Brodmann Acoustics JB 155 Speaker

We build speakers not as vessels, but as instruments themselves

Viennese piano marque Brodmann put its brand name on a range of loudspeakers in 2009. We’ve been listening to Brodmann Acoustics’ ultra-luxurious JB155, a 1400mm-tall monolith whose 480mm-deep enclosure is trimmed handsomely in glossily lacquered burr walnut veneer befitting a finely-crafted piano. It’s the smaller of two models in the company’s flagship Joseph Brodmann Series – the ‘JB’ in the speaker’s nomenclature.

If you’re going for broke, the company’s JB205 is even more statuesque at just over two metres tall, priced at $86 991 in standard gloss black finish and rising to $117k in premium veneers. While its JB models are priced in the same ball-park as high-end speakers from the likes of Wilson Audio, TAD Labs and Magico, Brodmann Acoustics’ loudspeaker line-up isn’t exclusively the preserve of the very wellheeled.

Its Festival range starts at $4200 for the FS standmount and $6200 for the F1 floorstander, while the Vienna Classic (VC) range comprises three handsome floorstanders priced between $12 128 and $23 002. There are several in-wall and on-wall models available as well.

The cabinets of these flagship Josept Brodmann models are sumptuously finished. Soft-dome tweeters and paper composite bass/mid drivers are made in-house to designer Hans Deutsch’s specifications, as well as the enclosures 

Defying convention

These are the creations of maverick designer Hans Deutsch, an Austrian acoustician whose loudspeaker designs fly in the face of conventional thinking.

Where speaker manufacturers the world over pursue a never-ending quest to find ways of making their cabinets as inert and resonance-free as possible, Deutsch – who trained as an opera singer in the 1960s before studying acoustics – deliberately rejects this approach.

Rather than trying to banish cabinet resonances and rely solely on a speaker’s drive units to generate sound, he uses sections of the loudspeaker enclosure as vibrating sound boards – ‘to allow the creation of a three-dimensional, transparent, true to life sound.’

States Brodmann’s literature: ‘We build speakers not as mere vessels, but as instruments themselves.’ It’s a radical approach that most, if not all, other speaker designers might consider heresy.

Brodmann Acoustics JB155

Bösendorfer Reincarnated

Hans Deutsch’s ‘Acoustic Active’ design approach recalls a range of loudspeakers made a few years ago by the famous Bösendorfer piano company of Vienna.

Indeed, Brodmann speakers are those Bösendorfer models reincarnated, the designs having been further tweaked and refined over the years.

Bösendorfer was acquired by Yamaha Corporation in 2008, since when the licencing of Hans Deutsch’s radical speaker designs has switched to Brodmann. The Brodmann firm is headed up by a former board director of Bösendorfer and some of the company’s former technicians, its brand name trading on the heritage of the Viennese piano craftsman Joseph Brodmann, who once had Ignaz Bösendorfer as a pupil in the early 19th century. Brodmann’s headquarters is in Vienna, but its pianos are built in China.

Brodmann Acoustics JB155

Brodmann’s speaker manufacturing, however, is in workshops in Austria where everything is made in-house. This includes the drivers themselves, the company’s latest low-mass mid/bass units (called ‘The Pure Voice’) designed to deliberately swing free on lightweight mounting frames to deliver ‘the marvellous dynamics and splendour of singers and instruments in the direction of original sound patterns,’ says the designer.

The JB155’s narrow front baffle sports three soft dome tweeters made of silk fibres soaked in acrylic. On the outside panel of the enclosure lie three 130mm drivers whose composite cones of hemp and carbon fibre are made ‘like fi ne hand-made papers: soft inside, for optimal damping, and hard on the outside for optimal sound projection’.

Their suspension is UV-resistant Styrofoam. Both the tweeters and main drivers employ magnets with very small gaps, with four-ply and six-ply voice coils respectively, on Kevlar mounts. Says Hans Deutsch: ‘Their design leads to maximal conversion of energy into acoustic pressure instead of a substantial loss of energy as heat.’

Inside the sturdy MDF cabinet there is (purposely) no damping material, the main drivers acoustically coupled via an internal resonator tube. Frequencies above 130Hz are projected by the drive units’ front sound field, while the drivers’ rear sound field drives the ‘Horn Resonator’.

At the rear are two large ‘sound boards’ designed to act as vibrating diaphragms, attached by strategically placed clamped bolts which can modify the amplitude of vibration in an effect ‘similar to the stiffening board of a grand piano’.

The JB155 sits on a large base plinth to ensure good overall stability, supplied with spikes as standard, although these can be replaced by the company’s Black Diamond inverted cones, priced $368 for a set of four.

Paints a broad picture

The JB155 delivers a sumptuously smooth and inviting sound. High frequencies are sweet and refined, with notable absence of ‘splash’ or graininess other than with truly raucous pop/rock recordings. Rather than projecting vivid images, the big Brodmann paints a broad and slightly diffuse sound picture across the end of a listening room. Under our listening conditions it had a ‘dark’, warm midrange balance. Low frequencies were generous and subjectively reasonably extended, but quite plummy and ill-defined. And with rock music they sometimes fell apart, with the bass intolerably boomy. Several of Bösendorfer’s – and now Brodmann’s – smaller models have received complimentary reports over the years.

Brodmann Acoustics JB 155

Having heard some of them at hi-fi exhibitions (fed by top-quality source components, naturally), I’ve found them creating creditably large and open sound images, delivering rich and extended bass frequencies given their room-friendly form factors. They’re an attractive proposition for many and well worth auditioning if your interest is piqued. However, this monolithic JB155 is far removed from being a room and/or family friendly speaker – unless one’s listening room is of stately proportions. While its front baffle is narrow it nevertheless made an imposing, statuesque sight in editor PM’s generously proportioned media room.

Brodmann Acoustics JB 155

We fed the JB155s a variety of CD-quality and high resolution recordings and drove them with a  Devialet D-Premier, using no-expense-spared Absolute Dream cables from Crystal Cable. Sometimes the speaker proved tantalisingly seductive. With simple music programme such as the lovely recording of Buddy Holly singing ‘True Love Ways’ on the album From The Original Master Tapes [MCA DIDX-203] the image created was gloriously Wide and deep, the atmosphere of the recording studio served up most graciously. Similarly it sounded open and quite refined with chamber music pieces. In an excerpt from Haydn’s ‘Fifths’ string quartet performed by Holland’s Ragazze Quartet, a high-resolution recording on Channel Classics the musicians appeared clearly separated with oodles of space around them. The big Brodmann created an immersive sound image – again, with a subjectively warm midband and delicate, finely-etched treble. The sound was criticised only for appearing dynamically softened compared with ‘traditional’ high-end monitors. But with some recordings the sound simply fell apart. For example, when playing Dire Straits’ ‘Private Investigations’ from Love Over Gold what started off as terribly promising (that smooth and easy-going presentation…) became, well, simply terrible as the bassist made his grand entrance, when we were greeted by a thick, booming muddiness swamping the room that made the recording unintelligible.

In between the two ‘acoustic sound boards’ is a single set of gold-plated multi-way input terminals, along with a three-position switch to adjust the output of the tweeters

A robotic ‘Thunk’

Another stern hi-fi test, the track ‘Gone Buttlefishin’’ from Sheffield Lab’s immensely dynamic James Newton Howard And Friends revealed the speaker’s lack of resolution. The ultra-vivid crispness of the cymbals and drummer’s rimshots were softened and the speaker proved unable to describe the detail and texture of bass and drums, instead reproducing a robotic ‘thunk’ at low frequencies. Recordings with seismic bass content such as Me’Shell Ndegéocello’s ‘Mary Magdalene’ on her album Peace Beyond Passion were so thunderous as to blur the entire piece. We were forced to conclude the JB155 is most definitely not a loudspeaker for rock music fans! On a positive note, with simple recordings the JB155 can deliver an engaging rendition of the music, its tonal balance giving you a cuddly hug rather than slapping you in the face. But its thick and uncontrolled bass will make it a non-starter for many audiophiles.