuit, distortions decrease significantly, and you can really hear that—the FR10 sounds so clean and yet never clinical.
The midrange driver was reduced from 25 to 20 cm, with just under half the N52 NEO neodymium magnets of the larger model—there are still 30. It has astonishing dynamic capabilities, equally astonishing 95dB efficiency (in reality, it is attenuated due to the basses), is more loadable than the big brother, but doesn’t play as low. Overall, it covers approximately the range between 550Hz and 1750Hz. The more than 6 cm long tweeter with its six neodymium magnets is the same as in the big one, where two of them play, and takes over the rest of the frequency spectrum. The absolutely symmetrical construction of the magnetostats, including the rear absorption chamber, also contributes to their clean sound. The midrange driver is placed classically below the tweeter in the FR10; in the large one, it was the other way around to bring it to ear level.
Surprisingly Deep Down
Chris has redeveloped the basses with the full breadth of measurement technology. They must, first and foremost, keep up with the resolution, bandwidth, speed, and distortion-free performance of the magnetostats. Servos, meaning servo-controlled basses, which Arnie Nudell loved so much, do not make their way into his loudspeakers, mainly because of their inherent background noise. He uses fundamentally the same long-throw basses in the FR10 as in the entire series. They have the same separated air gap with double Faraday ring, a low, very linear inductance, and a symmetrical double centering spider. Their drive isn’t quite as extreme, but their excursion of +/- 10 mm is still very high. This remains controlled pistonic up to just before the displacement limit, as the magnetic force hardly changes. Their membranes consist, as before, of a carbon-Rohacell mixture.
The carbon fibers are not woven and enriched with a light Rohacell foam core. Rohacell is a stiff foam based on PMI (Polymethacrylimide) with closed cells. The passive basses, which were installed at the back this time mainly for design reasons and not on the sides, have the same membranes. The much more elaborate and expensive passive bass solution avoids resonances and airflow noises from bass reflex tubes and, through their soft surround, Brunhaver shifts their resonance frequency into areas where they cause no more problems. Speaking of areas: 30Hz are also reached by the FR10, and you can hear that.
The Crossover
How to ultimately bring these drivers from different worlds to play so wonderfully homogeneously together is determined in the crossover. Brunhaver doesn’t want his drivers to overlap more than necessary, so he separates them steeply with 4th-order filters. For this, he measures as much as possible on-axis and in the room and obviously listens excellently. High-power, low-loss air-core coils with a high copper content, as well as mainly high-quality film capacitors and wire-wound resistors, do the job. The air-core coil for the bass, for example, uses a 2 mm thick copper wire for a low resistance.
The Enclosure and Its Design
The famous Studio 63 from Montreal also ensured the elegant enclosure design here, made from MDF and BMC. The baffle is made of BMC, a fiberglass mixture cured under heat. BMC has about the same density as aluminum but, according to Brunhaver, is acoustically significantly less conspicuous. The waveguides for midrange and tweeter can be directly milled into the baffle, which is then clamped with 10 long machine screws to the back panel and the actual enclosure, which is both acoustically sensible and optically elegant. For this purpose, copper pieces are cast into the baffle to receive the screws. The entire structure is braced and subdivided multiple times, including diagonally; the magnetostats work with the crossover in their own compartment, as do the basses. In the end, 20 layers of fine lacquer are applied by hand (!)—you can see this workmanship. This elegantly designed loudspeaker still seems to hover on an aluminum base with a mixture of rubber absorbers and stainless steel spikes.
And the Sound?
It is confident, competent with all music styles, very natural, and despite all resolution capabilities, never artificial. Even if you sometimes read otherwise, the FR10 plays outstandingly loud or quiet to my ears. Maybe it’s simply due to the right combination with our amplifiers. Even with the Exposure 3510 integrated amplifier, they played excellently together; I missed nothing. With the big Luxman combo of C-10 preamp and M-10 power amp, you might blow your budget, but then everything is just right, the sun rises, and not only that—even the fine hairs on your arms stand up permanently. In the report on the Luxman amplifiers, I wrote: “Sorry I Made You Cry” by The Czars could be the motto for my listening time with these amplifiers and the grand PS Audio loudspeakers.
John Grant’s voice sings directly to me. The famous folk song “Black Is the Color (of My True Love’s Hair)” is celebrated by The Czars as a timeless anthem with fanfares and Grant’s unmistakable voice. The piece is, however, accompanied by a strange tone that can be perceived as a disturbing noise if the system doesn’t manage to integrate and make it understandable. With the PS Audio-Luxman combination, this makes sense, and what’s much more important, the music touches me deeply. And it continues like this, no matter what music, what genre I listen to with the FR10. In the end, it is Gianmaria Testa with his so intimate album “La valse d’un jour”.
Believe me when I say that tears come to my eyes during “Centro la Tosca…”. I react emotionally to music when it’s presented like this, and here it is so. Testa sings so tenderly, so personally, almost fragile; even the scratchiness in his throat when he raises his voice or gets closer to the microphone hits me emotionally like never before. I follow his story, even if I don’t understand it in content; this transcendence is made possible by the PS Audio Aspen FR10.
by Christian Bayer
Specs
- Model: PS Audio Aspen FR10
- Price: Approximately 13,000 Euro
- Design Principle: 3-way passive (passive woofers)
- Frequency Response: 32 Hz – 20 kHz (-6 dB)
- Woofers: 2 x 175 mm
- Passive Bass Radiators: 3 x 160 x 225 mm
- Midrange Driver: 200 mm Magnetostat
- Tweeter: 1 x 64 mm Magnetostat
- Crossover Frequencies: 550 Hz and 1.75 kHz
- Sensitivity: 86.5 dB
- Nominal Impedance: 4 Ohm
- Minimum Impedance: 3.3 Ohm
- Finish: Pearl white, pearl black
- Dimensions (W x H x D): 299 x 1,050 x 413 mm (including stand)
- Weight: 34.1 kg
- Warranty: 5 years (upon registration)
Conclusion
If I ever buy a real high-end loudspeaker again that can practically do everything, is exceptionally attractively designed, and at the end of the day conveys every kind of music dreamily, then it would be the PS Audio Aspen FR10. It’s that good.
Unveiling the PS Audio aspen FR10 Speakers. Detailed Review and Analysis.
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