Sitting under a shade tree at the edge of the Willamette River watching brilliant leaves fall, I drifted off to a time and place when I knew young love. There is something about the nostalgia of fall that makes me daydream of a time when I knew it all, yet was very impressionable--the age of curiosity, the age of innocence.

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Her name was Fidelity, and though I remember that first glimpse, I am unclear as to what it was about her that captured me. Perhaps her voice...or purity...or strength...or finesse. Perhaps everything about her... perhaps.

Kappa was the mother of Fidelity, as I knew it. To me, there was nothing more pure.

But a war was raging around the world in which Fidelity had no place. Digital signal processing was a relentless battle of formats destined for digital domination. By the time the smoke began to clear Fidelity was gone . . . as is often the case in love and war.

Recently, from the ashes, the love and legend of Infinity Kappa was reborn. But would Fidelity be the same?

Unique Features - What makes the Kappa Series unique from most of the Infinity line of loudspeakers is the use of real wood finishes. The Kappa Series speakers are a wonderful marriage of Scandinavian craftsmanship and technology, built entirely in Denmark.

To achieve sonic accuracy and musicality, all Kappa Series drivers, woofers, midrange and tweeters, are constructed with Infinity's patented Ceramic Metal Matrix Diaphragm (C.M.M.D.) just as in the Entra ensemble we reviewed last month. This is also the same driver technology utilized in the flagship Intermezzo and Prelude MTS models. C.M.M.D. driver material is a constrained-layer sandwich construction formed by bonding alumina (a ceramic com pound), to both sides of an aluminum core, producing driver diaphragms of ultra-low mass and ultra-high rigidity for extraordinary transient response and resolution. With the inherent resonance of the drivers moved well beyond the audible range, unwanted sonic colorations are eliminated.

The results are dramatically reduced distortion and cone breakup, excellent detail resolution and smooth, consistent sound quality throughout the frequency range.

The floor standing Kappa 600 (38"x 8.25" x 17") features a single 6.5" midrange and 1" tweeter and maintains a sleek appearance by employing a 10" side-firing woofer and a rear firing port. This allows the Kappa 600 to achieve accurate low frequency response without a large, obtrusive appearance.

The Kappa 200 (14.25"x 8.25"x 14.5") is effectively a "bookshelf' version of the 600, utilizing the same driver array minus the 10" woofer. The Kappa 200s are also magnetically shielded so that they can be placed next to a video display (i.e., used as the main L/R). There are optional metal stands available from Infinity that are, again, excellent quality and match the overall look of the Kappa series well.

The Kappa Center is another impressive addition to the line. The three-way design of the magnetically shielded Center incorporates a 1" tweeter, atop a 4" midrange flanked by dual 6.5" woofers.

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