Home Review Vienna Acoustics Beethoven Baby Grand Reference

Review Vienna Acoustics Beethoven Baby Grand Reference

0

Pros

  • Very complete reproduction
  • Dynamic
  • Beautifully made

Cons

  • Doesn't always match
  • Midrange a bit reticent

Price: € 7500

Build quality
Controllability
Sound
Price

Intro

Contents

It’s quite a mouthful: Vienna Acoustics Beethoven Baby Grand Reference. But then again: we are talking about a serious speaker here. Now Austria – yes, Vienna Acoustics comes from Vienna, of course – is also a very serious country. And Vienna is a city with a lot of musical history. So not entirely surprisingly, the names fit with that. Does this Beethoven Baby Grand Reference play as seriously as the name suggests?

Vienna Acoustics has a number of series in its product range: Strauss Series, Concert Grand Series, Imperial Series and the Klimt Series. The first two series bear a name in the line of music. The speakers also have a musical name. The Imperial Series and Klimt series deviate from that. After all, Klimt is a painter. Within the Imperial Series we do have pianist Liszt.

Beethoven

Beethoven needs no introduction, we think. This speaker does. There are two versions of the Beethoven: the Baby Grand Reference and the Grand Reference. The Grand without ‘baby’ has a slightly larger woofer and an extra woofer. And therefore the cabinet is also slightly larger. Now the Baby Grand with two 6-inch woofers already goes down to 33 Hz. The ‘normal’ Grand picks up an extra 5 Hz and goes all the way down to 28 Hz. These are serious figures if you ask us. Because they are not really big with 260 x 1095 x 330mm. Just over a meter high. And they remain slim.

Finishing

We have a set in beautiful Rosewood. Cherry, Piano black and Piano white are also possible. Our Rosewood definitely looks very good. And the finish overall is also sublime. No crooked seams, discoloration or other misses. The base (foot) is an ingenious system. You – or your dealer – screw two brackets under the speaker (it needs six screws in total). In them you can screw the thick spikes (there are cups to protect the floor). The height is very easy to adjust, so the speaker is always stable. Smart system and it looks great too.

Drivers

The new Vienna Acoustics features Vienna’s patented drivers: the Flat X4P Spidercone. The center cone is recessed: so there is no bulging in the middle of the unit. The tweeter is a soft dome that has received a special coating. The Spidercone has been developed by Vienna Acoustics and is also manufactured near Vienna. This new unit should give an impressive frequency response. Despite its relatively small dimensions (6 and 7 inches).

To conclude: the Beethoven Baby Grand Reference is a three-way bass reflex speaker. The range is 33 Hz – 23,000 Hz. Sensitivity is 89dB, which is quite high. The crossover is a 6dB and 12dB Bessel filter.