Tannoy's Prestige Kensington SE doesn't sound like any other high-end speaker; it's something else again.

I may have written hundreds and hundreds of speaker reviews, but I can pretty much guarantee that if someone asks me about the Tannoy Prestige Kensington SE speaker in 10 years I won't have a problem recounting this review.

Zu Audio's Essence speaker breaks almost every high-end design rule and sounds all the better for it!

A great speaker should make you feel like you're there, with the music. That's the idea, but it almost never happens, even with some of the very best speakers money can buy.

They can sound great, but they rarely sound like the real thing.

Coaxially Cool

The most common type of speaker design has a tweeter towards the top of the speaker and a woofer below it. Some speakers mix it up with a woofer above too, or maybe a mid-range in there somewhere.

The XQ40 from KEF, like most of their speakers, does something a little different. The tweeter is inside the woofer.

Clearly Different

If that pun made you roll your eyes, they only get worse from here.

There are cool speaker designs, and then there are cool speaker designs. Most of the designs we audiophiles drool over include words like "ribbon," "ultra-tweeter" or maybe "plasmawoofer." Drivers and crossovers with specs to make a techy salivate wrapped in a swoopy MDF and veneered cabinet.

Or maybe not so swoopy.

Worth the Effort

Being a serious beer connoisseur is a lot of work. Different styles of ales, for example, like to be cellared at different temperatures and all would rather be cellared upright, making the usual storage solutions available for wines unsuitable for us beer geeks. Then there’s all the shelf space required for glassware—because who would ever think to drink a Christmas Ale from a Weizen glass or an American lager from anything other than a plastic Dixie cup?

Bass, Perfected

It has to be stressful for hardware manufacturers to send their products out for review. They don’t know the environment in which their gear will be evaluated.

They have no way of knowing if the reviewer will grok the product. It has to feel a bit like sending your kid off to school for the first time.

The Sound of Thunder

Paul W. Klipsch set out to design a speaker that could replicate the crystal-clear sound images of a ‘live’ orchestra or large jazz ensemble with an ease never heard before.

That speaker was called the Klipschorn and the world of audio engineering would never be the same again.

Now, 60 some odd years on, the horn lives on in the guise of the Icon series, and the WF-34.

Truth and Soul

I’ll never forget the very first time I heard a Burmester amplifier. It was 20-something years ago, and the rather svelte Burmester Model 878 was being compared with a muscle bound, high-end American amp.

The American amp sounded like a really good hi-fi, and it was more powerful, but the Burmester sounded more musical. It had more soul; the music was simply more alive and realistic sounding over the Burmester.

I’ve heard other Burmesters over the years at various shows and high-end stores, but I never had one at home, until now.