HiVi Swans F10

What do you get when you cross a loudspeaker with a gramophone? The Swans F10. A mixture of high tech and antique styling, the F10 should integrate well into any of those old time sepia dress up pictures your parents made you take as a kid. The F10's won't be for everyone (in fact, if they sell a handful a year, I'd call that a success) but they certainly are good for getting people to come into your booth at CES

While the styling may be old, the technology certainly isn't. Boasting a frequency range of 30Hz-20kHz and 89dB sensitivity, the F10's seem to have it where it counts. The speaker is a 4-way design with an isodynamic "supper" (I think they meant to write "super" in the press materials but hey, who am I to correct them?) ribbon tweeter, a 28mm soft dome tweeter, a 6.5" midrange, and a 15" woofer. The back of the speaker sports three sets of binding posts and the front has a large forward-firing port.

HiVi (maker of the Swans line of speakers) brags that the driver arrangement (the two tweeters basically on top of the 15" woofer) makes the speaker sound more like a natural point source. We think the smart money is on form over function. At just over a meter tall (1153mm to be exact), the tweeters are too low for your your conventional "at seated ear height" that most speakers (not Dynaudio of course) shoot for. Then again, no one ever claimed the Swans F10 were conventional. Still, we've been impressed with Swans speakers in the past and wouldn't be surprised if they sounded very good. With a "solid sculpted wood" cabinet and its unique design, this is probably one of those "if you have to ask you can't afford it" speaker offerings. For more information, please visit www.hivi.com.

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