Ruark Equinox Bookshelf speakers

Ruark Acoustics Limited, not yet ten years in business, goes from strength to strength. Already Gramophone's audio team has welcomed a round half-dozen of its products and here it is my pleasure to commend another. This one though, marks something of a departure from the previous line, being the first in a series of uncompromised 'audiophile' loudspeakers where style, finish and sonic quality have been given free reign.

In simple terms Ruark's Equinox is a fairly straightforward two-unit box loudspeaker of the reflex persuasion, with an external crossover and a dedicated stand; but the dressing up which has been applied to this basic concept has resulted in a striking and handsome piece of furniture in its own right. The main cabinet is constructed of 25mm HDF (high density fibreboard) veneered inside and out, externally in real walnut to which a rich reddish smooth lacquer has been applied. The attractively grooved front baffie and the rear panel are 30mm thick and finished in a satin black paint. A recent Ruark characteristic has been the sloping baffie, tipping the unit axis up to level with the average listening ear, and that is continued here. The vertical cabinet edges adjacent to the baffie have a pronounced concave sculpture and the remaining three side edges are boldly and most accurately bevelled. All these areas are painted with a satin smooth deep burgundy finish which sets them off against the adjacent natural wood colour. A black cloth-covered grille can be pegged into baffle receptacles but many will prefer the 'high tech' view of the drive units retained by another Ruark trademark: gold-plated socket-headed bolts. A similarly bevelled and finished narrow plinth drops below the cabinet base to conceal three cones, the points of which engage matching hollows in the steel top plate of the stand. A pair of bolts pass through clearance holes in this plate with their heads also remaining clear of the plate; these are a safety measure, ensuring that the cabinet cannot be displaced.

Whereas the baffle leans backwards as described, the leg of the stand leans forward and is a substantial two-piece structure. The front half is a steel section, tidily welded to both the top and bottom plates; this section is damped with a mixture of sand, lead shot and resin and finished externally with a skillfully applied coating of black 'wrinkle' paint. The rear half is a fibreboard box, painted burgundy, which contains the crossover components. At its base are four gold-plated multi-terminals with bridges to permit optional bi-wiring, and at the top a rather ugly plug and socket link with a short fat cable carrying signals to a similar affair in the rear cabinet wall; as expected, this immediately attracted unfavourable comment from several observers, not all of them female. The bottom plate of the stand is rounded off and slightly recessed into a beveled edge burgundy finished plinth. At each corner there is a threaded hole to take the supplied adjustable spikes which can be locked with gold-plated cap nuts (Brian O'Rourke, who heads Ruark, hastily offered me black ones when I complained that this was a trifle showy!).

The detailing and standard of construction and finish of this product are quite outstanding and it came as no surprise to see the neat badge of The Guild of Master Craftsmen present on the rear panel. I realize that I have dwelt on the visual aspects of this loudspeaker to some degree but so many of the non-industry people I meet remark on the unimaginative appearance of hi-fi in general, and loudspeakers in particular, that this excellent exception might inspire others to do something about it for the general good.

The bass/midrange driver has been specially built for this Equinox loudspeaker in Scandinavia to Ruark's specification (Ruark does not at present make its own drivers). It is constructed in a slim die-cast basket of 180mm outside diameter which is an exact flush fit in the baffie recess where it is retained by six bolts. There is a natural rubber convex roll surround to the 130mm diameter fibrous pulp cone, which is coated with a damping layer and fitted with an inverted 60mm diameter doped pulp dust-cap. This conceals a 40mm diameter long-throw voice-coil wound on a Kapton former and centred by the usual impregnated linen bellows. The moving assembly exhibits a free-air resonance at 33Hz. The ceramic magnet assembly is quite large at 110 x 30mm and the rear plate is 'humped' and vented to permit adequate inward travel of the coil without it 'bottoming'.

The crossover in the stand is of standard 12dB/octave design, using air-cored inductors and ICW polypropylene capacitors (no expense spared!) and passes the incoming audio to the Scan-speak tweeter at 2.8kHz. This is a doped 25mm fabric dome type with a hexagonal aluminium wound voice-coil on a Kapton former immersed in ferrofluid. This too has a vented magnet assembly, with an enclosed rear chamber offering a natural resonance around 800Hz, well below the crossover frequency.

The cabinet interior is fitted with braces to limit sidewall motion and, a fine detail this, they are shaped so as not to obstruct the air flow. The cabinet walls a re faced with acoustic foam and there is a centre fill of fibre behind the main unit. There is a 50mm diameter port in the rear wall fitted with a 140mm-long tunnel. This results in the expected pair of bandpass resonances at 22 and 66Hz. The impedance is quoted at 6 ohms, which is a fair assessment, making this an easy loudspeaker for an amplifier to drive, and the sensitivity at 87dB for a watt at one metre, also agreed, which suggests that amplifiers in the 50-100 watt range would suit.

Ruark Equinox Bookshelf speakers photo