Carfrae Little Big HornBy Paul Messenger

Few speakers look more extraordinary than Carfrae’s Little Big Horn, and hardly any are more beautiful, in my opinion and those of several visitors, who admired the faintly bizarre but beautifully sculptured shape, the delicious solid wood finishing, and were fascinated by the large ‘climb-through’ hole in the middle. The photographs are much more eloquent than mere words in describing a speaker which looks unlike any other on the planet, which makes perfect sense in form-follows-function terms, yet manages to do so with considerable panache and a wickedly gastropodic wit.As the name suggests, this is a horn-loaded design, a factor which accounts for both the shape and the bulk. And it is a bulky beast to be sure, my own quite generously dimensioned room (4.3x2.6x5.5m) is probably just about the practical minimum. In truth the Little Big Horn would fit more happily into rooms at least half as big again - and could happily fill a small church, should the opportunity present itself. But it doesn’t loom the way large speakers usually do, the curved profile, deep blue crackle finish around the horn profile and the hole through the middle all help minimise the perception of a bulk which is only really a handicap when you’re unpacking and struggling to manoeuvre them into place.

Let’s put the LBH into context. Like Carfrae’s swan-neck Big Horn, it’s based around a single Lowther DX3 drive unit, but where big brother’s horn is 3.3m long and fires into a comer, the LBH loads the rear of the Lowther by a

forward-firing 2m tractrix profile horn. It’s much more compact than the Big Horn, uses MDF rather than plywood, and less real wood veneer, so the whole affair is much less costly at £7,950 (against some

eighteen grand for the Big Horn).

Eight grand is still expensive for any pair of loudspeakers, and significantly (though not dramatically) more than the two other Lowther-driven speakers which have passed through my hands recently (the £5,000 Beauhorn Virtuoso in Hi-Fi+ issue 7, and the £6,000 Veritas H3 in Hi-Fi Choice issue 191).The Little Big Horn can easily justify its premium, however, not just on grounds of aesthetic elegance (where it’s in a class of its own), but also because it cunningly incorporates an active subwoofer as an integral part of the design. This is built into the separate teardrop shaped box which supports and orients the horn proper. (And you can christen it Custer’s Last Stand if you want to.)

What we have in toto therefore is a single full-range horn-loaded driver, which, in the Lowther tradition, has an extraordinarily high sensitivity (around 105dB/W on my estimate), at the inevitable expense of

limited bass extension. Jim Carfrae’s literature implies that the horn works down to 50Hz, but my measurements indicate a practical in-room lower limit of around 80Hz for the horn section, leaving the subwoofer to take responsibility for the bottom two octaves.The Little Big Horn differs from the other Lowther-driven speakers I’ve tried in making no attempt to horn-load the front of the drive unit. I suspect the lack of a short horn on the front is the reason why the LBH’s output is just a little weak through the broad midband, but such a horn will tend to add its own coloration which Jim prefers to avoid.

One less happy consequence of the slightly weak output 400z-1.5kHz is that it leaves the characteristic Lowther presence band resonance (about an octave wide centred on 2kHz) just that bit more exposed and obvious. The treble proper is also stronger than average, with evidence of another peak around 8-12kHz, but it remains a notable achievement to create a high efficiency mostly horn-loaded speaker capable of delivering a full bandwidth in-room balance which (once I’d fiddled around a bit with the subwoofer controls for best integration) held within +/-4dB

on a far-field in-room averaged measurement from 20Hz to 18kHz. This is a total contrast to the Beauhom Virtuoso’s behaviour, which is deliberately tuned to give a smooth and flat midband, while gently rolling off the top and bottom ends.The more time I spent looking at the Little Big Horn, the more I became impressed by the sheer cleverness, not only of the overall concept but also the fine detail of the design. The driver is carefully arranged to be at seated ear height, and the boss on which it’s mounted is a seriously chunky hardwood fabrication, cleverly put together to create patterns in the grain orientation. Subtle hardwood curves frame the horn mouth, and the profile of the subwoofer is curved too (creating an irregular shape which will help avoid standing waves).

Sonically I’m a bit of a sucker for Lowther-driven speakers and indeed for high sensitivity speakers in general, so the Little Big Horns immediately ensnared me in their enchantment. The sheer immediacy and vividness of the sound catches the attention straight away, much of which comes down to the effortless and natural way they reproduce dynamic contrasts and shading.

Most of the listening took place immediately after I’d carried out a group test on 12 ‘normal’ loudspeakers (averaging around £1,000/pair and 89dB/W sensitivity), and these

Carfraes instantly sounded like ‘real’ speakers, where

the others had been mere pipsqueak pretenders, lacking genuine scale

and limiting expression and

communication.First off I didn’t

connect up the subwoofers, and just listened to the horns alone. This was very beguiling, and honestly didn’t seem as lacking in bass extension as the measurements had indicated. On speech it was particularly magical, with great expression and a marvellous freedom from timesmear and chestiness. Individuals somehow managed to sound more distinctly individual, and regional accents were clearer and more easily identifiable. On simple material with little bass content, such as string quartets, the horn alone was lovely.

I half expected to find the subwoofer a let down, as all my previous experiences of trying to use active subwoofers alongside high efficiency ‘satellites’ have been tinged with

disappointment. While the Little Big Horn’s integral

subwoofers did compromise

the time coherence very slightly the effect

was indeed very small, and I happily

left the subs connected up for the duration, enjoying the

worthwhile extra weight and gravitas they brought to anything

with serious bass content. The other slight weakness is that their dynamic tracking didn’t always match the horns, so the balance seem to shift very slightly with level, but the overall integration was unexpectedly superb, and I was only conscious of their existence on odd occasions.

The one fly in the ointment - more of a dragonfly in fact - is that presence peak, which just happens to be in the region of the spectrum where the ear is most sensitive. This proved difficult to ignore, at least when using

my regular Naim (NAC52/NAP500) amplification,

which itself has a rather shiny and forward character, and made me reluctant to listen at realistically high levels. I could probably live with it, just as I can live with the slightly higher frequency peak of my Rehdeko RK175s, but I’m rather more

tolerant than most in this

regard, and tend to find most

conventional speakers (which usually

show a presence dip) a little shut in.

As I’d expected from show demonstrations, the

Little Big Horn is rather in-yer-face, and not exactly polite or smooth by conventional standards. But that’s partly because it’s exceptionally revealing of either the sources or amplification. The trick is to find the right components to create a sympathetic whole. High efficiency Lowther horns originally stem from the era of low powered valve amplification, and make natural partners for the revival of interest in single-ended triode

amps, especially as the impedance stays above a comfortable 9 ohms throughout. Jim Carfrae had brought along a pair of monoblocks from Glass Audio Tube Engineering, the GATE SE300 (from £3,335/pair, depending upon the source of the 300Bs), which he felt were a good match for the LBHs.

I’ve always had a soft spot for this type of amp, based on the magnificence of its midrange reproduction but tempered by major reservations about bass softness. However, Little Big Horn’s active sub means it does its own thing in the bass region, and the system amp doesn’t need to supply any serious current below 80Hz. Major reservation dismissed. Measurements taken with the valve monoblocks showed the same presence peak as before, but above that region the treble output proper was some 2-3dB less, and this is probably a major reason for the altogether ‘kinder’ and less aggressive sound which they produced.In fact the combination was an absolute delight. Background hiss was reduced while hum increased slightly - but those seem to be the inevitable consequence of going from transistor to valve operation when using a super-sensitive speaker. Best of all was the way the SE300’s classic thermionic sweetness took the ‘fierceness’ and aggression out of the system. It remains a moot point whether one should choose an amplifier or the speakers first. Given the Naim amps I probably wouldn’t

have chosen the Little Big Horns; given the Carfraes, I probably would have chosen the GATEs (or something similar).There are many reviewers who try to describe the sound of

their favourite recordings, an approach I avoid, because

it’s highly unlikely that these happen to be your favourite recordings, or even that you’ll enjoy them in the same way that I do. I could ramble on about the brilliantly layered production of the Beastie Boys’ Hello Nasty, the Iyrical lucidity of Eminem’s Marshall Mathers LP, or the delicate and subtle interplay on the Grateful Dead’s Reckoning acoustic set.

But I’d rather report on the effect a speaker

system has upon my actual behaviour, as this

seems much more meaningful. A major strength of the Little Big Horn is that it makes even ‘difficult’ material that much more accessible than regular speakers. I found myself listening to a lot more Radio 3 than usual, and getting sucked into the wonderful textures of orchestral instruments and instrumentation.I’ve now been listening to the Little Big Horns continuously for about three weeks, across a broad range of programming which includes a mixture of vinyl, CD and radio, plus an (un)healthy dose of day-to-day television watching. Jim’s coming back to pick them up tomorrow, and I’m not looking forward to his arrival one little bit!With a speaker this coherent, temporally and dynamically, choice of source and amplification components becomes extra critical, and I’d certainly suggest

valve amplification is likely to be preferable to the solid state variety. Indeed, the enormously high sensitivity of the Little Big Horns is a powerful incentive to go straight down the single-ended triode road, as the modest power outputs will be no handicap, and their sonic marriage might have been made in heaven.As I sat ruminating while Radio 3 was playing some Mozart, the thought came over me that if I ever get to retire from this loudspeaker reviewing game, this could well be the speaker system to retire with. It’s not perfect - no speaker is - but it’s such a fine combination of the various qualities I personally rate most highly that I reckon it would fill the bill very nicety indeed. Others might prefer the smoother, more mid-oriented sound of the Beauhorns I reviewed a few months back. But I strongly urge any reader interested in getting closer to the ‘real thing’ to take the time to audition a Lowther-based speaker system, as the combination of single-driver coherence and massive sensitivity brings its own unique magic to the proceedings.

TECHNICAL SPECIFICATIONS

Type: Single driver horn with active sub-woofer.Main Driver: Lowther DX3Sensitivity: 105dBImpedance: <9 OhmsBandwidth: Horn -3dB at 18KHz Sub -3dB at 26HzDimensions (WxHxD): 380x1,350x950mmPrice: £7,950

Manufacturer: Carfrae LoudspeakersTel. (44)(0)1803 868461Net. www.carfrae.com

Glass Audio Tube EngineeringTel. (44)(0)1245 381784