#AUDIO NOTE AN E REVIEW DRIVERS#
#AUDIO NOTE AN E REVIEW DRIVER#

As with my old SP100, the rear of the midrange driver is contained within a sealed subenclosure made of MDF. The driver's surround has also been made stiffer, while its ferrite magnet remains unchanged. The SP100R 2's 7' midrange driver, also designed and made by Spendor, has undergone even more development, with a new polymer cone, 5' in diameter, that's said to be much stiffer than before. According to Swift, the damping of this driver is accomplished differently from that of its immediate predecessor, with a newly chosen compound on the rear side of the cone and a very thin coat of a cellulose-based material on the front. First is an 11.8' Bextrene-cone woofer that incorporates a cast-alloy frame, a ferrite magnet, a fabric dustcap, and a half-roll surround made from what Swift describes as 'a synthetic simulation of a natural latex rubber' and says has the best qualities of a modern polymer.

#AUDIO NOTE AN E REVIEW DRIVERS#

Two of the SP100R 2's three drivers are made in Spendor's factory, in Hailsham, East Sussex. That distinction, according to Swift, is more than just marketing fluff: 'One of the things that sets Spendor apart is that we understand how our drivers work.' Spendor remains among the few high-end speaker manufacturers that design and make their own drive-units indeed, as company owner and design director Philip Swift mentioned in a recent conversation, some of the tooling used to make the drivers in my Classic SP100R 2 review samples was used in the early 1970s, to make their classic BC3 monitor. This flagship of Spendor Audio's Classic line has undergone its second revision, and is now in R 2 (Revision 2) form thus, when offered the chance to give it a spin, my hearty Hell, yes. I might add a third factor: The unapologetically big, boxy Spendor SP100 fit my idea of what a loudspeaker ought to look like far better than any of the towers, triangles, pyramids, panels, or pee-wees on the market. Just as important at the time, it sold for only $3300/pairwhich explains how I could afford them on the spotty salary of a teacher turned fledgling publisher.

But my purchase decision came down to two things: The SP100 did virtually everything one could ask a modern loudspeaker to do, requiring in the process far less amplifier power than usual. My decision to try the SP100 was influenced by John Atkinson's review of its antecedent, the nearly identical Spendor S100, in the December 1991 issue of Stereophile. In late 1996, as Listener magazine entered its third year of existence, the Spendor SP100 became my reference loudspeaker, and would remain so for a considerable time.

Audio note an e review