No woofer, no tweeter, no crossover-
just you and four 4.5" drivers.

By Nick Batzdorf

One thing about speaker design is that it’ll never be finished. The definitive monitor doesn't exist, and unless there's some totally new concept yet to be discovered (like holographic models of the source), it never will. That's why there's room for different approaches like the one taken by Ambiance Acoustics with their California Cubes.

As you read at the top of this article, these monitors use an array of four identical 4.5 " drivers-there's no woofer and no tweeter. Since all four drivers are identical and operate across the full bandwidth, there's no need for a crossover (although there is a need for an active equalizer that comes with the monitors). There's also no bi-wiring, bi-amping ... or bicuspids, for that matter. After verifying that these speakers work fine with a very small amp (like 50 WPC), we reviewed them using a very fine Hafler 9505 Trans-Nova with 250 WPC/8 ohms. The enclosure is a 13 5/8" square cube (outside dimensions), made of plastic laminate-covered composition board; the whole thing is very solidly made, with no rattles or cabinet ringing. A single tuned port in the middle of the driver array faces forward, and you connect the wires to your typical 5-way binding posts around back. As to the unusual look of the cabinet (white background, sort of a chicken wire with drop shadow pattern), well, it's either your taste or it's not. Other colors are available.

The design
The advantages to the array-based design are that there's no crossover distortion and that the bass, while not prominent, is very tight, even responding down to around 32 Hz as the drivers couple. Also, because the impedance curves are identical for all the identical drivers, the monitors maintain a relatively consistent sound at all volume levels. (I know, Mr. Fletcher; yes, Mr. Munson.)

The disadvantage is that there's a very small sweet spot-both horizontal and vertical dispersion is very limited. And that's not necessarily bad if the room has problems because the high freqs tend to stay from the walls.

The sound
These speakers are very smooth and extremely easy to listen to, and the response seems to be quite even across the spectrum. They can also get quite loud without straining. These speakers aren't particularly open-sounding -- the details and high end, while certainly there, are not as prominent as I'm used to them being. But that's not to imply that they're wrong; in fact, my first reaction to them was that "they sound right." And the stereo imaging is good, despite the lack of high frequency dispersion.