Castle Knight 5 Floor standing speakers
Brand Castle has recently belonged to the British IAG Ltd. concern, which also includes such famous manufactures as Audiolab, Mission, Quad, Wharfedale and others. Castle Acoustics itself for over 35 years has made the specialty in production of speaker systems for different purposes. It independently develops drivers and prefers nontraditional constructive solutions. One of them, Twin Pipe Technology, is implemented in the fifth model from the Knight series. This is quarter-wave resonator, which allows expanding bass range without using bass reflex and, consequently, getting faster response of diffusers to incoming signal. In addition, such construction allows maximal simplification of crossover filters.
Before the installation you should fasten the base and massive spikes, packed separately.
The diffusers of 150-mm LF and MF drivers are made of carbon fiber and have phase-equalizing "bullet" in the center. The tweeter with a soft inch dome is installed in the center of wide flange, slightly concaved inside. Build quality and finish of the body is beyond any criticism; externally the systems make the imprecation of a solid and expensive thing.
Listening. It's clear, why some manufacturers prefer nontraditional acoustic design like labyrinth or Transmission Line. The sound of such speaker systems seems to be more harmonious and comfortable; it is not tiring at all, even if you listen to such music like Dream Theater the whole day. Castle Knight 5 gave this hard genre quite an adequate interpretation - with the highest intelligibility, abundance of timbral components and three-dimensional, also very thoroughly drawn sound stage. Despite of noticeably attenuated lower bass, the sound is volumetric and punchy. At the same time it doesn't burden mainly due to natural, not overlong attack and detailed, but not too contrast elaboration of timbre of acoustic and electronic instruments. But overall tonal balance seems to be slightly shifted up, sharpness or noticeable emphasize at HF are not felt. We liked very much how filters work - they not only transfer the whole richness of cymbals, but also create the aura around them and light cloud of overtones. Accordingly, the atmosphere turns out to be light and airy that is especially felt at chamber recordings. Grand piano is absolutely authentic, the smallest details are heard in sound picture - murmurs, knocks of keys, sounds coming from the hall. At the kick of bass-drum you feel vibration of the membrane shading into smoothly decaying overhangs.
