At Stereotype we love music and we want you to get the best reproduction of that music in the price range that you can afford. We are not after your money; we only want you to be happy “to get more out of the music you love”. I am semi-retired, and Brendan works on the site in his spare time, we aren’t all about the money, we do it because we are passionate about music and good sound. I want to tell you about our latest speaker brand we added to our growing list of great value for money products, they don’t cost the earth, they look fantastic with real wood veneers and they sound terrific too, that brand is Castle.

I have always been a fan of Castle speakers and I have personally owned all their top models and many others in their range over the years. The four things I always like about them are also the four core things we consider before we even think of adding a brand to our range, we call it: the four L’s: Looks, Label, List price and Listening test.

So let’s look at how the new Castle Knight range fits the four L’s. There are five speakers in this range: Two stand mount models: Knight 1, Knight 2 and three floorstanding, the Knight 3, 4 and 5.

LOOKS

Of the components that make up a good music system, the speakers are the largest and will impose the most in your room. The modern popular way of room décor nowadays is minimalist and that is why in-ceiling, in-wall and sub/sat speakers are so popular. Unfortunately, the sound quality goes down as these sub/sat, in-wall, in-ceiling and sound bar speakers often can’t reproduce the full frequency spectrum naturally, and at various volumes. (For more on this, see my blog on “What is good sound“).

So what can we do?

Real wood!

Speaker designers have been working hard to make speakers like designer furniture: using glass, chrome or piano black finishes and different shapes from the conventional box (these types of speakers sometimes get referred to as having good WAF, or Wife Acceptance Factor). These are great for some but others like the warm and natural look of wood, this is where Castle comes in!

They are all made with REAL WOOD finishes unlike other Brands that use cheap vinyl or plastic finishes keeping the costs down. No wonder your other half doesn’t want them in the lounge! Currently two wood finishes are imported in the new Castle Knight range, Cherry and Mahogany. The finish is stunning, with the most beautiful deep-figured slices that are sourced from sustainable timber. Each speaker pair uses hand selected matched slices that are then sealed and waxed by hand in a process which takes over 5 days. It’s almost impossible not to run the back of your hand down the top and sides of these beautifully crafted speakers to feel their smoothness. Watching customers do the same when they first see them always brings a smile to my face.

Safely packed

The other appealing factor of this range is the size of three of these speakers, the Knight 1, 3 and 4 are small and slim line, and look the part in any room. The best way I can describe them is to use the words of most customers, “they are so cute”. The Knight 2 and 5 are big and immediately you know they are serious speakers and I mean serious! The quality of finish does not stop with the real wood finish. Even the packaging is one of the best I have seen of any speakers, even at three times the price. The amount of care Castle went through to get the product safe and sound to you and to add to the experience of opening up your set is unseen and unheard of at this price level. You immediately know Castle is very proud to present you with your set. Even the manual is in a form of a glossy brochure, not a piece of copy paper with a few printed words. You feel already proud to own this speakers long before you even heard them! So the first L (Looks) gets a big fat tick!

LABEL

Gloves to keep that 'oh so pretty' real wood finish smudge free

The Castle Brand has a long pedigree in the UK. It was founded in 1973 and is one of the most respected brands in UK. It’s considered by many as the poor man’s ProAc‘s and I think I have to agree with that. Not all of us have the means to afford a ProAc speaker but this Castle range is reachable for many budding music lovers. Castle has been a loudspeaker manufacturer in the truest possible sense with both design and manufacture of their speakers housed entirely in one factory. Castle is rare amongst loudspeaker manufacturers in that they not only manufacture the drive units and electronic components found in their speakers but also the beautifully hand crafted real wood veneered cabinets. Despite changing times Castle still retain this as the basis for the company even in the hands of their new owner IAG from China. So you can tick the 2nd L, Label.

LIST PRICE

Quality Spikes

Now here was my biggest surprise. Real wood finish speakers are expensive (like ProAc and the higher end B&W and Paradigm series speakers for instance). So when we heard the RRP we thought it was for a single speaker but when we were told “No, it is for a pair!” we immediately asked “where do we sign up?”. Unbelievable. The low cost is made possible by the fact that IAG bought the Brand and are now made in their own factory (no I must say resort… you must see this place it’s like a 5 star resort and I am sure it’s like that for all their workers too). So an even bigger tick on the 3^rd L, List price!

LISTENING TESTS

Do we need this? After going through the looks, label and list price it was almost a forgone conclusion that we must have this! We know Castle and we knew they would deliver. And sure enough after going through the range we were even more impressed.

First up was the Knight 3 because this one intrigued me the most, simply because there aren’t many similar products like this out there in the market. It’s a very slim line (165mm wide), and stands only a petit 820mm high (760mm without spikes), with only two drivers, a 1” soft dome tweeter and a 5” bass driver. When I looked at the specs that state it can play down to 38hz I initially thought it was a bit optimistic… so unlike my normal routine of testing all things new first with a midrange test I decided to test the bass first.

Heavy Plinth

I was quickly put in my place, that claim is true! Wow, how did Castle get that right in such a small floorstanding speaker?

Then I remembered why I always liked the Castle speaker’s bass so much. It’s the way they handle those bass waves inside the cabinet that is different to all other speakers and it now explains to me the angled wood plank I saw inside the box when I fitted the plinth. Castle owns Twin-pipe technology – a new type of transmission line implementation that vented through the speakers base onto its own plinth not towards the front or rear.

In most loudspeaker designs, room modes are easily excited by forward or rear-firing reflex ports, which can cause resonance and a resulting ‘boom’ at particular bass frequencies. Whilst giving an impression of good bass response, this boom frequency masks other frequencies making bass loose and slow. Using Twin-Pipe Technology inside the cabinet the bass response is extended without using unruly noisy reflex ports. This system couples the bass response within the cabinet enclosure using a twin-pipe quarter wave design to provide a smooth and even bass response which augments that from the main bass driver with clarity. Using a rigid yet light mixed-fibre cone material in the bass driver makes it fast enough to track the most complex score and its unique ‘TPT’ (Twin-Pipe Technology) extends the bass response of all its floor-standing models.

So there you have it and all I can add is: It works and it works amazingly in an almost unbelievable way. True it will never have the bass “volume” of say its bigger brother the Knight 5, but the Knight 3 ‘s bass is very pleasant to listen to and this is an ideal speaker for late night listening at a quieter volume or perfect for small rooms. Oh! I forgot to the mention the treble and midrange. The treble is nice and smooth which one would expect from a soft dome tweeter. The benefits are that the sound isn’t fatiguing, but they don’t have the sparkle of a say a Paradigm or B&W top end. So it’s a happy middle ground and it will please most except the extremists. That brings me to the midrange. Initially I thought it to be very rich and full bodied which accentuate the overall “big” sound I heard from these tiny floorstanders, but it was only after I listened to the “middle” brother the Knight 4 that I realised what I was missing, in comparison to the Knight 4 the midrange on the Knight 3 is set further back in the mix.

From left Knight 3, Knight 4 in Cherry and Knight 5 in Mahogany

Knight 4: Here I went my normal way of testing, starting with midrange first. I played the same track as on the Knight 3 and immediately I could hear more clarity, more presence in the voices and a more open sound compared to the Knight 3′s. So yes, a dedicated midrange driver makes a big difference. The treble has the identical character of the 3′s and the bass I found almost identical to the 3 as well. I thought it would have a bit more bass due to the slight bigger cabinet… certainly it can play louder than the Knight 3 without sounding strained. So I concluded that this is the preferred speaker if you are into vocal music, Jazz or acoustic material.

Knight 5: This is a big speaker and I expected a big sound. I was not disappointed… it did all I expected it to do plus more. The mids are full, present and rich. The treble is clear and extended without any harshness and the bass is tight and deep. But to me the most satisfying character of its sound was the fact that it has very little “boxiness” to its sound. I am over sensitive to most of the floorstanding speakers in the $2000 to $4000 range that has those dreaded drone-hollow sound in the upper bass and lower midrange. This makes them sound dull and mask the true complexity of natural sound. Most of these defects are produced by cabinet resonance due to a cheap cabinet design, little or no bracing inside and poor decoupling of the drivers from the cabinet. This is the down fall of most big floorstanders under $4000. The Jamo D570 and D590 with their ellipse form cabinets were the first big floorstanding speakers I came across that nearly solved that problem completely. No wonder so many other modern speaker Brands have copied that curved body design. To completely eliminate cabinet resonance you must have no cabinet at all, like the revolutionary Jamo R909 or the Magneplanar speakers. No wonder these are some of my favourite speakers. The Knight 5 has remarkably little cabinet resonance basically due to the extra internal bracing use to do the Twin-pipe bass loading. So I have to say this is a truly remarkable big floorstanding speaker and to me one of the best sounding floorstanding speakers under $3000 I have heard and its only $2299 a pair!

Knight 2 and Knight 1 (And the limited edition Richmond Anniversary model which I will review another time because it’s from... another world).

Knight 1: These are standmount speakers. The Knight 1 is a Medium sized standmount speaker. What makes it special is the real wood finish! There are few standmount speakers finished in a real wood veneer and I am sure there are none at the price level of the Knight 1′s $699 or even the $999 price of the Knight 2. The Knight 1’s sound took me by surprise. I expected a thin weak sound but I was greeted with a rich warm full sound that asked for more when I turned up the power… If you are after a small standmount speaker in a real wood finish and are on a budget. This is it! There is nothing else, contact us for an audition today.

The Knight 2: At first I almost thought the Castle Knight series didn’t need a big standmount speaker. The Knight 1 will cover most of the needs for a standmount speaker and can be used as rear speakers in a Home theatre set-up. However, I think a well designed and built big standmount speaker are in many ways the best way to go in a normal sized room. Big standmount speakers are in fact one of my favourite collectors speakers. They do not have that dreaded drone and hollow sound of so many floorstanders simply because you can make the cabinet so much stronger. The other plus factor is that you only have to get two drivers right to balance each other to get that critical coherence between the top, mid and bass right. My Jamo Concert 8 speakers are an excellent example of this. This EISA award winner was made by Jamo for nearly 15 years! True it was expensive at $4500, the Knight 2 is only $999 a pair… can it beat my Jamo Concert 8? …hell NO but it delivers a lot of performance for the money. It does not have the finesse at the top and the deep bass of the Concert 8′s but it has similarly exceptional midrange. Why do I compare this to my Concert 8? Because to me the Knight 2 does not have the same “family” sound as the rest of the Knight’s range. Ok they share the same drivers, they have the Knight 5′s width and depth but they have a tightness and authority to their sound that are really remarkable, so currently they are definitely my favourite Large standmount speaker under $1000.

So there you have it, the Castle Knight range has a speaker for everyone: Husband, wife, son or daughter… Rocker, easy listener or Jazz fan, no matter what your type of music you like, you will find a pair that will suit you. Even movie fans are most welcome; they have a matching centre and subwoofer to complete that picture as well.

Welcome back to New Zealand Castle, make yourself at home.

View the Castle range here, or contact us to arrange an audition.

I have the opportunity to listen to a wide range of speakers, and one thing which often stands out for me is the ability for higher end speakers to cope with complex passages of music.

Often songs start quiet, with maybe a great vocal and cut back instruments, then when the chorus kicks in everything steps up a notch – it’s at this point that often people reach for the volume control to turn the system down. In my experience, with good speakers you do not experience this, they just carry on playing with the treble, midrange, and bass all just playing nicely together.

This year I have loved Gareth Thomas Band‘s album Lady Alien, and track 2 Don’t Stop, really highlights what I’m talking about here. On some speakers the track starts off, the vocal images nicely, the bass from the kick drum is solid and everything’s great, then the electric guitar comes in and we are still doing ok on most speakers, but then just after the minute mark the drums kick in properly. It’s at this point that on some systems you grab the remote and down goes the volume.

Now, I don’t claim to be an expert when it comes to Physics (Unlike Tiens who actually is…) or speaker design for that matter. But I suspect this is because small amounts of distortion is creeping in due to cone break up, and these small blemishes start to muddy the sound, so you lose focus, frequency response and therefore the sound can become flat and harsh.

Jamo C607 Floorstander

I don’t really care so much for technology in speakers for technology’s sake, but I know most speaker companies spend a lot of time talking about technology to minimise cone frequency break up.

I used to think that the more drivers you have the more this phenomenon was reduced, and that certainly can be true when you compare models within a range – For example, this is where the Castle Knight 4 out classes the smaller Knight 3.

But now through my own experience I think it comes down to the driver in respect to cone break up and cabinet design, i.e. the less resonance the better. I use to run Jamo Concert 607′s as my front speakers before I upgraded to my current Paradigm Signature S2′s. Now these are both very different speakers – Rather than describing the differences here’s two photos which I think demonstrate the differences rather well!

Paradigm S2 (Version 2)

Now I should point out that the S2′s sell for more than twice the price of the 607′s, and while that hurt at the time I have never looked back, the S2′s are such an amazing speaker.

When I was comparing the two speakers, one of things I found was on complex tracks the 607s sounded muddy and flat, whereas the S2′s just kept pumping out clear sound – which is incredible when you think what that bass/midrange driver on the Paradigm is being asked to do. Back when Coldplay was good they released the outstanding Rush of Blood to the Head. The opening track Politik I had always skipped, it just sounded flat, harsh and hard to listen to. One of the wow moments I had with the S2′s was when I put this album on and went, wow, I’ve never heard this song like this before. SOLD.

One of Tiens’ all time favourite speakers are the Jamo Concert 8′s, a very solid 2 way standmount. It’s these same aspects of clarity that shine when listening to complex music, the Concert 8′s just play effortlessly. Tiens has always told me that you get a better image from a standmount over a floorstander in the same range, I think its fair to say that the smaller rigid cabinets help in minimising resonance, but perhaps less is more when it comes to complex music?

So the moral of the story, when auditioning speakers, don’t just listen to the nice easy listening jazz that the Hifi stores and shows will play you, take your own music along that you are familiar with, some quiet, some loud, and make sure you’re in charge of the volume control.