June 1, 2010
EgglestonWorks Andra III Loudspeakers
Associated Equipment
Speakers --
Rockport Technologies Arrakis, Paradigm Reference
Signature S2 v.3
Amplifier --
Boulder
Amplifiers 2060
Preamplifier --
Boulder
Amplifiers 1010
Sources --
Apple MacBook running iTunes and Amarra, Bel Canto
DAC3VB/VBS1 DAC, Simaudio Moon Evolution 750D
DAC/transport
Speaker cables --
Shunyata Research Aurora-SP
Interconnects --
Shunyata Research Aurora-IC
Power cords
-- Shunyata Research Anaconda Helix Alpha/VX, Python
Helix Alpha/VX, Taipan Helix Alpha/VX
Power conditioner --
Shunyata Research Hydra V-Ray II
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My primary
motivation for wanting to review the EgglestonWorks Andra III
loudspeaker was my positive experiences with the company’s
entry-level floorstanding model, the Dianne. When
I reviewed the Dianne last year, it retailed for $2500 USD per
pair, and today costs a still very reasonable $3250. I was impressed
with the Diannes’ ability to cast a mesmerizing soundstage while
virtually disappearing from my room. It was one of the pleasant
audio surprises of 2009.
What I hoped
for from the Andra III was a speaker that built on the Dianne’s
strengths -- great soundstaging and imaging, and a convincing
“disappearing” act -- but with greater overall authority and bass
extension, and even better resolution of fine detail. And at
$23,500/pair, I thought, it had better deliver a
lot more
than the Dianne to be anywhere near as exciting as that reasonably
priced model.
A classic
renewed
EgglestonWorks’ Andra platform is a classic of high-end audio. In
the late 1990s, the original Andra burst on the loudspeaker scene to
win favorable reviews from many sources. Like such speakers as the
B&W 801 before it, the Andra was a compact yet highly potent
floorstander that followed a simple formula: a big, full-range sound
from a pair of cabinets that wouldn’t dominate a listening room. Its
striking sound, particularly with strings and acoustic instruments,
made it impossible for the audiophile community to ignore.
The original
Andra was built to the nines, and still is, as can be seen in my “Searching
for the Extreme: Building the EgglestonWorks Andra III.” The
basic form of the Andra III has changed little in the years since.
It still uses Dynaudio’s 1” Esotar tweeter up top, two 6” Morel
midrange drivers below that, and a pair of isobarically loaded 12”
Dynaudio woofers on the bottom. That last feature requires some
explanation: In isobaric loading (isobaric meaning "characterized by
constant or equal pressure"), one woofer is mounted internally,
directly behind and facing the back of an exposed forward-firing
woofer. The idea, developed by Harry Olson in the 1950s, is not to
produce greater output, as some may think, but other theoretical
benefits: a lower resonant frequency than would be the case with a
single drive-unit, promising lower bass without a larger cabinet;
lower distortion due to ideal air-compression parameters in the
front woofer’s operating chamber; greater sensitivity due to a
halving of impedance (with a competent amplifier, the user should
see a 3dB increase in sensitivity because the amplifier is doubling
its power output into the load). The disadvantages are a doubling of
cost for the woofers, and a more complex cabinet geometry. So
consider the Andra III a three-way, ported design with a few twists.
At 46"H by
15"W by 18"D, the Andra’s basic shape remains relatively unchanged:
The III is still fairly squat and raked back. Fellow reviewer
Randall Smith, who helped me unpack the speakers and move them into
my room, was amazed that the Andra III was so small. He’d seen the
speaker’s weight -- a stout 225 pounds -- listed on the
EgglestonWorks website, and had assumed we’d be moving a much larger
speaker. Suffice it to say that the Andra III is a densely
constructed speaker, but not huge in overall dimensions.
What has
changed in the Andra III is important. The most obvious are the 6”
Morel midrange drivers. The older drive-units had polypropylene
cones; the new cones are of carbon fiber, for a greater ratio of
stiffness to mass, with new motor structures that promise lower
distortion. The midrange drivers are still run without a crossover,
the intent being to keep crossover components out of the critical
range of the human voice. The tweeter is now mounted on an aluminum
skin attached to the front baffle, an arrangement that allows for
better coupling of driver to baffle, and gives the speaker a
cosmetic flair it previously lacked. The midranges and woofers are
still mounted on the MDF baffles -- in their case, the aluminum is
purely cosmetic. The granite side panels of the Andras I and II have
been replaced with panels of aluminum.
For biwiring,
which is how I used them, the Andra IIIs come equipped with two sets
of rhodium binding posts by Cardas. The standard finish is gray with
natural aluminum side panels; other colors are available for an
upcharge, including piano black with black-anodized aluminum
hardware. Another change from the older Andras is that the finishes
are now automotive-grade paints instead of gloss-black laminate. The
grille is a sleek affair of fabric stretched over a thin metal frame
that attaches to the speaker with magnets embedded in the cabinet’s
front face.
EgglestonWorks
rates the Andra III’s frequency response at 18Hz-24kHz, and its
efficiency at 88dB. The impedance is said to be 8 ohms nominal, with
a minimum of 6.3 ohms. The warranty is a generous six years for
parts and labor.
Sound
It took me a
weekend to get the Andra IIIs set up to my liking in my Music Vault
listening room. I began by having them fill the footprints of the
Dynaudio Focus 360s, which I review this month for
SoundStage!
In these spots, the back of each Andra was about 5’ from the wall
behind it. The speakers ultimately ended up closer to the front wall
-- about 3’ away from it. These positions gave the Andras more
boundary reinforcement in the bass, and something else as well. In
fact, these speaker placements in my room are a recent revelation.
Perhaps it’s because of the ample room treatments (five
polycylindrical diffusers) I’ve affixed to the front wall, but now,
setting speakers deeper into the corners of my room does absolutely
nothing to diminish the soundstage depth, as conventional wisdom
suggests it might. In fact, I’ve found that, in addition to the
expected bass reinforcement, it makes for even wider soundstages.
And that’s what happened with the Andra IIIs.
I began my
listening as I had with the Dianne -- with “Tall Trees in Georgia,” from
Eva Cassidy’s Live at Blues Alley (CD, Blix Street 10046).
The EgglestonWorks Diannes had captivated me with this track due to
their amazing ability to create a deep soundstage in my room.
Well, soundstaging turned out to be one of the Andra IIIs’ strong
points as well. The larger speakers were able to re-create all the
depth that the Diannes got so right, while also producing
wall-to-wall width -- some of the widest I’ve heard in my room.
The Andras’
bass response was able to fully energize my room so that the
acoustic space -- in the case of the Cassidy album, a jazz club --
was even more palpable: I could literally
feel the dimensions
of the physical space. With the Diannes, I was able to only imagine
it. This is a clear example of why low-bass capability isn’t just
important for reproducing bass instruments. You need deep bass to
pressurize a room, something that’s absolutely critical when playing
live recordings because the acoustic signature of the venue, be it
club or concert hall or opera house, has so often been captured on
the recording. The Andra III did deep bass, if perhaps not
quite down to EgglestonWorks’ specification of 18Hz. In my room, the
Andra III was 3dB down at 20Hz, which is
very respectable.
The bass was more round than ultratight, though this might depend
somewhat on the room in which it’s used.
The ability of
the Andra IIIs to position images on the soundstage was impressive
in its specificity: aural images of instruments and voices were
precisely spaced and placed between room center and right speaker,
and room center and left speaker. Performing “These Bones,” from
I Couldn’t Hear Nobody Pray
(CD, Warner Bros. 46698), the
singers of the Fairfield Four were positioned in a wide arc across
the stage. In terms of dimension of soundstage, the Andra IIIs were
as adept as any pair of speakers ever deposited in the Music Vault.
All
audiophiles agree that the inability to reproduce voices correctly
sounds the death knell for any loudspeaker. It’s surprising, then,
that so many come up short in this regard. Although from the lowest
lows to the highest highs the Andra III was not the most neutral
speaker I’ve ever had in my room, it was exceptionally neutral where
it mattered most: in the midband, the range of the human voice.
There, I heard no tonal colorations with any of the music I listened
to. Male singers such as the Fairfield Four sounded deep and
resonant, as they should, with enough texture and body to each voice
to create a believable sense of the person in the room.
The midrange
wasn't just good with vocals. Jim Brickman’s “Generations,” from
Songs Without Words: A Windham Hill Collection (CD,
Windham Hill 11212),
was smooth and continuous -- his acoustic piano was reproduced with
excellent clarity and tonal neutrality. It wasn’t ultradetailed or
spotlit at any particular frequency that I could detect, but it
was simply beautiful in the naturalness of its sound.
The upper
frequencies were mildly subdued in my room, lacking that last iota
of energy and crispness that many of today’s speakers possess. I
didn’t consider this a liability in my listening, as the effect was
just a slight bit of warmth in the highs. The Andra III reproduced
most of the high-frequency detail in recordings, blatantly omitting
nothing, but from about 8kHz up the highs were recessed by just a
couple of dB. This voicing was a conscious choice, I think, made to
create a loudspeaker that will sound good with most recordings --
especially those balanced to be a bit hot on the top end. My
listening notes indicate that the Andra III allowed me to enjoy a
number of albums that would be less listenable through many other
speakers I’ve heard. Pop and rock recordings from the likes of
Audioslave to country from Lee Ann Womack sounded fuller and less
grating than they have through speakers with more energy higher in
the audioband.
To sum up the
Andra III in a phrase, it was wholly listenable. The Andra III
didn’t sound like a product designed to win awards for technical
precision; it sounded like a speaker that music lovers can kick back
with and enjoy over the long haul. I found I could listen to my best
recordings and get a healthy dose of overall high fidelity, along
with extension at the frequency extremes, but that I could also
enjoy most any album, regardless of engineering pedigree. The
midrange was the most neutral aspect of the Andra III’s sound, and
with good recordings, that’s where it shone. When I put on something
recorded by David Chesky or the folks at 2L, I heard a palpable,
richly figured midband that delivered the magic we all want to
experience from our audio systems.
What also set
the Andra III apart from other systems I’ve recently heard in my
room was its ability to throw a magnificent soundstage. Some folks
over the years have dismissed this trait when compared with such
significant areas of sound reproduction as tonality and dynamic
range, but when I heard the Andra IIIs cast a soundstage that gave
me the breadth and scale of a live performance in my listening room,
I just couldn’t ignore how simply enjoyable that experience is. I’m
not really sure what in the speaker’s design accounts for this
ability, but I sure did appreciate it in the listening.
Should you
buy them?
Investing in a
pair of EgglestonWorks Andra III loudspeakers is no inconsiderable
proposition: $23,500 is a lot of money, and in any economic
environment, let alone the current one, the plunking down of such a
sum on a luxury item should be carefully considered. I’d be remiss
if I didn’t remind you of what I wrote in March, in “How
Close Can I Get for Half the Price or Less?”: You can get truly
stupendous sound for a lot less money than you’d spend on a pair of
Andra IIIs -- sound that, in many areas, will easily compete with
them.
What you won’t get is precisely the sound
that EgglestonWorks has designed into the Andra III: that massive
soundstage, or the neutral midband bookended by sweet highs and
extended, well-integrated lows, or what it’s all housed in -- a
dense cabinet that’s relatively compact and beautifully built. The
Andra has been so successful for so many years not because of what
it doesn’t do, but because of what it does so well, and the third
iteration of this classic design brought me tons of enjoyment in the
two months I spent with it. Putting a price on that isn’t so easy,
but I figure it amounts to . . . oh, about $23,500/pair.
. . . Jeff Fritz
jeff@soundstagenetwork.com
EgglestonWorks Andra III Loudspeakers
Price: $23,500 USD per pair.
Warranty: Six years parts and
labor.
EgglestonWorks
540 Cumberland Street
Memphis,
TN
38112
Phone: (901) 525-1100
Fax: (901) 525-1050
E-mail:
jthompson@egglestonworks.com
Website:
www.egglestonworks.com
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