A full translation of the review is below.
Three years. This is how long it took the Cirencester firm (English region of the Cotswolds) to generate its new standard. Named Corinium in memory of the city’s Roman past, this column with nicely curved sides, 1.10 m high, inclined four degrees on its metal base for correct temporal alignment of four speakers in three ways, impresses with the level of perceived quality. A performance considering the price. Mast Spandl, designer and manager of Acoustic Energy, describes it as “enclosure of reasonable proportions adapted to an environment domestic, expensive enough to contain elaborate components, gifted of advanced musical qualities, knowing how to remain affordable…” The idea was to bring together the attributes of a compact speaker acting as a coherent source, combined with energy, dynamics and scale a floorstanding speaker coupling to the listening room in the bass. With a compass, the ability to reproduce live music. Except the tweeter, as on the 500 series, speakers are used in carbon fiber, improved (cone design and low hysteresis motor).
At the heart of the speaker, a 12 cm midrange with tuned load covers five of eight octaves from 260 to 3400 Hz (total bandwidth: 32 Hz to 30 kHz at -6 dB). It is relayed by a 29mm dome tweeter in Tetoron more rigid than silk, with a new structure of neodymium motor, absence of ferrofluid and copper shielding for reduce distortion, waveguide and rear decompression chamber. Loaded in a second open volume, the two 14 cm woofers with carbon cone couple to the part thanks to a rectangular vent. Second-order filters with minimum phase rotation contain air inductors, film capacitors and metal oxide resistors. Oxygen-free copper cabling is supplied by Wireworld. Resonance Suppression Composite (RSC) sandwich panels the cabinetwork varies from 22 to 45 mm in thickness, the front face is lined with 6 mm aluminum foil. This Corinium has a high sensitivity of 92 dB/W/m and an impedance of 4 Ω.
Listening
Placed in our 35 m² auditorium, the Corinium have no problem to take possession of the space. A sign of their hyper transparency? Their very strong reactivity to the associated electronics. We tested three amps to stop on the integrated Java Single Shot Integrated, based on GaN FET transistors (2×200 W under 8 Ω in class D). We have it often written: even if the yield is good (92 dB), the instantaneous dynamics, especially the serious, requires power and availability immediate, typical of class A or D amps. Proof of this is with such a tonic recording than the beach Fire-Li from Ten Songs of Change (Marion von Tilzer and Maya Fridman, trptk): if you want to play the piano-cello duet at concert level without compression, this power is required without delay. Thus managed, the Corinium demonstrate a real foundation and with a dazzling attack. These are speakers hyper neutral, with a tendency monitor, without coloring, also able to draw a space grandiose sound, as breathable as the taker of his wanted it, no more and, above all, no less.
Musical contribution: 5.5/6
Interest: 6/6
It seems a while since we had any Corinium reviews, so let’s change that! The latest (yes, there will be more over the coming days) is from Diapason in France. They have awarded the Corinium a Diapason d’Or award!