Altair

Rockport Altair

A great loudspeaker, the Rockport Altair** weights only 15 lbs more than our weight (olympic) set, 515 lbs per speaker. This is less than the FGUTPIA at 573.2 lbs / speaker, which we wish to lift (and carry home), in white.

Weddings are a funny thing. We like the Focal also in Carbon and Gold, and the Altair looks just fine in silver, we see. With a 15" woofer, similar to our now-gifted Velodyne F1500 R setup, and a Beryllium cone, similar to the Focal sweet tweeter, the Altair offers a fine frequency response of 20 Hz to 30 KHz, -3 db (+1.5/-1.5).

As it's senstive at 91 db, sweet, we shoudln't mention that we would prefer a 50 KHz or 90 KHz upper-level freqency response, but the addition of a Sony SS-TW100 ED from Audiogon.com, should work to bring the Rockport Altair up to 100 Khz, a fine top-end for SACD.

The 8" mid-bass setup should offer fast timing and tight response, and over-all, we like the look of the Altair, thought it's a bit stunted.

The Rockport Arrakis should take care of this (a double Altair, just like the B&W Matrix 800 took care of the famous Matrix 801's dynamically limited senses) - add four Sony SS-TW100 ED's per side, and you should have something both Harkkonen, and Giegeresque at 900 lbs / speaker.

A bit like the flying fat-man, the old Barron himself.

For best tasting, and listening add yourself the Weihenstephaner*Vitus White Beer Weizenbock 7.7% ABV to your listening session.

For best results, serve with a Tovolo ice globe, if you wish to take over the world, and a bit of rough orange-peel, if you wish to add American flavour.

To drive them, you may wish to check out the Vitus Audio MP-M201 Novidad (45 kg), amplifiers. 100W Class A. (€125.000,00 / pr.)

*Weinhenstephaner Vitus, Winner of the World Beer Awards, WBA, 2012,  Best Wheat Beer Strong.
** The Rockport Altair retails for $97,500 USD, and weights 780 lbs, each, crated.

JP 2014/07/10
HFA