Arendal Sound 1961 Tower Speaker Review

Arendal Sound is a relatively new speaker company based in Norway that sells direct to the end user, shipping their products across the pond to their U.S. warehouse and from there to their American-based customers. It takes some real stones for a prospective customer to lay down a substantial sum of money to get speakers shipped in from halfway around the world, sight unheard. But Arendal has established itself as a speaker force to be reckoned with and despite the general downturn in the component audio business these days, the company is enjoying some real success. Audioholics has reviewed their 1723 monitor (a large ‘bookshelf’ speaker, with dual 8-inch woofers and a 1.1” tweeter in their proprietary waveguide) and found it to be beyond excellent and the 1723 Tower S, which was similarly great.. Likewise, we’ve reviewed three of their subwoofers (the 1723 2V, the 1723 1S/1V, and the 1961 1S/1V) and found them to be unimpeachable in their engineering execution and superb sonic performance in their respective size/price categories.

As we said in our review of the 1723 Monitors:

Over the past few years, Arendal Sound has been building a reputation as a loudspeaker manufacturer that makes high-performance but affordable home theater-centered speakers. They are a Norwegian company whose main market is Europe, but they ship worldwide, and they are set up to be easily purchased and shipped across the globe. They make THX-certified speakers that look nice enough to not be out of place in an upscale living room. Many of the speakers that have that level of performance married to that level of looks tend to cost a fortune. Arendal’s loudspeakers are not the least expensive out there, but they are shockingly low-priced considering what they promise to bring to the table.

The 1961 Series is Arendal’s more “value”-oriented line. We wanted to see how one of their so-called “lesser” products would hold up under close scrutiny. Did they cut too many corners? Do their design choices make sense? Their 1723 Series establishes a very high benchmark. We wanted to see how the 1961 Towers would do, both on an absolute level and on a relative level for their size and price.

In terms of similar speakers (mid-sized/mid-priced towers) that have passed through my esteemed listening room over the past few years, the Arendal 1961s at $1799/pr. are a tad less than the RBH-55Es at $2000/pr., the B&W CM8’s at $2700/pr., the Atlantic Technology AT-1’s at $2500/pr., the NHT Classic Fours at $2700/pr., and the Paradigm Prestige 75F at $3000/pr. Arendal is a direct-to-consumer product; the others are a mix of direct and brick-and-mortar products (to whatever extent brick-and-mortar still exists these days), so the Arendals should have a little lower price without the retail “middleman” markup. But in perfect candor, I consider all of these speakers to be in the exact same price category and I will make my comparisons on that basis.

It’s a shame that “good” retail brick-and-mortar audio stores are essentially defunct these days, because, in addition to not being able to do in-person A-B speaker comparisons, consumers are now faced with the prospect of having to repack and ship large speakers for return credit if they are unhappy with their purchase. Simply bringing them back to the store was a much easier proposition many years ago. But the times are what they are, and this is the way higher-end audio business is done today.

Arendal offers free shipping to buyers in the U.S. They also offer a 60-day in-home trial (that includes free shipping on returns!), which they say is double the trial period of anyone else. As their website says,

“Our products represent a high-value to-performance ratio, and returns are rare. Thus we are very comfortable offering double the standard time you get to spend with our speakers.”

(Ed note: Actually, SVS offers a 45-day trial with their products and there are probably others. Still, Arendal’s 60-day period is laudable.) Their speakers are guaranteed for 10 years from the date of purchase. Arendal will even honor the balance of the 10-year warranty to subsequent owners, provided they have the original bill of sale that proves the original purchase date. In my experience, this is unique. They do say on their website that they prefer sending the user a replacement driver or module, rather than having the customer send the entire unit back to them, which is quite understandable. Although the idea of spending a considerable sum of money on audio products that you’ve never seen, touched, or heard may seem preposterous, Arendal’s website goes a long way towards putting those doubts to rest, with a long string of “consumer-first” statements and policies. This one, to me, was the best:

“We are not the right match for you if you want average products.”

Okay, so that’s a bit of background and context on Arendal and their way of addressing the market. Sounds nice and everything. All the right words. But it’s time to put those nice words to the test.

Design Overview

The speakers arrived in cartons covered in security plastic. The plastic itself was perfectly intact and the cartons didn’t have any dings, gouges, or tears. The best thing about the cartons is that they weren’t too big (!), as seen in the photo. These are modest-sized speakers, which in my post-retirement years is a very welcome thing indeed. When I got my Legacy Signature SE’s three years ago, I looked at them in my garage, pondering how I was going to get them into the house, thinking the whole time, “What the heck have I done?” (Okay, maybe I didn’t say “heck.”)

                 

            Arendal 1961s in garage—manageable size        Legacy Signature SEs in garage—what the heck was I thinking?

Removing the security plastic revealed a fairly nondescript kraft carton, refreshingly bereft of any gaudy graphics. Just the model no. and company name. Actually, a bit too plain: An “Open this end first” or some other instruction would have been nice, since the user has no idea how the speaker is oriented inside the carton and thus doesn’t know the best way to unbox them. Nice thick carton walls, however, very rugged.

     

Plain kraft carton and rugged carton walls 

However, I could see from the clear tape running the length of the box (no staples—Yay!) that the speakers are meant to be opened “coffin style,” not from the ends. So I dutifully sliced the tape and opened the carton flaps.

 

Carton opened “coffin” style

What a nice packaging job! The speakers are nestled deep inside what appears to be polyethylene foam blocks (dyed black—nice touch), not the cheaper, more “crumbly” Styrofoam. This may be about the biggest ratio of “External carton size to internal speaker” that I’ve yet seen. There is a lot of foam buffer zone around the speaker, which I guess is to be expected for speakers coming from overseas to America.

 

Generous foam packing

The speakers themselves were shrouded in a nice black cloth bag, as was the two-piece grille. The grill attaches to the speaker’s baffle board with neodymium magnets, so there are no clunky pins and receptacles to ruin the look. I give Arendal credit—the grille has a plastic mounting area for their logo both on the bottom of the grille and in the middle of the long dimension of the grille. It looks like the same grille used on other Arendal products as well, likely their 1961 horizontal Center speaker and 1961 Monitor in addition to this 1961 Tower (two grilles for the Tower). Just a different logo location. Tooling for a plastic grille is expensive—when a manufacturer has to tool something (a grille frame, tweeter faceplate, whatever), they will complain that tool is a “four-letter word!” Full credit to Arendal for using a common tool for a grille that can be used on a few different models. That’s something I would notice, having been on the “inside” of speaker development at major companies for all those decades.

 

Speaker in bag and neatly tied bag closure

 

 Tooled plastic grille

The inside carton foam has a cut-out spot for the spike feet kit. I’d have liked more complete instructions on how to attach the spikes and more identifying pictures with callouts. I could figure everything out easily enough, but a less experienced speaker buyer might be a little confused. There was a cursory mention of “spikes” in the 1961 brochure that came with the speakers, but it was just a very general overview. Arendal needs to provide more complete spike/foot attachment info, with callout pictures, and it needs to be in the spike kit box.

 

Spike feet box and brochure

The bottom of the speaker has machine screw inserts to attach the metal outrigger feet—six inserts (two rows of three). Given the cabinet’s under 7-inch width, it’s definitely overkill to put three inserts there when two would have done just fine. But three inserts is typical of the way that Arendal designed and built this loudspeaker. Everything is just a bit better than it has to be, just a little more than you expect.

 

Machine screw inserts and foot outrigger

The slot vent at the bottom rear of the cabinet came “pre-sealed,” with a chunk of foam very snugly jammed into the slot vent. There were no instructions on how to remove it (it was so tightly jammed in, I thought I was going to tear it trying to get it out), nor was there any discussion as to why it was there in the first place, why you would or would not want to leave it in the port, etc. I will speak to this subject at length later on when I discuss performance and listening tests, but just from a setup standpoint, the user needs more and better information on why the vent plug is there and how to best remove it.

  

Vent, with foam ‘sealing’ insert

Right above the slot vent is the terminal plate and connection binding posts. This whole area is very nicely done. The terminal plate itself appears to be made from brushed metal, and the binding post knobs are made from beefy metal, not cheap plastic. The posts themselves are spaced too far apart to use a standard banana plug adaptor, but I found the extra-wide spacing to be a benefit that gives the user some nice “working room” to connect the speaker wire. Good job, well thought out on Arendal’s part.

Brushed metal terminal plate and beefy metal knobs

From an actual acoustic design standpoint, the 1961 is a 5-driver, 2 ½-way system. There are four 5.5-inch woofers, which Arendal describes as follows:

…long fibre pulp paper with our proprietary coating that ensures covering a wide frequency range from the deepest bass to well above 1500Hz without any hint of cone resonance. The cone material also makes it inherently self-damped which results in a natural sound without coloration throughout the frequency band. The entire surround of the driver is designed to follow the same curvature as our waveguide, so the entire baffle of the speaker has a sleek appearance. No screws or cheap plastic to hide them.

--Arendal Sound

The surrounds extend into gaskets that cover the mounting screws, making for a very clean look. The two lower woofers are low-passed at 120 Hz, a very low frequency. This frequency ensures that the lower woofers do not intrude on the midrange at all, preserving the cleanest, most interference-free radiation possible. The upper woofers extend to 1500 Hz, where they hand off to the tweeter.

It's worth noting that 1500 Hz is a very low tweeter crossover frequency and it means that a larger portion of the audio spectrum is being handled by the lighter, “faster” driver than would be the case in a conventional 2-way with a crossover frequency an octave or so higher (around 3000 Hz). The choice of a 1.1-inch dome—which is meaningfully larger in circumference than a 1-inch dome (11% bigger) enables this tweeter to reach down to this low frequency easily and is indicative of the intelligent, thoughtful engineering on Arendal’s part.

The tweeter is essentially the same 1.1” soft dome as in their more expensive 1732 Series, but the 1961s utilize a less expensive ceramic magnet instead of a neodymium magnet. Here’s what we said about this tweeter in the 1723 Monitor review:

The tweeter is a 1.1” synthetic soft dome loaded into a circular aluminum waveguide. The waveguide should help control dispersion by constricting the lower end of the tweeter’s band but also widening the high end. This is done so that the dispersion remains more consistent than what normally occurs for dome tweeters without a waveguide, which is a very wide dispersion at their lower end that ends up becoming narrow at the top of the tweeter’s frequency range. Arendal’s literature states that the tweeter uses a neodymium ring magnet, copper and aluminum shorting rings, ferrofluid cooling, as well as an aluminum heatsink and a damped rear chamber to mitigate resonances from backwave radiation.

--James Larson - Contributing writer, Audioholics

I will add that although theoretically a 1.1-inch dome will have a CDF (Critical Dimensional Frequency, the point at which a driver becomes dimensional and ‘beams’ its output forward like a flashlight)) of 12,327 Hz compared to a 1-inch dome’s CDF of 13,560 Hz or a ¾-inch dome’s CDF of 18,080 Hz, in a practical sense the difference is far less than a half-octave and the frequency range is so high that there is very little program material there anyway. Plus, Arendal’s well-done waveguide will ameliorate those dispersion differences to a large degree, so overall, this is an extremely well-conceived and well-executed high-frequency section. A lower mid-to-tweeter crossover is definitely worth sacrificing a tad of theoretical dispersion at the (virtually inaudible) extreme high end. This was the right design choice.

The cabinet is made from HDF (High-Density Fiberboard) instead of the more common MDF (Medium Density Fiberboard). This gives the enclosure great strength and rigidity and considering that this is a pretty compact cabinet with no dimension exceeding 33 inches, the entire unit seems as solid as the proverbial bank vault. The front panel is a full 25 mm thick, which gives it plenty of “beef” to be routed for the drivers and still have enough thickness to be strong. Naysayers will point out that the ultra rigidity of HDF actually contributes to a little more “ringing” in the panels compared to the softer, less dense MDF, which some people think is actually more acoustically absorptive. One distinct, undeniable advantage to HDF, as Arendal points out, is that it’s able to be machined more precisely and cleaner than MDF during the manufacturing process. In any event, this is quite an impressive box, and it’s amazingly heavy for its size.

Another surprisingly nice touch was the fact that Arendal uses six machine screws with reciprocal threaded inserts to mount the woofers to the baffle. It would be expected—and perfectly acceptable—that the drivers would mount into the baffle with four wood screws directly into the MDF. But no—Arendal uses six screws and they fasten into threaded inserts that will never strip out the wood material (remember, Arendal uses HDF, not MDF) the way wood screws will after a while. This is amazing attention to detail and it costs Arendal more money to do it this way. The fascinating thing is that they certainly didn’t need to mount those small 5.5-inch drivers this securely (wood screws would’ve been fine), and with four woofers sharing the bass duties equally, no single woofer is going to be driven that hard and vibrate too much. This kind of “overkill” is the way Arendal does things.

However….a former boss of mine at a speaker company I worked at in the 90’s would always say, “Don’t give away invisible gifts. If there is something good about the product but it’s not readily visible to the customer’s eye, make a big deal about it in the brochure or on the website.” Listening, Arendal? Point this out.

 

Baffle is 25 mm thick, and uses machine screws with threaded inserts

The finish, too, is noteworthy. It’s just a textured matte black paint, but it’s quite obviously applied with care and it exudes quality. Between the neo-attached grilles, the brushed metal terminal plate, the metal binding post knobs, the solidity and weight of the cabinet, and the perfectly done paint finish, the Arendal 1961 Tower comes across as a no-excuses, top-quality product. First class, all the way.

Set-Up

I set up and listened to the Arendal 1961s in a two-channel music system. The room is a very large 24 x 26-ft.  “great room” with a 14-ft, tray ceiling. One wall is open to an adjoining 14 x 23-ft. kitchen. This is a large acoustic space and it really puts extreme demands on a set of speakers if they are to “fill it up.” The room is an almost perfect mix of absorptive/reflective surfaces and the angularity of the tray ceiling contributes nicely to the total lack of annoying resonances or “dead spots” in this room. It’s a great-sounding space, even though it’s very large.

Excellent recordings, especially of small-scale ensembles like jazz trio or solo piano, can sound almost live in this room. I have tremendous confidence that this room allows equipment to sound as good—or bad—as it can.

The 1961s were set up about 1 ½ feet from the wall behind them and about 6-7 feet from the sidewalls along the 24-ft. wall. That means the speakers were 10 feet apart. I experimented with placement by moving them closer to the wall behind them but found that the balance got a little ‘tubby’ when the speakers were within about 6 inches to a foot off the wall. The speakers have pretty good horizontal dispersion and toe-in was modest—perhaps 10˚ or so. Set up this way, the speakers threw a very solid, well-defined image with a good phantom center. Even though the 1961 is an M-T-M design that somewhat restricts the vertical dispersion (presumably intentionally), there was not any noticeable change in tonal character whether the listener is seated or standing. Another thing that surprised me—pleasantly—was the fact that even though the tweeter is barely 27 inches above the floor—well below the typical 35-38 inch ear height of a seated listener—the speaker’s highs were not “missing in action” or diminished in any way. I can think of two factors that contributed to this agreeable outcome:

1.      The 1961’s cabinet has a “leaning back” shape that throws the speaker’s HF output a bit higher than a straight up-and-down cabinet would. Another good design choice by Arendal.

2.      The tweeter’s waveguide really does what it’s supposed to do and the tweeter propagates the entire HF spectrum quite uniformly into the listening area.

These are not placement-sensitive speakers and I would confidently guess that that’ll sound quite good in a very wide range of reasonably sane locations.

Associated Equipment

The rest of the system is simple but straightforward, and very high quality. The pre-amplifier/power amp combo was Parasound’s New Classic 2100 pre-amp and 2250 power amp, rated conservatively at 200/385 watts per channel 20-20k, into 8/4 Ω loads, respectively. The 1961s are rated at 4 ohms, so they have access to the 400 watts per channel available for them here.

The CD player was the NAD 545 with Burr-Brown DACs. Despite the imposing size of the listening room, this is more than enough clean, distortion-free power to ensure that the electronics never intruded upon the listening sessions in a negative way. Speaker wire was simple 14 ga. twisted-end, inserted into the holes in the binding posts. Basic Monster interconnects between the pre/power and the CD/pre. Nothing lunatic-fringe about the connectors and speaker wire, and more importantly, nothing that could even remotely be considered a defining or distracting influence on the sound.

Woofers and Crossover

Although Arendal doesn’t spell it out explicitly in the brochure or on their website, I’m going to make the assumption that all four woofers are identical, and their operating bandwidth is dictated/controlled by the crossover, not by the drivers’ characteristics.  Similarly, their published information doesn’t specify the crossover slopes or other specifics of the network, but when I asked Arendal, they told me the lower woofers were rolled off above 120 Hz with a 2^nd-order slope (12 dB/oct.), while the upper woofers and tweeter were integrated via reciprocal 4^th-order (24 dB/oct.) low-pass/high-pass slopes. This is unusual (and better) than average. Most 2 ½-way speakers simply use a single inductor (1^st-order) low-pass on the lower woofer section.

The crossover uses high-quality components, including air-core chokes in the listening-sensitive tweeter circuit that can take higher input levels without saturating compared to ordinary iron-core chokes. They also use good quality polypropylene capacitors and high-power resistors. The entire subject of crossover capacitor type is a controversial topic that strays pretty far into ‘snake oil’ territory, so I’m going to leave that to others to argue over. Suffice to say that, along with ‘boutique’ connector cables, extreme speaker wire, fancy internal speaker wiring, cabinet spikes, amplifier anti-vibration feet, AC power conditioners, and all the other things in the “peripheral” audio category, I consider myself an agnostic on all these matters. Or perhaps I should simply invoke my late Jewish grandmother’s pet phrase: “It couldn’t hoit.

 

1723 S Tower crossover (1961 Tower crossover is very similar in layout and componentry)

The woofers utilize a beefy stamped steel basket with good reinforcement and appear to have a 1-inch voice coil. The magnet is large and substantial. Remember, there are four woofers splitting the heavy lifting of the current-heavy lower frequencies, so combined, they should be able to handle any reasonable input power scenario. They should also be able to handle pretty much any unreasonable input power scenario as well. Combining the actual piston area of the four woofers, we get to around 72 sq. in. By comparison, an average 10-inch woofer (9-inch piston, assuming a ½-inch surround) has a radiating area of about 63 sq. in., so the 1961‘s four woofers combined are a shade larger than a 10-inch woofer. That should yield some solid bass and it does, as we’ll see in the Listening Impressions.

Arendal Sound 1961 Tower Listening Impressions & Conclusion

Like many people in this business, I have listened to a lot of speakers over the years. Reviewers and designers alike develop an acute sense of critical hearing when it comes to evaluating a speaker’s sound. In the very recent past, I’ve had some really excellent mid-sized mid–priced floorstanding speakers pass through these parts, such as the Atlantic Technology AT-1, $2500/pr. (Stereophile-recommended for several years, Class B up to $20,000/pr., with their revolutionary H-PAS bass technology), the B&W CM8, $2500/pr., the NHT Classic Four with its dome midrange and ¾-inch dome tweeter $2700/pr., the Paradigm Prestige 75F $3000/pr. and most recently, the RBH Impression Series R-55E, $2000/pr. All of these speakers are similar in size, price and general acoustic quality. I’d be happy to live with any of them on a day-to-day basis.

But they’re not the same. They have their individual character, their strengths and weaknesses, and their particular colorations. Now along comes the Arendal 1961 Tower. How does it stack up, both in an absolute sense considered on its own and in comparison to other speakers of similar size/price that I’ve heard?

The 1961 Series we looked at is a $1799/pr. tower in matte back. For real hi-fi aficionados like Audioholics readers, we’d consider that mid-priced. For the average Joe/Jane on the street whose idea of home music listening is to say, “Alexa, play Allman Brothers,” speakers that cost $1799/pr. are clearly intended only for the lunatic fringe, a relic from another time, incontrovertible proof of the seriously misplaced priorities of anyone who labels themself an “audiophile.”

I used a wide range of contemporary and older CDs, all very well recorded, mostly jazz, pop, and classical. I did not concentrate on super low-frequency material, because the 1961s aren’t subwoofers and they make no claim about having meaningful response much below 40 Hz. I have an SVS 3000SB subwoofer in my system, but for this review, I turned it off and ran the Arendals full-range. I also did a quick A-B with my reference Legacy

Signature SEs, just to get a quick relative gauge on the 1961’s performance against a much larger, more expensive (over four times as expensive, three times the size!) speaker whose performance is well-known and accurately cataloged.

 

Unfair comparison: The Arendal 1961s and Legacy Signature SEs

Quincy Jones, Walking in Space

This is a 1969 (!) recording of surprisingly excellent tonal accuracy, with outstanding bass reach and detail. The background tape hiss betrays the 1960s-era vintage of the recording, but everything else is first-rate. This is a studio big band of jazz heavyweights, led by Music Director Jones in a collection of remarkably noteworthy performances. The actual tonal quality is superbly realistic. Grady Tate’s tasteful, swinging drumming throughout is marked by his understated approach, punctuated by instantaneous explosive fills. On a good speaker, you can get a sense of the floor tom’s head resonance in a three-dimensional space and his snare drum rimshots have a distinct feel of ‘air’ and liveliness. Likewise, when properly reproduced, Freddie Hubbard’s Harmon-muted trumpet has great growl and buzz, but it should never get overly edgy or piercing. On the entire album, bassist Ray Brown is all over the place (on both electric and acoustic bass) with melodic runs and fills up and down the bass spectrum. The clarity of the bass and the ability to follow every note no matter how “busy” the band is above the bassline is a major part of this music’s interest.

The 1961s came up big on this album, delivering every bit of excitement, detail, and space that I know is there.

   

Williams is probably best known for his stint as the drummer in the never-equaled-again Miles David Quintet from 1964-1968. This album dates from 1989 and is a particularly terrific recording of one of Williams’ best post-Miles bands. The opening cut, Geo Rose, is noteworthy for the amazing sharpness of Williams’ hi-hats and ride cymbal, and the depth and power of his bass drum. There is a lot of very high-frequency energy on this tune and a speaker with even the slightest tendency towards HF emphasis is going to be a non-starter here.

Once again, the 1961s displayed their excellence. The tune was lively and exciting, but there wasn’t the smallest hint of edginess or shrillness. None. This tune is an extremely difficult tune to reproduce correctly, but there were no complaints on my end. Tough to believe that this kind of sound was coming from a 33-inch-tall speaker, effortlessly filling a 24 x 26-foot room. Switching to the Legacy Signature SEs, sure, you could hear that the reproduction could be deeper and a bit more detailed and spacious, but not that much more! The cliché “Punching above their weight” is trite and over-used. But if ever it applied, it applies here.

Weather Report, Heavy Weather

The jazz fusion group Weather Report is well-known for their many adventurous and creative albums over the years and the non-stop string of outstanding musicians that rotated around the group’s founding core of keyboard player Joseph Zawinul and saxophonist Wayne Shorter. This 1978 version of the group is one of the best, because it features the incredible bass playing of Jaco Pastorius. The tune I used here was Teen Town. A furious, uptempo, syncopated funkfest, this is exciting, pulsating music that typifies Weather Report’s amazing musical energy. It’s very well-recorded also, with Pastorius’ bass and some strong bass drum kicks venturing well below 40Hz. I addition, there are some snare drum transients that you swear are going to deposit the midrange driver in your lap when you play them at an extremely high volume. This cut is 2:51 of non-stop visceral impact.

This was the only cut where the 1961 came up a little short. Jaco’s bass and the kick drum hits were both just a little below the effective lower cutoff of the 1961 and the tune only sounded very good, not great. The Legacy Signature SEs really pulled way ahead on this cut. Back in the 1960s, Acoustic Research (AR) was the leading American speaker brand and their products received one great review after another. Their best speaker was the AR-3a, a 12-inch, 3-way, acknowledged by most critics and reviewers at the time (1967-68) to be about the ‘best’ speaker around for deep bass extension, low distortion, and smooth, linear frequency response. In 1969, AR followed up on the 3a with the AR-5, using the same dome mid and tweeter as the 3a, but with a 10-inch (not 12-inch) woofer in a slightly smaller cabinet and at a lower price. High Fidelity magazine (one of the Big Three magazines of the day that included Stereo Review and Audio) said in their generally favorable review of the AR-5 that (in a large room), ”…the AR-3a sounds like a masterful, authoritative reproducer, while by comparison, the AR-5 sounds like a very good medium-priced speaker.”

That phrase sprang to mind as I switched between the two speakers on Teen Town. This was the only cut that made me really aware of the 1961’s limitations. But if the Legacy Signature SE wasn’t there for direct comparison, the 1961’s limits would’ve been far less noticeable, if at all.

    

Steely Dan, Aja
This is a nicely-recorded pop CD, with Steely Dan’s trademark clarity, solid deep bass and crisply-etched vocals. Everyone knows this disc well. In its day, it set a new high-water mark for clarity, spaciousness and bass impact. Even today, only the best speakers can keep Steve Gadd’s explosive drum fills on the title track clear and well-defined under Wayne Shorter’s tenor sax solo. (Plus, your amplifier has got to have the stones to not run out of juice during those loud floor tom fills, especially in a large room like mine. Luckily, no sweat there with the Parasound 2250.) The 1961s did very well here, never losing their composure, even at near-uncomfortably high SPLs. They never got screechy or edgy and maintained a nice warmth and musicality at all times. It was on this album that the 1961s first evidenced that slight trace of midrange boxiness, but it was never objectionable and it was really only evident in the totally unfair comparison with the four-times-as-expensive Legacy Signature SEs.

Lee Ritenhour, Festival

A really terrific recording on the now-defunct GRP label, Festival has the typical GRP sonic signature—superb, natural midrange clarity and astonishingly deep, organic bass. Although much of this album is eminently forgettable, formulaic “smooth jazz,” there is some real musical goodness here too. Especially notable is the track Odile, Odila, a Latin-flavored vocal ditty with an infectious pulse and some really deep bass tones. This cut, played back at a fairly high level on speakers like the 1961s, powered by gobs of ultra-clean, distortion-free Parasound wattage, is truly striking and the sound defines what “high fidelity” is all about. I was shaking my head in disbelief listening to this kind of sound coming from such diminutive, unassuming compact floorstanders like the 1961s.

     

Robert Shaw, Atlanta Orchestra and Chorus, Firebird Suite and music from Prince Igor

The Telarc label had, in my opinion, the very best classical recording quality of any label I’ve heard. A true “audiophile” brand, their recordings have become legendary over the years, especially for deep, natural, uncompressed/unrestricted bass. Who can forget the warning they printed on their “1812” CD, warning the user that the cannon shots went down to 6 Hz and not to play them too loud because you could damage your speakers? But it was the absolutely sonorous, sumptuous quality of their midrange/string sound that really won the day. Gorgeous, organic, realistic sound.

This CD is no exception. The massed coral sound on Polovetsian Dances is stunning, and never gets smeared over or lost in the orchestral mix. The bass drum strikes during the climax of Firebird are majestic. On truly excellent speakers, this recording will send chills down your spine. With the 1961s, I definitely reached for my scarf, even without the 20-40 Hz octave.

Confession: Although I didn’t use my SVS 3000SB subwoofer at all during my time with the 1961s, I just couldn’t resist trying it on this CD with the Arendals. The addition of the sub pushed the 1961’s sound into “Ok, that’s about all I’d ever need” territory,

Melody Gardot My One and Only Thrill

 

Gardot is one of the “new breed” of female jazz vocalist with a breathy, sensual voice and a commanding musical presence. Her albums are meticulously produced affairs, with well-recorded, natural instrumental backing. My One and Only Thrill is a 2 CD album from 2009; one disc recorded in the studio, the other a segment of a live concert in Paris.

The last cut on the studio disc is “Over the Rainbow.” This is a great rendition of that classic tune and an equally great recording. Taken at mid-tempo with a modern 8^th-note semi-funky/Latin-esque feel, it starts with a percussion vamp and then follows with a deep and powerful bass line, before Gardot’s vocals enter the scene. She is very close mic’d, but there isn’t a trace of harshness or grain. The 1961s convey the power and depth of the bass with surprising impact and musicality, and the vocals soar over the instrumental backing with effortless clarity. This is a very demanding recording and the Arendals passed the test with flying colors.

The Vent Plug

Like many manufacturers, Arendal equips these speakers with a vent plug that negates the ported aspect of the design and turns them into a “sealed” speaker. Sealed is not “Acoustic Suspension,” as I wrote in my article, so one wonders why the user has the option to seal the vent at all. Doing so will raise the effective lower cutoff frequency by quite a bit and make the speaker incapable of full-range operation. Some people say that sealing a tower speaker gives it a 12/dB/oct. LF rolloff that is easier to integrate with a subwoofer, and if you’re using a sub, you don’t need the main L & R speakers to go much below 80-100 Hz anyway. In my opinion, this is bogus reasoning. If the main L & R speakers (like these 1961s) can respond strongly down to 40-50 Hz, then you can use a lower LP crossover for your subwoofer. That greatly increases your sub placement options by reducing its localizability, since it’ll be fed only the totally non-directional frequencies below 50-60 Hz. And from a practical standpoint, it makes zero sense to spend good dough on full-range floorstanders and then throw away their bass performance. Most manufacturers, unfortunately, do not give the end user good, complete information on when and why port sealing might be a good idea, nor do most manufacturers give the end user any theoretical information on the difference between ported and sealed, 4^th-order vs. 2^nd-order low-frequency rolloff, localizability, phase integration between mains and subs, etc. Arendal missed the boat here. There should be more complete info on the pros and cons of vent sealing and also some info on the best way to remove this very tightly wedged-in vent plug.

If I was with Arendal in product development and marketing (and I was in that position for decades at many speaker companies, such as Bose, Boston Acoustics and Atlantic Technology), I simply wouldn’t include vent plugs at all. The 1961s are vented loudspeakers, and damn good ones. Just let them be what they are and don’t confuse the issue.

Editorial Note: by Gene DellaSala

I generally agree with Steve on his sentiments about a port plug on tower speakers. However, IF you are running sealed subs in your system then there can be advantages to sealing the towers to better align LF response IF you aren't bass managing the speakers and running them full range.

Measurements

First, I need to offer full credit to Arendal. Very few, if any, speaker companies these days publish detailed performance graphs. In the “old days,” when high-fidelity had a huge enthusiast following of knowledgeable, informed hobbyists, many companies did publish performance data, because much of the consumer market could understand and appreciate such information. These days, most people who would’ve owned a good component stereo system in the 1980s had they been 30 years old then have a six-inch long Bluetooth speaker or some other anemic-sounding streaming device. They wouldn’t understand real high-fidelity graphs and charts if they tripped over them.

What follows are Arendal’s actual in-house frequency response and dispersion graphs for the 1961 Tower. Based on my listening experiences and comparing these curves with the ones made by Audioholics’ own James Larson of the 1723 Monitor and the 1723 S Tower, I have no doubt that these curves are totally valid and are a good representation of what the user is likely to hear. The very slight “boxiness” I heard on occasion is evidenced by the fairly rapid falloff of the mids and highs off axis, which would cause a slight “chestiness” of “boxiness” to occur. Likewise, the diminished bass below 40 Hz that I noted on Teen Town can also be clearly seen here, with the mid-30 Hz level being around 12-15 dB below the 100 Hz level. Before anyone screams, “But room gain will lift the bottom end,” yes, that’s true to some extent. But…it’s true of all speakers, including those with a native response that extends strongly below 40 Hz. So these FR curves tell a real, true story. These are not made-up, fabricated curves. Overall, these show the 1961 to be an accurate, uncolored loudspeaker with a uniform, predictable off-axis response, one that might benefit from some extremely subtle, judicious EQ should an educated user want to go that route. For a speaker that sells for well under $2000/pr., this is remarkably good performance.

The impedance curve shows that these are legit 4-ohm speakers that require (and deserve!) quality amplification. I commend Arendal for not calling them something bogus and vague like “Compatible with 4 and 8-ohm outputs” or something meaningless like that. They’re 4-ohm speakers and Arendal calls them what they are.

These are absolutely honest curves and my hat’s off to Arendal for publishing them. 

Conclusion

Finally, I just want to restate here what our James Larson said before about the 1723 Monitors, because it certainly holds true for these 1961 Towers. I’ll unashamedly steal his words:

Indeed, by all indications, Arendal has been very successful in the European market. Based on what I have seen in the 1723 Monitors, I believe that if North Americans discover what Europeans have already been shown with these speakers, Arendal will have similar success here. Highly recommended!

--James Larson - Contributing writer, Audioholics

The Arendal 1961s are definitely first-rate loudspeakers by any standard and all the more remarkable when one takes into account their reasonable price and modest size. I am a 40+-year veteran of the consumer electronics business with extended tenures at Panasonic, Bose, Boston Acoustics, and Atlantic Technology. I’ve been involved with the conception, design, engineering, and marketing of many of the industry’s best-selling and most highly regarded models. I know what goes into product design, I know what the compromises are, and I can spot when a manufacturer has made the right choices or the wrong choices. I don’t get impressed or carried away by run-of-the-mill products.

I am impressed now. Really impressed. To this veteran’s ears and eyes, the Arendal 1961 Towers are truly special, really way above the norm. Over the years, I’ve seen ‘em all and I’ve heard ‘em all. Arendal should be arrested for offering speakers of this quality for $1799/pair. This is what high fidelity is all about. Perfect? Of course not. A trace of midrange boxiness here and there and less than subterranean bass extension. But these are minor misdemeanors, not major crimes.

I’d like to put the amazing price/performance ratio of the 1961s into a slightly different context: $1,799 is what you might expect to pay for a pair of really good stand-mounted “bookshelf” speakers. There are any number of 5 ¼-inch or 6 ½-inch 2-ways out there for $1,800, $2,200, or even $3,000/pair. And they’re all perfectly good speakers, worth their asking price. But for $1,799, Arendal has given you a set of 5-driver 2 ½-ways with impeccable build quality, beautifully finished, and with great attention to detail (like the rugged outrigger/feet and metal terminal plate and metal binding post knobs). Plus, the 1961s are floorstanders, so you don’t have to buy a set of $300 stands to go with those $2,200 bookshelf speakers.

The 1961s are compact, unobtrusive, built like a tank, have all kinds of small things that surpass your expectations and….they sound great. My wife looked at them next to those huge Legacy Signature SEs and said, “They sound great to me. I wish we had those.” I think the Arendal 1961 sets a new standard for floorstanding speakers around $2000/pr. for smooth, natural sound, great build quality, décor-friendly appearance, and unexpected luxury flourishes. This is an exceptional product.

The Score Card

The scoring below is based on each piece of equipment doing the duty it is designed for. The numbers are weighed heavily with respect to the individual cost of each unit, thus giving a rating roughly equal to:

Performance × Price Factor/Value = Rating

Audioholics.com note: The ratings indicated below are based on subjective listening and objective testing of the product in question. The rating scale is based on performance/value ratio. If you notice better performing products in future reviews that have lower numbers in certain areas, be aware that the value factor is most likely the culprit. Other Audioholics reviewers may rate products solely based on performance, and each reviewer has his/her own system for ratings.

Audioholics Rating Scale

• — Excellent
• — Very Good
• — Good
• — Fair
• — Poor

Metric	Rating
Build Quality
Appearance
Treble Extension
Treble Smoothness
Midrange Accuracy
Bass Extension
Bass Accuracy
Dynamic Range
Performance
Value