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Endeavor Audio E-3 Loudspeaker

Endeavor Audio E-3 Loudspeaker

If you have ever been to a high-end audio show, you’ve undoubtedly noticed that there are dozens of new speaker manufacturers making outlandish claims for their babies. Even though I wish all of these products were as superlative as the claims made for them,, it’s actually rare to hear a brand-new speaker from a brand-new company do many things exceptionally well, while at the same time remaining affordable. The E-3 floorstander from Endeavor Audio Engineering is one of those rarities.

The Setup
Since Endeavor Audio Engineering is a new company, I wasn’t expecting to be blown away by its debut model, nor was I expecting it to deliver continuous listening enjoyment month after month. Yet from the moment I first set up the Endeavor E-3s it was obvious that they were something special, and they only continued to improve after four months of tweaking.

The Endeavor E-3 is rather like a Goldilocks floorstander— not too big and not too small. Standing 44″ tall and weighing 82 pounds, it is big enough to produce big sound, while small enough not to dominate the room, overload it with bass, or require several friends to help you reposition it. Standing waves inside the enclosure are greatly reduced due to the E-3’s cabinet design: The front baffle measures nine inches and tapers down to five inches at the rear, eliminating the effects of parallel cabinet walls. For the top end, the E-3 employs a high-dynamic-range dual-ring radiator; in the midrange a single 6.5″ Kevlar cone handles frequencies from 220Hz to1.8kHz; and two slightly larger 6.9″ anodized aluminum cones provide fast low-end response in a Butterworth bass-reflex enclosure.

Endeavor Audio E-3 Loudspeaker

On the backside are a single pair of five-way rhodium-plated binding posts with knurled edges for easy tightening. The entire speaker sits on two steel outriggers that have fully adjustable spikes for easy leveling and adjustment of rake. All you need to do to adjust angles is twist the knobs at the top of the spikes. This allowed me to experiment with various rake angles throughout the review period—something that can be quite difficult with many speakers. (Constantly adjusting small spike feet on the bottom of a speaker quickly becomes tedious.)

The E-3’s sensitivity comes in at 88dB, which means that low-powered tube amps will quickly run out of juice, but most other amps should have no problem bringing SPLs up to a respectable level. Most of my listening took place with the Rogers High Fidelity EHF-200 Mk2 integrated tube amp (112W), which has an output transformer optimized for the E-3’s 4-ohm load. I also used the Arcam FMJ A19 (90W at 4 ohms), the TEAC AI-501DA (60W at 4 ohms), and the Stein Music Stateline Amp2 (40W at 4 ohms), all of which produced satisfying SPLs. My vintage Harman Kardon A500 (25W) couldn’t drive the E-3s adequately, so if you’re a tube fan you’ll need at least 40W, unless you listen at very low levels.

Most people probably have an average-sized listening room similar to mine, which is seventeen feet wide, nine feet tall, and nineteen feet deep. After playing around with speaker position, I found a sweet spot with the E-3s about eleven feet apart, 42″ from the rear walls, 39″ from the sidewalls, and toed in around fifteen degrees. This provided the extremely precise imaging I crave, while retaining a wide soundstage with a controlled low end. Because the E-3s are rear-ported, bass-reflex loudspeakers, they need some room from the rear walls to properly breath— anything closer than two feet begins to muddle their bass just a bit. Though the E-3s never sounded overly bright, they mellowed just enough to produce exceptional sound when rake was adjusted to about a two-degree upward slope. This was actually counter to what I had presumed when I first set up the E-3s. Even though the tweeter aligns above my ear in my listening position, the upward slope allowed the woofers to sync better with the top end, which provided better coherency and imaging, especially when listening to bass-heavy jazz.

Before the speakers had been properly tuned for my setup, some of the imaging seemed out-of-whack. Low-end piano notes tended to dive toward the floor, rather than flow toward the listener (think of a piano oriented forty-five degrees from the microphone); cellos and upright basses liked to do the same thing. In such cases, imaging was “precise,” though not accurate with regard to natural spatial cues. This problem was ameliorated by proper setup, including careful tuning of the rake angle.

 

The Good Stuff
Tweaking is a lot of fun, at least for most enthusiasts, but the real fun begins when all the tuning is done and the music starts flowing. Luckily, Leif Swanson of Endeavor Audio let the E-3s break in almost 500 hours before sending them my way. They had another 200 hours of playtime in my room before the serious listening began. I try to make sure that I listen to the same reference material on vinyl and digital when assessing equipment. Sometimes this isn’t possible, but for the most part I have multiple versions of everything. This means that the E-3s were filling my listening room—where I also work—with amazing sound almost every day for several months straight. At the time this review was written, these speakers have been a mainstay for almost five months, so I’ve had lots of time to adequately evaluate them.

For the last four months, my favorite small-scale classical reference music has been Ludovico Einaudi’s hauntingly beautiful In a Time Lapse. The beauty of this album is that it was recorded in a monastery, the ambience of which requires a system that can produce deep and accurate soundstaging in order to fully realize the album’s emotional impact, as well as properly register the positions of the violins and piano. On the track “Experience” the lower registers of the piano are also somewhat difficult to reproduce. Once properly set up, the E-3s produced the desired effect of piano notes flowing toward the listening position, rather than into the floor. This accuracy with regard to front-back imaging and soundstaging turned my listening room into a three-dimensional soundscape. I felt as if I could see Einaudi’s fingers move along the piano keys. Then came the harp, which sits to the rear of the piano. Its lightly plucked strings never melted into the piano’s chords, but remained separate entities. This was especially impressive when the violins joined the party, first to the left, then in the center, and then to the right, next to the piano. With some systems the harp is all but lost when the strings begin their frenetic crescendo, yet the E-3s held on to the subtlety of the instrument, which is tucked away at the back of the soundstage, and refused to give up. There was a lot less loss of information than I expected for $6995, although there was still some veiling of the harp. If my room were double its current size, I’m sure the E-3s could have resolved the instruments even better.

The next music sample may not be something ever heard at an audio show, but it’s equally adept at demonstrating speaker capabilities. Rage Against The Machine was in heavy rotation during the 90s, and its 1996 hit “Bulls on Parade” sounds like a bunch of noise through low-quality systems. But when played through a high-end stereo, it can be truly magical. The heavy crash of cymbals morphs from a blanket of white noise into a distinct instrument; the muddled bass lines become tuneful; and the overly bright screech of guitar and vocals resolve into an adrenaline rush of sound that makes you want to get up and air-guitar. This is music to rock out to, and the E-3s filled my listening room with mosh-pit energy, not loud noise. Again, this music isn’t for everyone, but it’s just as difficult to reproduce as Stravinsky because the room can easily become overloaded. Even at very loud levels, the E-3s were able to control the chaos and do these Harvard-educated rockers some serious justice.


Endeavor Audio E-3 Loudspeaker

Speaking of Stravinsky, Le Sacre du Printemps came alive and hypnotized me. Call me nerdy, but it’s the musical details that really excite me when listening to full orchestral music. The ability of a speaker to recreate a soundstage, to turn a smear of noise into a contrabassoon is the accuracy I seek. The E-3s separated the wheat from the chaff and sucked me into the music. The way they handled the tremendous drum whacks, the dissonant strings, and the teasing reed instruments sent my heart racing. Each section of the orchestra was a section, and when things reached a fevered pitch the respective instruments flowed together while remaining simultaneously distinct.

This is what I want from a speaker—the ability to keep pace with the music I love. This accuracy in point-source speakers is why people—myself included—love speaker companies like Magico. There is something very special when you hear such clarity combined with tight low-end extension, and the E-3s are reminiscent of the S3s or S5s in their ability to do this trick. When listening to the E-3s, it’s impossible to focus on anything other than the music, and the analysis of minute details gives way to pure sonic bliss.

Universal Functionality
One of the big issues with some speakers is that they sound great only under ideal conditions. Some speakers are so picky that they require entire rooms to be built for them to truly come alive. While we would all love to have acoustic engineers design our listening rooms, very few of us will ever have that opportunity. What I love about the Endeavor E-3s is that they have sounded superb every time I’ve heard them: in my home and at the recent Chicago AXPONA and T.H.E. Show Newport. And you don’t need to take my word for it, just look at show reports since Rocky Mountain 2013 and you’ll find universal acclaim. This is due to the E-3s’ ability to function universally, almost as if they were declaring to the room that it won’t stand in their way. Not that I’m saying the E-3s are perfect, but they have a natural way of blending into their environment and letting the music take over. Sure, they were a little boomy at AXPONA (an unfortunate acoustic obstacle course), but they still sounded really good, kind of like your favorite band playing at a venue with less-than-ideal acoustics—you still love them despite the hiccups. The E-3’s flaws are like the ticks in your favorite records or the dings in your car; they are there when you look for them, but the rest of the time they don’t even register. As a consumer—and reviewer—this is what I want in a speaker. $6995 is a lot of money for most of us, and we want to make sure that the speaker we buy performs well in our current room, and any other room in which we place it.

I’m reminded of Mazzy Star’s “Fade Into You” when I think of the E-3s. They rock out; they finesse their way around; but ultimately they fade into the music. When you hear them, you will fall in love, even if you’re not a box-speaker fan. The E-3s are speakers everyone should hear, because through them you’ll hear nothing but music.

There must be something in that California water, because this is a speaker wise beyond its years.

SPECS & PRICING

Frequency response: 32Hz–22kHz +/-2dB (IEC )
Driver compliment: Dual 6.9″ aluminum woofers, one 6.5″ Kevlar midrange, one dual-ring radiator tweeter
Impedance: 4 ohms
Sensitivity: 88dB/1W/1m
Bass loading: Fourth-order Butterworth
Crossover points: 220Hz, 1.8kHz
Dimensions: 9″ (tapering to 5″) x 44″ x 15″
Weight: 82 lbs.
Price: $6995

ENDEAVOR AUDIO ENGINEERING
1060 Northgate St., Suite A
Riverside, CA 92507
(951) 233-9852
endeavoraudio.com

ASSOCIATED EQUIPMENT
Analog: VPI Scout 1.1; Rega P1, RP3, P5; Acoustic Signature Wow XL; Funk Firm Flamenca; Ortofon 2M Black; Pro-Ject Tube Box II
Digital: Rotel RD-1580; TEAC UD-501; Bluesound Vault; Music Hall 25.2; iMac, iPad Air; Asus RT -N66U gigabit router; Drobo 5N 16TB NAS storage; Audirvana; Amarra; Pure Music
Preamp/amps/integrateds: Classe CP-800; Rogers High Fidelity EHF-200 Mk2; Arcam FMJ A19; TEAC AI-501DA; Stein Music Stateline Amp2; Harman Kardon A500
Cables: Nordost; WireWorld; Wywires; Audioquest

By Spencer Holbert

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