English - Usher Audio

REVIEWHI-FI WORLDMetalDetectorsIf it's transparentloudspeakers you crave,David Price imploresyou to seek out<strong>Usher</strong>’s new Be-10!Much to my chagrin,the only science Iwasn’t terribly goodat was Physics - nota great admissionfor an electronicsobsessed, internal combustionengine-fascinated fifteen yearold. But then, a curious ability atChemistry kind of made up for it.I’d never been particularly excitedat the prospect of test tubes,Bunsen burners and fume cupboards(although the occasional opportunityto add water to acid was nevermissed), but somehow almost byaccident, I took to it like a duck towater...One of the reasons was learningabout the Periodic Table. “Wow,” Imused, “here’s everything you needto know, all the chemical buildingHI-FI WORLD JUNE 2009www.hi-fiworld.co.uk

locks mapped out in front of you- learn that and I’ve cracked it”. Thusbegan my slavish, by rote, chanting of“H-He-Li-Be-B-C-N-O-F-Ne-Na-Mg-Al-Si-P-S-Cl-Ar-K-Ca”. Although itwasn’t quite as easy as “Every GoodBoy Deserves Football” for my Music‘O Level’, the mnemonic eventuallysunk in and lo and behold, ChemistryGCE was a pushover!Well, a decade or so (ahem!)later, my increasingly porous greymatter has retained little of myschool science exploits, but one thingit does remember is the PeriodicTable, and my interest in materialstechnology remains. That’s why I’mstill fascinated at the way loudspeakerdesigns choose different substancesto make drive units - from plasticfilm membranes for electrostatics toslivers of metal for ribbons, or anynumber of variations of doped paperand plastic with conventional movingcoil cone drivers. The fun thing isthat there are no rules - aside fromthat the thing or bit that moves theair should be as light and rigid andunresonant as possible...Oh, and I forgot the finaldictate - with commercially availablespeakers at least - cost. Let’s notforget that there’s got to be a pointin making them in the first place (i.e.the company’s continued existence),so financial considerations hold sway.That’s why most speakers use movingcoil drivers (they’re the cheapestand/or the easiest to source ormake), and also why most moving coildrivers use plastic cones of one typeor another. Again, the same sort ofthing you make Coke bottles out ofor dispense Shampoo from is nevergoing to break the bank now, is it?Still - before we get too‘knowing’ and cynical about why thecommercial reality of productionloudspeakers is generally so far awayfrom the theoretical ideal - let’s notforget that this is only half the story.Just because you’ve got the bestdrive unit material doesn’t guaranteeyou will have the best sound - youneed to integrate those driverswith the cabinet and other driverssuccessfully before you even comeclose. However, what you can be sureabout is that if you haven’t got thebest driver materials, you’ll never beable to get the best sound.And so to the <strong>Usher</strong> Be-10- which makes a very earnestattempt to achieve the state of theloudspeaker art by using not polypropyleneor paper, but Beryllium forits treble and midrange units. My ‘OLevel’ Chemistry textbook remindsme that this is the lightest stablemetal on the planet, and only thefourth heaviest element in existence.The prospect of using Hydrogen orHelium to make your speaker conesis - shall we say - ‘airy fairy’, and Iwouldn’t want to sit too close to aLithium tweeter unless it was sittingin a bath of oil - to prevent it spontaneouslycombusting like a Spinal Tapdrummer! In short then, ‘Be’ is ultralight yet stable, and as such ideal foruse in a transducer. Because of itsvery nature, it is far better suited tothe job of moving air than anythingmade from heavy old Magnesium orAluminium. Well, Beryllium would beideal, were it not for the fact that it’sso expensive to produce safely - forconsumer loudspeaker applications,the price certainly isn’t right.This explains why so fewspeakers have ever employedthis material - with the standoutexception being Yamaha’s NS1000Mwhich I use to this day. Sure, theyhave their weaknesses, but the speed,clarity and insight is like no other I’veheard. The Yamahas’ strength comesnot from using a Beryllium tweeter,but from mating one to a five inchBeryllium midrange dome so well.With this speaker, you have all themost audible frequencies handled byphase-coherent, identical soundingtransducers, and the results arestartling. Well, to this select groupyou can now add the <strong>Usher</strong> Be-10s- for they too run Beryllium tweetersand midrange units, although with theBe-10 <strong>Usher</strong> have chosen to invertthe midrange dome to a cone profile.This, says the company, is the firstever such driver.£10,500 buys you a very big(365x715x1215mm) box weighingno less than 92kg (including itsbase). The Be-10 is, like so manyof my favourite loudspeakers, a bigthree way running a 1.25” Berylliumtweeter from 40kHz down to3.46kHz, after which that 5” invertedBeryllium dome takes over. Thisgoes down to 550Hz, when an 11”Eton woofer handles everythingright down to 25Hz (claimed) withthe help of bass reflex loading. Oneproblem for the bass unit to contendwith, with two of the world’s fastest,lightest drivers pulsing away above it,is how to keep up. For this reason,<strong>Usher</strong> have chosen Kevlar - whichis another light and stiff material (apatented para-aramid synthetic fibre)- famous for being used in bulletproofjackets, amongst other things, due toit being five times stronger than steelon a weight-for-weight basis. Thecabinet is a familiar profile for <strong>Usher</strong>,being rounded at the back (to reduceresonances) and angled backwards(to provide time-alignment). Needlessto say it is massively braced and thestandard of finish is - as you’d expectfrom high end <strong>Usher</strong>s -immaculate.REVIEW"they showcase the best incontemporary loudspeaker design,and make it work like few others..."SOUND QUALITYCosting over £10,000 I am afraidyou cannot make excuses for aloudspeaker such as this - it’s right upagainst the likes of B&W’s 801D andthus playing with the big boys. Withthis in mind, I wasn’t expecting to beable to be ‘nice’ to the <strong>Usher</strong> Be-10s.Of course, I knew that they had agreat start in life with their state-ofthe-arttreble and mid units, but inmy experience theoretical excellencerarely translates into practicalperfection. Being the hardened oldhack that I am, I was ready to findfault, but it turned out to be moredifficult than I had first thought.Within the opening notes of thefirst bar of a cleanly recorded pieceof music, played through decentamplification, you can tell just howdifferent these boxes are to almostevery other. There is exceptionalclarity from top to bottom, but it’snot the usual sort of dry, sterile focusthan so many so-called ‘reference’loudspeakers serve up. Instead, thisis natural and effortless. Rather thanshining a thousand Watt bulb on therecording and clicking in the zoomlens, the <strong>Usher</strong>s provide a wide anglewindow on what’s going on withoutHI-FI WORLDwww.hi-fiworld.co.uk JUNE 2009 HI-FI WORLD