German Physiks HRS-130 - Locrian Audio

The HRS-130 loudspeaker is a re-designed version of our highly acclaimed HRS-120. Similarities end at the casual glance of the octagonal cabinet, because the sound quality has improved significantly, closing the gap with its larger stable mate, the Borderland. The cabinet has been also restyled to give a smoother look, enabling the HRS-130 to blend better in a variety of living environments. It can be ordered in multiple wood veneers and finishes as well as a new, luxurious high-polish polyester finish, which is available in black or white.

The HRS-130 is ideal for smaller dedicated listening rooms or can be integrated in a modern living room with minimal decorative interference. Furthermore, it performs well at minimal distance from the rear and side walls.

Excellent Resolution and Dynamics. Well Controlled and Extended Bass

The HRS-130 has a new crossover derived from the one in our best selling Borderland Mk IV. It provides improved resolution and dynamics, making it even easier to follow the various threads in a performance, even at high levels.

This makes listening a truly involving experience.

The bass driver is located at the bottom of the cabinet and works in a “sealed” enclosure. This enclosure is linked via a small opening to a smaller cavity located at the top of the cabinet. This cavity acts as a Helmholtz Resonator and is tuned to the resonant frequency of the main bass enclosure and ensures a smoother bass response.

The HRS-130 uses the same 10-inch bass driver as our much more expensive PQS-402. This provides deep and well defined bass with excellent control. The integration of the bass with the rest of the frequency range is exceptional, allowing you to immerse yourself in the music without the feeling that you are listening to several different drivers.

On the advantages of a wide-bandwidth driver:

“Slicing and dicing the music for consumption by several drivers has a major consequence, namely the loss of coherence since most instruments are reproduced by multiple sources of sound on a baffle. By contrast, the DDD sings with one voice—just like the real thing. The driver is literally positioned outside of a box, which allows for its 360-degree radiation pattern and is responsible for its outside-of-a-box spaciousness.”
Dick Olsher, The Absolute Sound, October 19, 2017

“What you get here is a world-class wide-range driver that is exceptionally well engineered and superbly integrated into a speaker that is almost perfect for a small-to-medium-sized room. In my estimation, the carbon-fiber DDD is one of the top five driver innovations of the past 40 years, delivering the coherent phase and uniform power response first envisioned by Lincoln Walsh. Given the right amplifier and room setup, the HRS-130 ticks all the important sonic boxes and clearly edges out the competition when it comes to palpable imaging. No wonder the German Physiks HRS-130 is currently my favorite speaker under $25k”
Dick Olsher, The Absolute Sound, October 19, 2017

HRS-130 Design principles

HRS stands for Helmholtz Resonator Speaker. If the HRS-130’s bass unit worked into a simple cavity as shown in figure 1, there would be a bump in the bass response at the cavity’s resonant frequency.

Figure 1: Hypothetical cabinet without the Helmholtz resonator

To prevent this, there is a smaller separate cavity at the top of the main cavity, as shown in Figure 2 and the two are linked by a small opening between them. The smaller cavity is filled with damping material and is tuned to absorb energy at the main cavity’s resonant frequency. This gives the HRS-130 the clean bass response it is known for.We first used this technique in the Mk IV version of our Borderland loudspeaker. Prior to this, the Borderland used two 8-inch bass drivers in an isobaric configuration.

Figure 2: HRS-130 Cabinet Schematic

“Summary”

The HRS-130 combines the speed and imaging qualities of an electrostatic panel with the coherence and communication of a full-range driver, along with the air shifting qualities of a dedicated subwoofer. Huge, wide, tall soundstages are continuous sweet spots that permeate even large listening rooms in an entirely natural and unforced way with fast transient dynamics, pure bass notes and dense complexity simply flowing as music should. Acoustic music feels live and mesmerising, while electronica is able to transport you to another world. The HRS-130 deserves high-quality and generous amplification to shine fully. £14.5k is a considerable sum, but this is a lot of high-quality engineering and hand-finished luxury for the price, and I’ve just heard £1,600 of well-chosen amplification create a performance that could challenge some well-regarded six-figure systems. Add another pair of monoblocks to bi-amp each speaker and it could well be a giant slayer
Chris Ward, HiFi Choice, November 2016, download