Review and Discussions of Silverline Minuet Supreme Plus Speakers

Anybody has some movie lines stuck in their heads. "I like leeetle things…" uttered by Ian Holm while playing Napoleon in Time Bandits is one of my all-time faves. This line bubbles up to the tiptop of my consciousness every time I go to CES looking for small loudspeakers to review. The Silverline Minuet Supreme speakers are certainly little things; simply 5.5" wide, 9" tall, and 7.25" deep. When I saw them in Alan Yun'south room at CES last yr, I felt an instant attraction. After looking through the extensive list of reviews on his site, I felt a bit tardily to the trip the light fantastic toe—they've been reviewed past a lot of people. Then When Alan revised the Minuet and turned it into the Minuet Supreme, I was offset in the queue for review, with my dance ticket gripped tightly between thumb and forefinger.

What's Makes information technology Supreme?

I asked Silverline's designer and owner Alan Yun what he changed to make the Minuet into the $600 Minuet Supreme. He said: "The Minuet Supreme is the extension of the original Minuet with several pocket-size merely disquisitional improvements." First the crossover point was changed from 3.5kHz to 3.7kHz. According to Yun, "this gives the tweeter a more relaxed presentation in the lower highs coupled with more extension. This new crossover signal also enhances the midrange and lower midrange with a bit more weight."

The cabinet is the biggest corrective change. Instead of cheap-looking vinyl wood-grain, the new Minuet Supreme has switched to existent wood veneer. And what veneer it is, with wonderful grain and figuring. Going to veneer also necessitated some other product changes. Yun said, "The chiffonier of the Minuet Supreme is more rigid than the original Minuet. The Supreme uses a 1/2" particleboard compared to the three/8" of the original. Overall the Supreme's cabinet is an inch deeper. These changes give the Minuet Supreme a much lower cabinet resonance without making the cabinet too 'dead.' Nosotros consider the particleboard we are using to be the almost consistent forest material vis-à-vis weathering, in normal living environment. Nosotros practice not use plywood."

Instead of exotic materials, the Minuet Supreme relies on tried-and-true technologies, a silk dome tweeter and paper cone midrange commuter. Yun's reasoning is straightforward. "I fell in honey with dynamic paper cone drivers when I first heard them. My humble opinion is that paper cone drivers ordinarily have a more neutral and robust midrange even though the demote measurements are not every bit skillful as other materials. Although sandwiched materials and ceramic cone drivers achieve clean and tight performance, many take a kind of dryness I observe emotionless. A good newspaper cone driver always has more 'humanity.'"

Another weapon in Yun's designer's arsenal is the driver itself. "I use a long-throw over-hung design. The cone is i/ii" above the spider. This 'mini' driver with an effective diameter of 3.25" yields an unusual peak-to-height excursion of i/2", which enables the Minuet Supreme to reach a free-resonance point below fifty cycles. Except for the driver frame, the motor magnet, spider, and T-Yoke are custom made for me. Due to its efficiency, this driver can play effortlessly in the mid-90dB's."

In lodge to get a seamless match with the woofer Alan Yun used an ultra-lightweight silk soft dome tweeter. To cope with the estrus generated by the driver, it has both internal ferro-fluid rut dissipation and a heat sink on the dorsum. Yun says, "I love a soft-dome silk tweeter because information technology gives a warmer sound and eliminates the fatigue usually plant on hard materials such as metals, diamond, or ceramics."

Even the real rosewood veneer on the Minuet Supremes was called as much for its sonic effect as aesthetics. "There are and then many dissimilar wood veneers available. Personally, I prefer the Danish rosewood veneer nosotros're using on the Minuet Supreme. The audio from this veneer is more 'organic' than other veneers I tried."

Every bit Yun said, "To build a very small mini-monitor without giving away quality is very challenging, particularly nether the restrictions of a upkeep. Nonetheless, the Minuet Supreme has PP capacitors, 6N copper internal wiring, bi-wireable high-quality bounden posts, machined and brushed anodized solid aluminum speaker binding post boards. They are all hand-assembled, and the serial number is engraved past the designer himself later on final testing." Getting all this in a speaker that sells for $600 a pair would accept been unthinkable only a few years ago.

Let's Dance

Dorsum in 2007 Neil Gader reviewed the original Minuet speakers. He found the originals to be "gregarious and voluble with a hint of spotlighting on top. Harmonically the Minuet has an intrinsic sweetness that just won't quit… Although information technology attains some impressively high SPLs, when stressed information technology will sit on vocals a scrap, pushing them back a couple rows…similar every mini-speaker I know of, the Minuet can't summon the linearity and sheer gravitas that larger multi-driver speakers extend to the lower frequencies…if your tastes run strictly to Mahler or Metallica it might be a bit overmatched, otherwise the Minuet is musicality personified."

The Minuet Supreme retains all the sonic strengths of the original model, but adds greater dynamic range to the mix. Although I still wouldn't recommend the Minuet Supremes for a large or even eye-sized room, in a pocket-sized room tethered to at least 1 subwoofer the Minuets tin deliver an astonishing amount of both detail and musicality. Because I like using gear in its well-nigh appropriate setting, most of the fourth dimension I used the Minuets in my desktop arrangement (see the equipment box) where they delivered high SPLs with no hint of sonic distress. My personal pinnacle SPL levels came long before the Minuet'due south.

Even in a desktop setting, less than ii feet away, the Minuet Supremes do a superb disappearing act. They rival the Role Kayaks in their ability to produce a consummate moving picture of the soundstage with no hint every bit to the actual location of the drivers or box. My examination for this is simple; I shut my eyes, spin around in my chair a couple of times, and so try to option out where the speakers are. With the Minuet Supremes I failed miserably.

I'chiliad very partial to monitors that deliver all the information a recording has to offering. On hard to unravel recordings, such equally the Dial Brothers' Punch, the Minuets had no trouble successfully revealing fifty-fifty the subtlest spatial data. Each instrument and each vocalization occupied a particular location in 3-dimensional space. Some speakers tin can't quite nail those things; they're besides flat and one-dimensional, or they are as well vague. The Minuet Supremes put every instrument exactly where it should be in 3-dimensional space. I've never heard a speaker in my desktop that does a amend job of preserving all the locational cues imbedded in a recording.

Using my iPod Touch and the AudioTools App I was able to test the Minuet's dispersion. Both pink and white racket proved the listening window on my desktop was larger than any normal human being in a sitting position could move out of. Merely when I completely stood up did the pink and white noise frequencies begin to shift due to loftier-frequency roll-off. Within xxx degrees of parallel with the tweeter there were no audible traces of high-frequency shift.

When I talked with Alan Yun about the Minuets he emphasized that getting the midrange right was a master design goal. I think he succeeded. The Minuets are exceedingly musical speakers due primarily to their midrange graphic symbol. They remind me of the Spendor SP1s in that they never sound harsh or screechy, unless the music actually is harsh and screechy. The Minuets besides take a seductively natural presentation that is the antitheses of hyped-up hi-fi audio. Mayhap this is what designer Yun calls "humanity."

While the Minuets practise provide a remarkable amount of lower-midrange and upper-bass energy for their size, don't await them to generate the sort of punch that you'll feel in your upper diaphragm from a full-range room-sized speaker. On the tune from Lawrence Arabia's Dirge Darling, "Apple tree Pie Bed," these little speakers tried difficult to go along up in the lower midrange and deliver some dial, simply several small speakers in my collection, including the ATC SCM 7, Epitome Southward-1, and Aeriform Acoustics 5Bs, produced more lower-midrange and upper-bass bear on. These all have larger drivers and larger enclosures. Evidently at that place are limits as to what even the best-designed 3.5" driver in a small ported chiffonier tin can generate in the style of slam.

As yous might expect from such a diminutive transducer, the Minuets have truncated bass extension. But since their roll-off is smooth and hump-costless, it'south easy to mate them with a subwoofer. With both the Earthquake MK IV x and JL f112 subs, I constitute a 70Hz crossover point worked nicely, letting the Minuets generate the leading edge while the subwoofer delivered the main part of the wave.

The Last Curtsy

Every bit more audiophiles comprehend computer-based sound systems the cheesy transparent plastic speakers that populate many desktops will be replaced by transducers that tin can actually sound like music. The Silverline Minuet Supreme speaker is an platonic candidate for such a position. It is revealing, musical, and, perhaps best of all, human.

SPECS & PRICING

Blazon: Two-way bass-reflex mini-monitor
Commuter complement: I 1" silk dome tweeter, ane 3.25" pulp paper cone mid/woofer
Frequency response: 60Hz–28kHz
Sensitivity: 88dB
Nominal impedance: 8 ohms
Crossover frequency: 3.7kHz
Recommended power: ten–300 watts RMS
Dimensions: 5.5" 10 9" ten seven.25"
Weight: 15 lbs./pair
Price: $600/pair

Silverline Audio?Engineering, Inc.
1491 San Carlos Ave.,
Concord, CA 94518
(925) 825-3682
sales@silverlineaudio.com
silverlineaudio.com

Associated Equipment
Source Devices: MacPro model 1.1 Intel Xeon two.66 GHz computer with 12 GB of memory with OS x.6.five, running iTunes ten.0.2 and Amarra 2.0, Pure Music 1.65, AyreWave 1.0, and Audirvana music playing software
DACS: Weiss DAC 202, Wyred 4 Sound DAC 2, and Empirical Sound Off-Ramp 3
Preamps: none
Amplifiers: Bel Canto m-300 mono amplifiers, Edge Electronics AV-6, Accuphase P-300 power amplifier
Speakers: ATC SCM7s, Prototype S1s, Aerial Acoustics 5Bs, Role Audio Kayaks, Earthquake Supernova mk Four 10 subwoofer
Cables and Accessories: Locus Pattern Polestar USB cablevision, Locus Design Nucleus USB cablevision, PS Sound Quintet, AudioQuest CV iv.two speaker cable, AudioQuest Colorado interconnect, Empirical Audio Coax digital cable, Audioprism Basis Controls, and Adam Sound speaker wedges

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Source: https://www.theabsolutesound.com/articles/silverline-minuet-supreme-loudspeaker-tas-211