GOLDENEAR BRX

When I first started writing for Stereophile, John Atkinson brought me a speaker to review. The shipping box was really beat, and it had some other reviewer’s name on the UPS label. After a few days of trying to get it to sound good, I speculated that John and at least one other reviewer already knew this speaker did not sound good. Flummoxed, I wrote JA a simple email (he likes simple emails), “Is this a test?” He replied, “Everything is a test.”

- Herb Reichert

On Tuesday, at 10am, John’s well-traveled, faded-tan Land Cruiser was double-parked on Hart Street in front of my building. As he handed me the boxed BRX loudspeakers from American company GoldenEar,1 he said, “I reviewed and measured these.2 Now let’s see what you think of them.” That means it’s a test.

When doing comparisons, sequence is everything. What just left the room inevitably affects my responses to what just entered. Before I installed the $1599/pair BRXs, I was playing the twice-as-expensive ($2995/pair) Falcon Acoustics LS3/5a, driven by the new Nelson Pass–designed, class-A, single-ended, First Watt F8 amplifier. This humble little setup was among the most exciting truth-telling audio systems I’ve ever assembled, and I was not in the mood to change it. But I did.

As I set the BRXs about 6' apart on the 30 stands JA1 provided, I thought, Oh no! Passive radiators! God save me from speakers with puffing cheeks. Then I saw the luxurious, stamped-metal grilles and was delighted. I like when speakers sound right with their grilles on, and the BRXs looked like they were designed to be seen and used with their grilles on.

Then I noticed the thick, curved lip protruding 1.5 from the bottom front of the speaker and wondered if it served any purpose beyond making sure the relatively heavy grilles don’t slide off. (Later, I determined that the BRXs sound smooth and articulate with their grilles on, but I preferred the rawer transparency without.)

The first album I played with the BRXs was a recording I’d been studying for weeks: The Art Ensemble of Chicago’s