New high-end Hi-Fi brand Asci Lab has launched its first set of speakers, promising perfect sound without an oligarch price tag.
They start at £1,100 / $1,200 and additional speakers and subwoofers are launching this year.
A new high-end Hi-Fi firm from South Korea is using the appliance of science to deliver some sweet Seoul music.
Asci Lab, a start-up created by two acoustic and live sound experts with 20 years of experience under their belts, is developing "measurement-led" speakers that promise to deliver "perfect sound".
In simple terms, that means it's using an extremely expensive near field scanner system and a process known as Fine Element Analysis, FEA for short. This helps develop speakers that sound superb.
The scanner system, made by Klippel, makes it possible to prototype much more quickly and much more accurately. And that means the resulting speakers are considerably less expensive than some rivals.
As the company's UK retailer Purité Audio puts it: "They aren't aimed at the oligarch market. When a customer asks, what is the finest affordable loudspeaker?' I can now answer Asci Lab."
Of course, that's not exactly an unbiased assessment, but the speakers' specifications are impressive.
Asci Lab C6B: key features and pricing
The first design, the C6B speakers, feature six-inch aluminium-ceramic woofers, a 1-inch aluminium-ceramic dome tweeter and a 5 x 8-inch passive radiator. They're enclosed in ultra-high mass MDF (700kg/m cubed) with additional internal bracing to reduce unwanted resonance, and the woofers are mounted with vibration-damping mounts.
The tweeter has a proprietary waveguide design and a very low crossover point of 1.1KHz. They've been designed to allow a closer centre to centre distance between the drivers, and the phase plug has been "perfected" thanks to the creation of 1000s of simulations, we are told.
These are Asci Lab's first speakers, and more are on their way. The firm has published a roadmap (PDF) for the next three quarters that includes much larger units and powerful subwoofers too.
The Asci Lab C6B speakers are available now for £1,100 / $1,200 (about €1,300 / AU$2,265).
