Living Voice R80 OBX Loudspeaker
Regular price £52,000.00
R80 OBX Loudspeaker
The R80 is a sophisticated and uncompromised 2-way loudspeaker combining the visceral thrill and lyricism of the Vox Olympian horn loudspeaker with the musical coherence and tonal beauty of the Auditorium Series.
Living Voice designs reach deep into the musical performance and extract the magical essence that makes music an abiding and compelling joy, making them the natural choice of the passionate and discerning music lover.
Less can be more. It just takes longer.
To reach this goal Living Voice chose a symmetrical mid treble/ mid (MTM) two-way driver topology in a reflex-loaded enclosure using two state-of-the-art 8″ bass/mid drivers and 34mm tweeter. Living Voice set out on this path several years ago and here, in 2023, the R80 is born.
It is a complicated business making something simple. The past 12 months bear testament to this with painstaking incremental progress and seemingly endless iterative developments on both the cabinet tuning and crossover.
R80 Series
As with all Living Voice loudspeakers the precision-calibrated crossover components are largely proprietary and are either made by hand in-house or by specialist suppliers specifically for this model. The crossover topology has been arrived at through a 4-year empirical development programme.
The R80 has a unique cabinet construction that is a further development of what they have evolved for the Auditorium Series over the past 30 years. This translates beautifully into the R80 design aiding its natural tonal filigree and easy dynamic contrast.
The form factor of the R80 is clean, simple, and unornamented, relying on classical golden ratio proportions and premium materials which makes for what we hope is a timeless aesthetic.
It has a wide bandwidth and deep extended bass with a benign amplifier load that deviates by only 4 ohms from 120 Hz to 20 kHz. Overall sensitivity is high, making life relatively easy for all types of partnering electronics and playing to the strengths of single-ended triode amplifiers, including those of 7–10 watts.
The R80 brings a new level of performance to the Living Voice range with a natural tonal response across all types of music. The sound quality is sophisticated and transcendent, and we hope that everyone who buys a pair has their passion for music reignited.
Making A Connection
R80 has been a process of patient development. It is a loudspeaker for music lovers who listen with their feelings as well as their ears.
Technical Summary
- Benign impedance characteristic
- High sensitivity wide dispersion MTM topology
- 36mm dense hardwood composite enclosure. Interior lined with maple veneer.
- Stiff internal triple bracing
- Living Voice proprietary hand-wound air core inductors
- Optimised crossover layout, mechanically isolated with star earthing
- Crystal-oriented internal wiring harness
- Proprietary non-inductive wire-wound resistors
- Proprietary Living Voice polypropylene capacitors
- Gold WBT binding posts
- HF Drivers: Scanspeak Ellipticor 34mm Dome tweeter 4ohm. Elliptical Voice coil. Neo AirCirc 120mm.
- Bass / Mid Drivers: Scanspeak Ellipticor 21cm Midwoofer 8ohm. Paper cone. Elliptical Voice Coil. Neo AirCirc.
- Deep Cryogenic Treatment: Applied to WBTs, internal wiring harness and select crossover components.
- Included Accessories:
Accessory Box with 8 pcs of spikes, floor protectors and 2 spanners enabling easy height adjustment of the loudspeaker in-situ: 1 spanner for rotating the spike and 1 for locking it. - Available Finishes:
Cabinets made in premium furniture grade, book-matched veneers. Outboard crossovers (where supplied) finished in matching book-matched veneers. Glossy Ebony or Satin Ebony / Glossy Santos or Satin Santos / Pippy Oak. Other finishes & RAL by special order.
Technical Specifications
- Sensitivity: 92dB (2.83v @1m)
- Nominal Impedance: 6 Ohms
- Minimum Impedance: 4.5 Ohms
- Loading: Reflex port to rear of cabinet.
- Frequency Response: 25Hz–20kHz
- Power Handling: 100 Watts
- Cabinet Dimensions: W 310mm × D 423mm × H 1090mm
- Plinth: 490mm wide at the front, tapering to 430mm wide at the rear, × 423mm D × 60mm H - Black satin finish
- Gross Weight:
- 45.5 Kgs per cabinet
- 8 Kgs per Crossover
- 4.5 Kgs per R80 Plinth
- Crossover Dimensions (in ‘suitcase’ orientation): W 120mm × D 450mm × H 270mm