ETUDE 5 FLOORSTANDING LOUDSPEAKERS REVIEW

Made in the UK, Etude 5 Floorstanding Speakers cost £13,000 and are finished in real piano lacquer, applied by the Shackleford Piano company. How do they sound?

In a world where many speaker designs seem to bear much resemblance to others, the Etude 5 are a breath of fresh air and, indeed, an intriguing alternative. Whilst Etude may be a new name to many, keen-eyed HiFi show attendees may have spotted Etude and their sister company Curvi speakers making a graceful noise on the end of some tasty valve gear from boutique brand Super Natural Audio at the North West Audio Show (UK).

Curvi-HiFi and Etude Loudspeakers come under the umbrella of the holding company CML Music, the initials being those of founder Dr. Christopher Liauw, a veteran of some twenty-seven years as a Senior Research Fellow, then Senior Lecturer in Polymer Materials at Manchester Metropolitan University. Since 2019, speaker design and manufacturing have been Chris’s full-time occupation. The Etude 5 is the culmination of around ten years of research and development. The USP of the Etude 5 speakers is that they are transmission line designs based around BMR (Balanced Mode Radiator) drivers with a pair of side-mounted force-cancelled bass units, all sharing the same transmission line. Whereas the Curvi BMR mk2 cleverly uses a single transmission line loaded with a 158mm chassis BMR driver, the Etude 5 has four 85mm BMRs forming a vertical linear array. The BMR units are fed full range, whilst the 220mm chassis bass units bolster sub 100 Hz frequencies. A ring-radiator type tweeter steps in from around 6 kHz to, and for the pets in your life, extends up to 40 kHz.

All models in the company’s portfolio are only available directly from the brand. The Etude 5 comes at an introductory price of £13,000. I must state that from personal experience, Chris’s attention to detail is second to none. From the first phone call, through delivery and set-up, to the supply of technical information, I found Chris to be one of those rare people who demonstrates zero holes in his level of consciousness, efficiency, and accuracy. The Etude 5 is currently offered in black or white high gloss as standard. The company offers to supply other RAL colours and finishes and can even match a specific colour sample. 

DESIGN AND BUILD QUALITY OF THE ETUDE 5 LOUDSPEAKERS

I will first comment on the stunning finish of the Etude 5. Although I am not a pianist, the first thing to come to mind when I first inspected the speaker cabinets was, indeed, a high-end piano. Further research revealed that the cabinets are finished in real piano lacquer, applied by Shackleford Pianos, a specialist piano restoration company. Although we have not had much of it lately, the finish really ‘pops’ in sunlight. The cabinets are CNC machined from 25mm thick high-density moisture-resistant fibre board for the carcase and 36mm thick MDF for the baffle. The cabinets are internally braced via strategically placed solid timber braces.

Whilst the cabinets are slim and typically for a floor-standing design, they are deeper than most at just over a metre in height and just under 50cm deep. Being front-ported, they can be placed close to the rear wall with few compromises. Those side-mounted bass units will mean space will be needed on either side of them. Chris and his colleague Richard set them up on spikes and shoes on my carpeted floor, angled with the speaker faces pointing directly at me. They sounded so good that I was not tempted to tweak the setup in any way. 

The bass units (from Morel) have 75mm voice coils and are mounted in what is described as a Force Cancellation Cage and fed from a second-order low pass filter. The four BMR drivers are mounted between a CNC-milled aluminium alloy baffle insert and a 4mm stainless steel fixing plate. A thin layer of polyethene and a cellulose-based composite material is sandwiched between the drivers and plates to provide damping.  According to Dr Chris Liauw, this level of rigour applied to driver mounting is critical for maximum dynamics and realistic transient response. The BMR array is fed full range via a three-element all-pass baffle step equalisation network and covers essentially the full musical frequency range (ca. 50Hz to ca. 10 kHz). The tweeter is from Scanspeak’s Ring Radiator range and contributes via a second-order high pass filter from around 6kHz. This tweeter was specifically chosen for its lack of break-up within the measured frequency range. 

Dr Chris Liauw primarily worked with BMR drivers to avoid the need for a crossover in the 2-3 kHz range, which he says is key to accurate reproduction. All filter and equalisation network components are low-loss audiophile-grade, including a 1.8 mm wire air-core inductor and a 1.4 mm wire ferrite core inductor. The single reversible electrolytic capacitor is bypassed with a film capacitor; the other capacitors are premium-quality metalized polypropylene types. All capacitors are elastomer-wrapped. Heatsink-mounted thick film resistors are used in all three networks.  Parallel resistor networks are employed in the baffle step network and high-pass tweeter filter. One of the resistors is swappable via a solderless connection to allow tuning of the tweeter output and baffle step notch depth. 

To the rear is a single pair of binding posts, which, for me, saves questioning whether I could get better results if I bi-wired them. A large front port with an acrylic diffuser is at the bottom of the speaker’s front face. At the base, below the port, is a forged 8mm steel plinth into which a large pair of steel spikes are mounted. There is an outrigger paddle to the rear, into which a single spike is mounted. Much debate surrounds the use of spikes these days but mounted in the supplied spike cups placed upon my rubber-backed carpet, I felt satisfied that the speakers were suitably de-coupled from my concrete floor. An optional pair of Clipaudio Mute Point bases is offered for those requiring additional isolation at the cost of £1,200. The base may be of particular benefit to users with suspended wooden floors.

Excluding the plinth outriggers, the dimensions of each speaker are 1090mm high, 490mm deep and 183mm wide. The frequency response is quoted as being 20hz-20khz. The Etude 5 has a quoted sensitivity of 85dB/W, and impedance is listed as an average of 10 ohms, which dips to a minimum of 3 ohms at 24 Hz. Despite these figures, I found myself listening with the volume dial in a similar position as with my hypothetically more sensitive Totem speakers. I suspect the Etude 5’s wide dynamic range and high resolution may explain this.

HOW DO THE ETUDE 5 LOUDSPEAKERS SOUND?

The system used for evaluation was based around Simaudio/Moon components, namely the 780D DAC and 600i amplifier. The award-winning Melco N1 is still here and was the source for local and streamed files. Townsend Isolda analogue and CAD and Melco digital cables were used, and Titan Audio provided the mains cables. 

Whilst the early impressions were positive, the initial sonic balance, whilst fast and detailed, was a little lean and lacking in texture. The sound fleshed out over the next few days, and the soundstage became more expansive. Despite this, I had nagging doubts regarding the suitability of the 600i, which I suspected to be the likely culprit for the slight greyness to the balance. As an aside, I was given some new grounding products for me to try and these immediately restored the missing colour and helped the speaker cabinets to sonically ‘vanish’ and this would suggest that the Etude 5 could be a great reviewer’s tool in that it immediately told me about changes made in the rest of the system. 

In general terms, the Etude 5 presents a neutral balance but with a slight bass lift. The BMR drivers are extremely fast to react to dynamics and transient information, giving a slightly more upfront presentation than my reference Totem speakers. Suitable program material can, at times, make you jump out of your seat. Yet they can sound as relaxed and docile as necessary with more sedate recordings. The top end is clean, refined and extended.

As I mentioned previously, the Etude 5 can present an image that is free of the cabinets. With the right recordings, the soundstage expanded well beyond the width of my room and seemingly began from behind the rear wall. Yet the central image is absolutely rock solid, delivering vocals that at times were scarily lifelike.  The Etude 5 will tell you about the microphone used for the recording, and studio effects are laid bare.  

Well-recorded classical music, such as Ann-Sophie Mutter’s 2023 release Bach, Bologne, Previn, Vivaldi, Williams, streamed via Qobuz, was delivered with stunning clarity, precision and dexterity, yet in a flowing and natural manner. The soundstage was so detailed and the acoustic so palpable that with closed eyes, I could be fooled into thinking the string section was in my living room. Paradoxically, the Etude 5 told me just how processed sounding strings of Matthew E. White’s Big Inner (CD rip) were. Thankfully, the music was still presented enjoyably, so this was merely an observation rather than a distraction. One of the musical qualities I look for in a HiFi component is a sense of the music being played, i.e. does a guitar sound like it is being strummed? Does a singer sound like they mean the words they sing? It’s one of the things I get from my Totem Forest Signature speakers. The Etude 5 passes this test in spades and then some. Everything I fed them with sounded like music, which put them amongst some exalted company.

Readers may have noticed I haven’t talked much about the Etude 5’s bass performance. I left this part until last because I did not want to detract from their musical performance. Now we are on the subject; the bass is simply stunning in terms of depth, control, texture, dynamic contrast and timing. Stu, being a huge dance music fan, would completely love these speakers, as I do. They passed the acid test of playing Trentemøller’s Chameleon at high volume without getting the least overblown or out of control, yet those deep notes hit as hard as they are supposed to. The Etude 5 is one of those few speakers able to deliver convincing bass notes at lower listening levels, yet the bass remains under control at higher volume levels – impressive stuff. Being front ported and having the bass units to the side means the bass stays under control when the speakers are placed close to a rear wall, but they will need space to their sides.

CONCLUSION

The Etude 5 is a speaker that I would happily keep in my system if funds allowed. In many ways they remind me of one of my favourite small speakers, the Serhan Swift Mu2, but with a lot more headroom, especially in the low frequencies. This may seem strange comparing a small pair of stand-mounted speakers to a large full-range floor-standing one, but the Etude 5 gives you the speed and transient response of a small speaker but with the power and scale of a large speaker. Interestingly both speakers use a very similar-looking tweeter from Scanspeak’s Ring Radiator range. The Etude 5 images in my room are better than anything, other than, perhaps, the Totem Element Fire V2, although these two are very different sounding transducers. The bass quality rivals that of the Atalanté 5 from Revival Audio, which Stu reviewed and loved back in 2022, but for me, the Etude 5 is far more engaging musically, not to mention more revealing and convincing. If you are reading this review as a potentially interested customer, my advice would be not to hold back; if your system is up to it, the Etude 5 is capable of connecting you to your music in a way that few others can. 

AT A GLANCE

Build Quality And Features:

Both the build and finish are beyond reproach. Unique combination of BMR and dynamic drivers

Sound Quality:

These are full-range speakers that excel at making music, yet the HiFi qualities are equally present and correct. 

Value For Money:

Although the Etude 5 is far from budget price, similar performance from an established manufacturer would cost several thousand pounds more.

We Loved:

Just about everything, but primarily, the Etude 5 delivers both musically and HiFi-wise

The build quality and finish are beyond reproach. They work well at low volume levels

We Didn’t Love So Much:

This is not a criticism, but these are fast and dynamic-sounding speakers and very revealing

If you like a more ‘laid-back’ sound, or if your system has a forward and incisive balance, then an extended demo would be essential  – We invited Chris Liauw to comment on this last point and he commented “it is possible to make the balance less forward and more laid back by increasing the baffle step notch depth and also perhaps reducing the tweeter output.  These changes can be made via solderless resistor exchanges (as Chris pointed out in his review).  The changes can be done by the installation team or via the client themselves if they are not averse to using an allen key and screwdriver.”

Elevator Pitch Review: Suitably paired, the Etude 5 can deliver a truly captivating musical performance. Bass lovers will find much to love here, but there is so much more to these speakers than their stunning low-frequency abilities. The build quality is exemplary, and the finish is stunning. Act fast before the brand grows and the price increases.

Price: £13,000

Chris Ballie

SUPPLIED BY ETUDE SPEAKERS