Similar to ES-14N, the cabinet of ES-28N is tilted to get better time alignment for the drivers. The two woofers sit in a bass reflex compartment, carefully braced for low cabinet colouration. For the same reason, the whole cabinet is made from a sandwich construction with a layer of high-damping glue beside two MDF panels. The front plate is 50mm thick and made from two 10mm sandwich panels and a separate chambered MDF panel of 30mm. The midrange has its own compartment with a triangular backside to avoid reflections. The remaining part behind the tweeter takes the crossover, so the components are isolated from high sound pressure levels. The port tube opening is located on the bottom. That allows an eight-centimetre diameter port in a length that gives the lowest possible output of resonances from the cabinet and the highest maximum output of low frequencies. In addition, the port is equipped with pressure-equalizing holes in the middle to avoid the tube resonance of the port itself. The opening in the socket is big enough, so even in cases where the cabinet is standing on the floor without spikes, the bass performance is not compromised.
Epos
Epos are a brand with quite a lot of history behind them, they were originally founded in 1983 and over the years they developed a bit of cult following and released some very well regarded models.
Over the subsequent years the brand name changed hands a few times, being owned by Mordaunt Short for a while and in 1999 they were acquired by Creek Audio.
Fast forward to 2020 and Karl-Heinz Fink, the founder of FinkTeam Speakers and the head of the acoustic design consultancy ‘Fink Audio Consulting’ acquired the name and brand from Creek Audio. Karl-Heinz always had an interest in Epos as a loudspeaker company and he felt it was a perfect opportunity to take a classic speaker design and improve upon it using modern design and more up to date engineering techniques.
A classic speaker returns to the future!
The original ES14 was arguably the most famous Epos loudspeaker from back in the day, it was a large 2-way standmount speaker and it seemed fitting to start the new Epos brand with a resurrection of a classic model. Visually, the new ES14N has an unmistakeable classic Epos look to it, but they really went back to the drawing board to ensure that it would perform to the very highest of standards.
The new design has almost the same internal cabinet volume as the original ES14 – a calculation derived from the drive unit size and the bandwidth of the speaker, but the new design has a slightly different shape. As you can see from the images the cabinet is tilted backward – this time aligns the tweeter and the mid/bass driver together which has the important benefit of increasing coherency and also reducing standing waves.
This ES14N has been around for just over a year now, standing by itself as the only loudspeaker in the Epos line up, this was only ever going to be a temporary situation and 2 more Epos models have been unveiled to complete the line up.
The first model is a compact standmount called the ES7N, these are significantly smaller than the ES14N, standing at only 290mm (ES14N are 491mm high), but they still pack an incredible punch for the cabinet size and price point . The ES14N is a stunning loudspeaker, but one overriding comment is that they are quite big, so the guys at Epos have listened and here were are!
The ES7N sound superb when installed on stands, but they have also been designed to work when placed in more confined spaces, close to wall on sideboards or cabinets, placed on bookshelves or within an Ikea Kallax.
The design team have incorporated a switch on the back of the cabinet, the position of the switch changes the crossover filter and adjusts the tonal performance of the speaker based on its position in a room.
Priced at £1890 a pair they are superb pair of speakers for those looking for something compact and affordable, they are available in white, black, walnut and orange.
This leads us on nicely to the third loudspeaker in the Epos line up, the ranging topping ES28N floorstander, this is 3 way design standing at just over a metre tall. The ES28N has not been launched at the time of writing, but it shouldn’t be much longer before it is available. The UK price has not be finalised as yet, but we anticipate it to be between £7000-£7500.
