• AddThis Social Bookmark Button

Ruark Epilogue Loudspeakers Reviewed


  • January 11, 2009

| Print Page | Adjust Font Size:

Free Home Theater Review Weekly Newsletter.

Enter your e-mail below to get Home Theater Review's weekly newsletter with the latest equipment reviews and home theater news sent directly to your inbox.


*Required

'Y'gaddaseeit!' 'Y'gaddaseeit!' 'Y'gaddaseeit!' Three times is usually enough to convince me that something's afoot. Ordinarily, there's so much new and worthwhile kit at a hi-fi show that the surfeit of brilliant new products tends to overwhelm. But when a consensus forms by Day Two, then we're talking Possible Future Classic. And when a member of the press actually buys the thing on the spot...*

Admittedly, the Ruark Epilogue is a budget product; even I could afford a pair at list price. Which means that the latest UK hit is yet another entry level product. Despite hints that the British have ceased to act as if their privates are being cut off when they're told that a hi-fi component costs more than £99, the UK market is decidedly low-end. And however much a certain brand is revelling in the success of winning an award for a £600 speaker from the very magazine which perpetuates - nay, meanness, the reality is that the British would rather spend £300 on a couple of months' worth of beer than on a pair of speakers. Which is why Ruark's sells for £239 per pair, not £339. Let alone £2399.

But we can't blame Ruark (or any other British speaker builder) for continuing to pander to an audience that thinks there was a price freeze in 1979. The very same people who'll invest up to a grand in an annual two weeks' worth of communal vomiting in Spain have forced this issue. Quite simply, the British are prepared to be realistic about the prices of everything hi-fi. Which is why the UK can boast an abundance of cheap speakers. But the Ruark Epilogue is hardly 'cheap'. More precisely, it's an act of charity.

I mean, just look at what's on offer for £239. The Epilogue is a pocket gem, measuring a tidy 290x170x220mm (HWD) - just the ticket for the myriad, underpriced 24in stands which the UK also has been forced to produce in abundance. The enclosure is rear-ported, and it's 'styled and voiced to complement both visually and sonically other Ruark systems'. And it's here that we betray a sad, sick, stomach-churning truth: we are considering this budget offering as a main speaker/full-range system.

It was demonstrated as such at the Hi-Fi Show, and it's being marketed here as a contender in the £200-£300 sector. But note the quote: '...styled and voiced to complement both visually and sonically other Ruark systems'. So now you know its actual : It was designed to complete a Ruark home theatre set-up... You know, mixing it with the likes of the Dialogue One centre channel and Prologue One floorstanding speakers. But for the UK market? It's also billed as a main speaker. Which is sort of like Lambretta marketing a moped as a motorcycle...or the UK alone.

This creates one helluva weird back-handed compliment: Ruark's rear-channel designs are good enough to satisfy UK front-channel needs. What does that say about our expectations? Or what Ruark makes of its home market? It's the sort of thing that leads to having non-entities as both Prime Minister Leader of the Opposition...

OK, OK, I fell for it, too, and the horrible truth was only imparted to me after I'd formed my opinions based on treating it as I would any small, affordable two-way. It would have been different had I only used it in rear-channel mode, and I might never have learned what the Epilogue can do. Yes, it's good a product, so much so that you can turn the dichotomy back-to-front and argue from across the room that it's an insult to the Epilogue to relegate it to rear-channel usage.

Epilogue is a clever, 'grown up' package, with no visible compromises. The cabinet consists of a 15mm MDF 'wrap' in a Satin Black finish, with side panels machined from 18mm MDF. A further sense of solidity and dependability greets the tyre-kicker as soon as the speaker is prised off its stand: the weight of a single Epilogue is 5kg. The £239 outlay pays for black lacquer end-cheeks while an extra £30 buys real wood veneers; it will be interesting to see how many Epilogue customers bite the bullet and plump for the deluxe finish. ('Holy cow!!! Thirty quid!!! I could buy two curry dinners and clothe my nine children for that!')

At the back of this beautifully manufactured enclosure are multi-way binding posts with bi-wiring facility, above them the 'gas flowed rear port', shaped to prevent whistling, whooshing or whatever other artefacts a poorly designed orifice might produce. Under the sturdily framed grille is a 140mm treated paper-coned mid/bass driver with high-loss rubber surround and a high-flux magnet system. The edges of the cone are cut not into a circle but into a pentagon to assist in dissipating vibrations around the cone rather than feed them back into the cone itself; this break-up typically occurs at the crucial 1k-4kHz region, so its removal ensures a smoother frequency response and lower coloration.

Handling the frequencies above 3.5kHz is a 19mm fabric dome tweeter with ferrofluid cooling and damping. Ruark tried to place it as close to the bass/mid unit as possible, stopping short of cutting a crescent out of the surround to make it even cosier. Then again, the frontal area is so small that you're guaranteed a minimal difference in the location of the 'acoustic centres' of the drivers regardless, their proximity necessary to improve driver integration and dispersion in the crossover region.

Given the size of the Epilogue, Ruark is right to suggest that it works well either in stand- or wall-mounted situations, but the rear-firing port determined a placement at least 30cm from the back wall if they're to 'breathe'. Shelf-mounting be a compromise, The review pair arrived with Partington's luscious new Super Stand, which will be available in a custom version for Ruark Epilogue owners, selling for around £199 per pair and with the upward-facing spikes and caps re-located better to suit the Epilogue's footprint. As the Partington just may be the best new mini-monitor stand design since Cliff Stone's Foundation, the £199 price tag is reasonable, but some might balk at purchasing stands which cost roughly 4/5ths that of the speakers themselves.

Maybe I'd have been better off being told that the Epilogue is a rear-channel speaker in front-channel clothing; the specs provide no suggestion of the limitations nor compromises which are quite acceptable in most rear-channel applications, Dolby Digital and DTS not included. The impedance is a straight 8 ohms, which could apply to main or rear speakers, but the sensitivity isn't particularly geared for amplification of the sort which inhabits most A/V receivers. I mean, would you feel comfortable feeding 20W (and a hyped 20W at that) into a speaker with 87dB/1W sensitivity? Ruark even goes so far as to suggest amplifiers rated at between 20W and 100W, which kinda rules out a bunch of rear-channel amplification stages as found in the budget A/V sector.

Also amusing is the optimistic frequency response, stated as 45Hz-20KHz +/-3dB in free space conditions - more than enough to handle anything likely to be derived from the back end of a ProLogic source. But this is no heavyweight, and it sure don't sound like 45Hz to me. What it sounds like is a small two-way which delivers way more than its tariff suggests. But it is no substitute for something packing a couple of 10-inchers...

Since this is no pseudo-horn, high-efficiency design, I stuck with amplification a bit more substantial than what comes out of a surround-sound decoder/receiver. Alas, the Musical Fidelity X-A50s had gone back to their maker, but I still had a Roksan Caspian integrated to hand, plus Bill Beard's 30/60 valve integrated amp (30W/ch) and - to see how the Epilogue fared with a silky signal - Unison Research's Simply 845. Sources included the Krell KAV-300CD at one extreme and the Marantz CD-63SE at the other, and I try them briefly as rear-channel speakers. But forget the latter: the Epilogue is simply too good for that role unless you're using Dolby Digital, DTS or some other full-range surround system.

Let's cut to the weaknesses: there are debilitating characteristics beyond the compromises one would anticipate in a speaker this small. I mean, you weren't really expecting me to tell you that the Epilogue delivers enough bass to crack walnuts/loosen plaster/emulate a T. Rex's belch...did you? The Epilogue only delivers the requisite punch when the levels are on the high side of normal. At my preferred setting, which wouldn't upset a neighbour if I lived sandwiched between two flats, the sound is lightweight enough to remind you that you are not in the presence of woofers the same diameter as a bicycle tyre rim.

The only other repeatable betrayal involved image and soundstage size. While the Epilogue created a wide and fairly deep arena, image height was restricted and there was never a totally convincing sense of the speakers doing a disappearing act. With eyes closed, you had a pretty good idea where the speakers were, save for how far apart they were positioned. So, coupled to the adequate rather than awesome bass, you that the Epilogue is a mini-monitor.

But the sound! If ever a product reminded me of how much we allow spatial and dimensional concerns to distract us from the , the Epilogue is it. Not a week before, I was the guest speaker at a retailer's 'musical evening', and I made a point of including a number of mono recordings in my demonstration, especially 1950s Capitol recordings from Dean Martin. The point was to show that, by using mono recordings when we're assessing products, we can focus on the sound of the instruments rather than their positioning. And if you have to ask which is more important, then you're obviously the sort of pathetic wretch who finds nouvelle cuisine more satisfying than real food.

Epilogue's midband is clear and detailed, with hints of warmth that might be used to tame aggressive solid-state amps of the budget variety. The upper frequencies share the same traits, imparting a delicious sense of coherence, the join between the mid/bass driver and tweeter impossible to detect. The bass, too, demonstrates a mix of clarity and warmth, and the damping is just right, its control not as overly taut as that of a sealed enclosure, but not as 'floppy' as in some ported speakers.

Probably the most outstanding characteristics, the qualities which makes this speaker a stand-out in the budget sector, are its transparency, a lack of distracting coloration and the ability never to sound like its being overworked. By the latter, I don't mean that you can hammer the hell out of it in the SPL department and expect it not to crack. Rather, I mean that it never sounds like it's trying - and then failing - to act like a speaker the size of a long-case clock.

Most small speakers juggle such compromises as nasality or 'honk' with a lack of bass, or the suffer exaggerated highs due to the impression created by truncated bass. The Ruark deals with its challenged lower octaves much in the way a Wilson WATT does: it never attempts to reproduce what it cannot, never straining to deliver thunderous bottom octaves. And so it sounds relaxed, 'in touch with its mini-monitor self', as the politically correct might put it. This, in turn, suggests a refined, confident, capable system which listeners with tough standards will only fault in non-essential areas. It is a speaker which joins the ranks of the Tannoy Mercury 2 and the LS3/5A, a substitute for neither but an alternative to both.

This, of course, presupposes that your priorities place tonal balance above dimensional concerns, midband quality above bass extension, neutrality above impact. If so, then get your butt down to a Ruark dealer, armed with your most detailed and textured rather than dynamic test tracks. Ask the dealer to use an amp a cut above the £300, 50W/ch integrated norm. Sit back. Think 'dram' rather than 'gallon', quality over quantity, persuasion over force.

Then get out your credit card.

Keywords

Ruark Epilogue Loudspeakers Reviewed

Subscribe to the Newsletter
Subscribe to HomeTheaterReview.com's Weekly Newsletter to get the latest news, reviews and insight on the world of home theater, HDTV and audiophile equipment. Subscription is 100% FREE!
*Required
Email Marketing by VerticalResponse
subscribe to rss Subscribe with RSS
Follow home theater equipment reviews and daily news via our RSS feed.
Related Bookshelf Speaker Reviews (Classic):
  • Comment on this article

    0
Post a Comment

Please answer the following question (required) before posting to help us prevent Spam.


Featured Audio-Video News

Experiencing Your Dream Home Theater While On Vacation

Experiencing Your Dream Home Theater While On Vacation -

It isn't any news that the economy is in the dumps. Morphing your living room, garage or basement into the...

Latest Bookshelf Speaker Reviews (Classic)

Rogers db101 Speakers Reviewed -

Wealth by association is a funny concept. But that's never stopped merchandisers from exploiting weird non-sequiturs like Ferrari-badged wristwatches, Marlboro clothing or any of the perfumes which inevitably follow the success of a designer in the rag-trade. And while writing... Click for more...

Sonus faber Concerto GP Loudspeakers Reviewed -

Keeping one step ahead of the competition has been Sonus Faber's trick ever since the birth of an Italian 'school' of speaker design. Whatever the origins of the genre - and there are stories to make Boccaccio blanch - the... Click for more...

B&W Solid Sub/Sat Speaker System Reviewed -

Sub-woofer/satellite systems can be a pain in the butt for reviewers because all the myriad permutations must be addressed. And, hey, does the B&W Solid Solutions system permutate. That's not B&W's fault. They're dealing with a format established years ago... Click for more...

ATC A7 Loudspeakers Reviewed -

"Hot minis continue to proliferate." It's the kind of phrase you'd expect to find in any show report, in any magazine, covering any British hi-fi show. It's the clichÈ that has marked the British loudspeaker industry ever since the 1970s,... Click for more...

Sonus fabber Musical Loudspeaker Reviewed -

It's easy to forget that, once upon a time, the doyen of Italian speaker manufacture made amplifiers. They were mainly valved, oozed the sort of woodcraft found in the company's speakers and sported daft names like 'Quid'.* They were not... Click for more...

Ruark Epilogue Loudspeakers Reviewed -

'Y'gaddaseeit!' 'Y'gaddaseeit!' 'Y'gaddaseeit!' Three times is usually enough to convince me that something's afoot. Ordinarily, there's so much new and worthwhile kit at a hi-fi show that the surfeit of brilliant new products tends to overwhelm. But when a consensus... Click for more...

Opera Platea Loudspeakers Reviewed -

It's not just sound which comes in waves: hardware trends seem to as well. With domestic congestion, urban dwelling and bitch-wives* from hell deeming with increasing vehemence that any speaker larger than a loaf of bread is an intrusion, it... Click for more...

B&W Nautilus 805 Loudspeakers Reviewed -

Presuppose for just a second that the cheapest model in a range will always outsell the model above it in logarithmic proportion. Presuppose it all the way up the range, to its flagship edition, and you can only imagine the... Click for more...

Diapason Karis Bookshelf Loudspeakers Reviewed -

While there's been no announcement to the effect, nor a banner across the upper corner to indicate it, this is part of a series of reviews. The theme? To find a replacement for the late, lamented LS3/5A. The requirements are... Click for more...

ALR Entry 2M Loudspeakers Reviewed -

Irony, said to be something which Americans fail completely to comprehend, was written all over this assignment because of one teensy detail. Before I was allowed to review ALR's Entry 2M budget two-way loudspeaker, I was commanded from on high... Click for more...

Latest Bookshelf Speaker Reviews (Classic)

Rogers db101 Speakers Reviewed -

Wealth by association is a funny concept. But that's never stopped merchandisers from exploiting weird non-sequiturs like Ferrari-badged wristwatches, Marlboro clothing or any of the perfumes which inevitably follow the success of a designer in the rag-trade. And while writing... Click for more...

Sonus faber Concerto GP Loudspeakers Reviewed -

Keeping one step ahead of the competition has been Sonus Faber's trick ever since the birth of an Italian 'school' of speaker design. Whatever the origins of the genre - and there are stories to make Boccaccio blanch - the... Click for more...

B&W Solid Sub/Sat Speaker System Reviewed -

Sub-woofer/satellite systems can be a pain in the butt for reviewers because all the myriad permutations must be addressed. And, hey, does the B&W Solid Solutions system permutate. That's not B&W's fault. They're dealing with a format established years ago... Click for more...

ATC A7 Loudspeakers Reviewed -

"Hot minis continue to proliferate." It's the kind of phrase you'd expect to find in any show report, in any magazine, covering any British hi-fi show. It's the clichÈ that has marked the British loudspeaker industry ever since the 1970s,... Click for more...

Sonus fabber Musical Loudspeaker Reviewed -

It's easy to forget that, once upon a time, the doyen of Italian speaker manufacture made amplifiers. They were mainly valved, oozed the sort of woodcraft found in the company's speakers and sported daft names like 'Quid'.* They were not... Click for more...

Ruark Epilogue Loudspeakers Reviewed -

'Y'gaddaseeit!' 'Y'gaddaseeit!' 'Y'gaddaseeit!' Three times is usually enough to convince me that something's afoot. Ordinarily, there's so much new and worthwhile kit at a hi-fi show that the surfeit of brilliant new products tends to overwhelm. But when a consensus... Click for more...

Opera Platea Loudspeakers Reviewed -

It's not just sound which comes in waves: hardware trends seem to as well. With domestic congestion, urban dwelling and bitch-wives* from hell deeming with increasing vehemence that any speaker larger than a loaf of bread is an intrusion, it... Click for more...

B&W Nautilus 805 Loudspeakers Reviewed -

Presuppose for just a second that the cheapest model in a range will always outsell the model above it in logarithmic proportion. Presuppose it all the way up the range, to its flagship edition, and you can only imagine the... Click for more...

Diapason Karis Bookshelf Loudspeakers Reviewed -

While there's been no announcement to the effect, nor a banner across the upper corner to indicate it, this is part of a series of reviews. The theme? To find a replacement for the late, lamented LS3/5A. The requirements are... Click for more...

ALR Entry 2M Loudspeakers Reviewed -

Irony, said to be something which Americans fail completely to comprehend, was written all over this assignment because of one teensy detail. Before I was allowed to review ALR's Entry 2M budget two-way loudspeaker, I was commanded from on high... Click for more...

All Bookshelf Speaker Reviews (Classic)

Latest Equipment Reviews

Mapleshade Time-Correcting Maple Bedrock Speaker Stands Reviewed -

For ages the adage with bookshelf and/or monitor speakers has always been getting the tweeter or tweeter/midrange as close to ear height will yield the best results. Of course proper placement in a room as well as in relation to... Click for more...

Mapleshade Samson V.1 Equipment Rack Reviewed -

Seemingly everyone makes an equipment rack of some form or another these days with varying degrees of success, however for best results you're better off going with a third party or specialty equipment rack. The problem with going with an... Click for more...

Oppo BDP-83 Special Edition Universal Player Reviewed -

Oppo Digital's first Blu-ray player the BDP-83 entered the market in mid 2009 to numerous accolades. A mere half year later, Oppo Digital, not satisfied with the untapped performance potential of the player, released the BDP-83 Special Edition reviewed here.... Click for more...

Parker Audio 95MK II Loudspeakers Reviewed -

Chances are you've never heard of or seen a pair of Parker Audio 95MK II loudspeakers. Because of that fact, you're probably thinking they're some sort of uber-esoteric, high-end, ultra-expensive loudspeakers from some designer's garage in Munich. Well, you'd be... Click for more...

Bel Canto e. One S300iu Integrated Amplifier Reviewed -

Integrated amplifiers have always been an effective and affordable way to get into two-channel audio. However, in recent years, integrated amplifiers have come into their own, offering performance and simplicity that even high-end separate systems have trouble matching. Case in... Click for more...

Bel Canto e.One S300 Power Amplifier Reviewed -

Stereo amplifiers have been a staple since music went from single speakers to two-way back in the day. Over the years, we've seen stereo amplifiers go from simple, manageable black boxes to over-the-top, larger-than-thou space heaters for the home and... Click for more...

OmniMount Link Series A/V Stands Reviewed -

As its name suggests, OmniMount's Link Series is a modular line of A/V stands that you can mix and match to craft the exact entertainment solution you need. You can also add on as your system grows. The Link Series,... Click for more...

Paradigm Reference Studio 20 v.5 Bookshelf Speaker Reviewed -

I've been a fan of Paradigm for years, owning and enjoying seemingly every speaker in their product line from the awesome and affordable Atoms to their flagship Signature S8s. Over the years there have been two Paradigm speaker designs that... Click for more...

Bel Canto REF 1000M Mono Amplifier Reviewed -

When one thinks of a 500-Watt mono amplifier you probably picture a large, heat sink clad hunk of steel that weighs more than the car you drove it home in and probably costs more too. What if I told you... Click for more...

OmniMount VideoBasics TV Mounts Reviewed -

You've spent the extra money to buy an ultra-thin HDTV. The last thing you want to do is hinder the minimalist look by mating the TV with a bulky wall-mount. OmniMount designed the VideoBasics line of flat-panel TV mounts with... Click for more...

Read All Reviews