Up to 84% in savings when you subscribe to The Absolute Sound
Logo Close Icon

Begin typing your search above and press return to search. Press Esc to cancel.

2021 Product of the Year Awards: Floor Standing Loudspeakers of the Year

2021 Product of the Year Awards: Floor Standing Loudspeakers of the Year

Rosso Fiorentino Elba 2 

$5000

The entry-level floorstander from Italian speaker specialist Rosso Fiorentino couldn’t have been built anywhere but Italy. The Italian inspiration is apparent in the handsome matte-black cabinet flanked by beautiful walnut side panels, along with a baffle covered in textured black leather—very Italian. The Elba 2 is two-and-a-half-way design employing dual 6.5″ midrange/woofers mated to a 1″ silk-dome tweeter. Sonically, the Elba exudes refinement and classical elegance, eschewing a forward and aggressive presentation in favor of musical expressiveness. This speaker beautifully portrayed music’s very fine timbral structure, revealing a warmth and richness in instruments and voices that come closer to the real thing than any $5k speaker has a right to. The Elba 2 may sound a little dark through the midrange compared to similarly priced competitors, but this tonal balance is much closer to live music than the threadbare timbres and bleached tone colors that so often passes for “clarity” and “resolution.” As a result, the Elba 2 never assaults the senses, fostering instead a sense of ease and musical involvement that even some far more expensive speakers fail to offer. The Elba 2 isn’t a great loudspeaker for the price. It’s a great loudspeaker, period.

Rosso Fiorentino Elba 2

Wilson SabrinaX 

$18,900

Although significantly more affordable than the fantastical behemoth Wilson Chronosonic XVX, the SabrinaX is, unquestionably of the same gene pool. Utilizing the Convergent Synergy Mk 5 tweeter seen in the WAMM Chronosonic, the 8″ woofer in the Sasha DAW, the binding posts of the XVX, and sharing Wilson’s new AudioCapX-WA capacitor technology first implemented in the XVX, the SabrinaX is a wolf in sheep’s clothing. The cabinet is constructed entirely from Wilson’s proprietary X-Material to reduce vibration and noise, dropping the noise floor and increasing dynamics and overall scale. The result is a speaker crafted with the same attention to detail as a Wilson’s $329k XVX, and one that conveys a sense of musical truth and beauty remarkable at its price point. The Wilson magic is all there. As expected from a single woofer and smaller cabinet, it lacks the massive low-end authority offered by Wilson’s more expensive entries, but literally nothing else. The Wilson sound in general has become big and bold, yet natural and refined, mind-numbingly dynamic but gentle and complex. The Xes are alive and real without a hint of becoming overly analytical and resolving. The SabrinaX is a juggernaut in its price class, and our choice for High-End Loudspeaker of the Year Award.

SabrinaX Quartz Portrait 2

YG Acoustics Carmel 2 

$24,300/pr.

When YG decided to revamp its entry model, the charming Carmel, it didn’t hold back. Much of the technology from its higher-end offerings found a place in this two-way, floorstander, along with standard YG features like a solid-aluminum sealed enclosure, proprietary anti-resonance devices, and world-class fit and finish. The result is a slender package with a surprisingly big, lively sound, and an ability to delve deeper than you’d expect. The highs, meanwhile, extend much farther (an airy 40kHz) than a typical soft-dome tweeter, with the benefit of no metallic glare. Imaging, tonality, detail, and dynamics are all at a bespoke level. Musically, the speaker is an unending delight. Yet, all this is only half the story of why the Carmel 2 merits POTY honors. The YG fits perfectly into today’s smaller, shared-purpose—and, often, shared-wall—listening spaces. The speaker is stylish enough to complement any décor, is perfectly happy tucked out of the way near the wall behind it, doesn’t require humongous amps, and sounds great even at low volumes. In sum, those building a compact reference system will find the Carmel 2 particularly well suited to the task.

2021 Product of the Year Awards: Floor Standing Loudspeakers of the Year

Magico A5 

$24,000

The A5, Magico’s new A Series flagship, is industrial art, simple, compact, efficient, and elegant in a Washington Monument kind of way. A three-way, five-driver system in a 6061-T6 aircraft-grade-aluminum sealed enclosure measuring 10.5″ wide x 44.75″ tall x 14.9″ deep, the A5 is anodized and finished brushed black. The speaker utilizes internal bracing and cabinet materials previously implemented in its top-tier Q-series speakers, which results in detail and dynamics unexpected in a speaker at this price point. The A5 houses three 9″ woofers featuring Magico’s Graphene Nano-Tech cone technology, Mundorf’s new M-Resist Ultra foil-resistors, a 28mm pure beryllium-diaphragm tweeter, and the new 5″ honeycomb-matrix midrange cone design. Its overall presentation is triumphantly cohesive. The scale of dynamics and sense of mass are staggering considering the overall size and price. Image accuracy and presence are meticulous, as expected, and set within a stage that rivals that of the best loudspeakers. The spatial presentation is so impressive that it fosters the illusion of being able to walk onto the stage and around the performers. Moreover, the A5 offers a sense of “rightness” in overall presentation that belies its price point. A great speaker, from a great company, and at a relatively affordable price, the Magico A5 is an easy choice for our High-End Loudspeaker of the Year Award.

2021 Product of the Year Awards: Floor Standing Loudspeakers of the Year

Vandersteen Audio Kento Carbon 

$39,475

The four-way, five-driver Kento Carbon loudspeaker can be summed up in two words: extraordinary cohesiveness. From its organic, reach-out-and-want-to-touch-it presentation to the solidity of its instrumental timbre, the Kento combines Vandersteen’s core time-and-phase-accurate design philosophy with a high level of midrange/treble purity and the ability to create highly realistic and truthful bass. A key advancement for the Kento is the use of side-firing 9″ woofers, combined with newly updated, built-in, low-frequency room-optimization/compensation controls that deliver unprecedented, for Vandersteen, additional 100Hz-to-200Hz mid/woofer-to-woofer integration. These all-analog controls free the Kento Carbons to operate near optimally in multiple spaces and locations (placement near walls or out into the listening room), without the same level of concern about unruly bass performance experienced with some other designs. Kento Carbon produces some of the most believable 200Hz-and-below bass that reviewer Andre Jennings has heard from any of the company’s products as of this speaker’s introduction—and possibly from any stand-alone speaker encountered to date. 

KENTO

Magnepan MG 1.7i Loudspeaker 

$2400

In Issue 107, JV selected Magnepan’s tall, skinny, three-way, full-range, quasi-ribbon, dipole MG 1.7 floorstander as one of his favorite loudspeakers of the last 70 years. High in resolution, low in distortion, with enough bass and treble (of superlatively high quality) to satisfy anyone save a head-banger, and a midrange that reproduces well-recorded voices and acoustic instruments with jaw-dropping realism, it is one of those “sweet-spot” wonders that pops up every decade or two. The 1.7 gave you a generous taste of everything its bigger and more expensive Maggie brothers were capable of for a tiny fraction of what you’d pay for the same wonderment in a top-line dynamic speaker. In his review of Maggie’s latest version of this classic, the 1.7i, long-time TAS reviewer John Nork (who purchased the review pair) was in complete agreement. This is a genuine Hall of Famer, and an easy pick for TAS’ 2021 Budget Product of the Year. 

Magnepan_1.7i

Estelon X Diamond Mk II Loudspeaker

$78,000

As JV says in this issue, this three-way, hour-glass-shaped floorstander with a literally rock-solid enclosure from Alfred Vassilkov of Estonia is not just a great direct-radiating loudspeaker; it is one of the greatest direct-radiating loudspeakers. Building on the virtues of the original X Diamond (which already had the best disappearing act and  low end JV had heard from a direct-radiating ported loudspeaker), the X Diamond II adds astonishingly realistic timbral warmth and body to what was already a superbly phase-and-time coherent package. With its new tweeter, crossover, and wiring, the new X Diamond has no audible weaknesses—no matter what kind of listener you are or what kind of music you prefer. Always blessed with class-leading resolution, the X Diamond Mk II now boasts superior dynamic range and lifelike density of timbre, while that unique granite-and-acrylic enclosure (without parallel walls inside or out) still gives you the same incredible disappearing act that so wowed JV a decade ago. The new Estelon competes with every other reasonably sized floorstander JV has heard, and he’s heard just about all of them. Ideal for moderate-to-largish rooms, its only real rivals may be the much bigger, top-line Estelons, Magicos, Wilsons, Kharmas, etc., which could better suit truly gigantic listening spaces. One of the best cones-in-a-box speaker of its relatively modest proportions JV has ever heard or reviewed, he can’t praise or recommend it highly enough. Thus, its well-deserved 2021 TAS Overall Product of the Year Award.

2021 Product of the Year Awards: Floor Standing Loudspeakers of the Year

Tags: LOUDSPEAKER PRODUCT OF THE YEAR STAND-MOUNT

Read Next From Review

See all

Adblocker Detected

"Neque porro quisquam est qui dolorem ipsum quia dolor sit amet, consectetur, adipisci velit..."

"There is no one who loves pain itself, who seeks after it and wants to have it, simply because it is pain..."