February 2002 Reviewed by Wes Marshall	Bohlender Graebener Radia X-Series Home-Theater Speaker System

Description Model: Radia X3 speakers (mains and surrounds) Price: $1025 USD each Dimensions: 40" H x 7.75" W x 9.5" D Weight: 35 pounds each Model: Radia X1 center-channel speaker Price: $975 USD each Dimensions: 7.75"H x 20"W x 9.5"D Weight: 22 pounds Warranty: Three years parts and labor	Features Planar-hybrid design 3" ribbon tweeters 5" aluminum-cone woofers Heavy-duty MDF cabinets with internal bracing Anodized-aluminum rails for structural rigidity Biwireable Magnetically shielded Linkwitz-Riley crossover alignment (second order) Polypropylene capacitors and air-core inductors (crossover) Cherry or black-ash vinyl finish

A brief history

Bohlender Graebener (hereinafter BG) was formed almost nine years ago by Tom Bohlender and Dave Graebener. Tom was an enthusiast with a vision and Dave was a designer with an invention. Dave had worked previously with Speakerlab in Seattle, Washington, and helped design the Carver Amazing Loudspeaker. Both were fans of planar technology, believing it solved some problems associated with more conventional drivers, specifically high-frequency roll off (over distance) and uncontrolled dispersion.

Starting over 15 years ago, BG developed expertise in the manufacturing of the drivers that allowed nearly unlimited length. As an engineering tour de force, BG put together a series of custom arrays for the Philadelphia Tower Records Classical Department that measured over 250’ long! The problem was, how to use the driver in a small, home-friendly and competitively priced package aimed at home theater. With the help of Warren Kocmond, a retired atmospheric scientist, these questions were answered. The BG corporation moved into a large manufacturing facility and began developing the in-wall and free-standing ribbon loudspeakers known today as the Radia Series. Hence, the $5075 Radia X-Series home-theater speaker system we have here.

Design

The Radia X1 center-channel speaker and Radia X3 main/surround speakers both use a 3" ribbon tweeter and two aluminum-cone woofers. The X3 speakers are modern, good-looking columns with solid-aluminum anodized rails covering the front vertical edges. They have a non-removable black ABS-plastic grille cover and a black-ash wood-grain finish. The speakers are relatively light and somewhat top heavy, but given their sturdy base and the adjustable and lockable spiked feet, they stand very solidly.

The X1 has an identical look, excepting its horizontal orientation. It uses rubber support feet instead of spikes. The speaker cabinets are made of heavy-duty MDF with liberal internal bracing. The aluminum rails are not just for looks. They reportedly add both rigidity and a rounded corner to help ease diffraction effects.

Igor Levitsky, BG's head engineer, developed a second-order Linkwitz-Riley crossover using linear air-core inductors and polypropylene capacitors. The Linkwitz-Riley crossover was chosen because it reportedly allows consistent group delay and phase response over a wide frequency range, a trait that should, in theory, give a very solid image, especially given the speed of both driver types. Both the X1 and X3 can be biwired or biamped. With a rated sensitivity of 93dB, they should play fine with lower-powered amps, though note should be made of the 4-ohm impedance. Frequency response reportedly extends down to 40Hz for the X3 and 50Hz for the X1.

Room placement

When the speakers arrived at my house, they were sans manuals. With no information, I simply set them up where my reference system resided. When I had the chance to get on the Internet, I found the manuals at the company's website and discovered that my normal positioning of the three front speakers fit BG’s recommended positioning. They favor having the surrounds and the front speaker array equidistant from the main listening spot, so that is how I arranged them. They also prefer that the left and right speakers form an equilateral triangle with the main seat and that the surrounds make a 120-degree angle from the listening position. Each X3 should be at least 1.5’ from the front and back walls and at least 1’ from the side walls. These are minima.

The X1 is ported on the rear, which means care should be taken when setting it close to the rear wall. In my room, the front speakers were 3’ from the front wall and about 12’ from the side walls. The surrounds were 10’ from the rear walls and about 12’ from the side walls (my room is abnormally large). I used the Lexicon MC-1 to set levels, crossovers, distances, and all surround parameters. BG recommends using the "small" setting in your controller’s speaker setup for both the X1 and X3, which is what I did. Since there is no Radia subwoofer at this time, I used the Sunfire True Subwoofer Signature.

The BG sound

BG recommends that you break-in their speakers for a minimum of 100 hours at a moderate sound level. They are absolutely right. Fresh out of the box, the speakers sound harsh. Before you listen critically, be utterly sure they have been well played. Otherwise, you won’t hear the speakers at anywhere near their optimum. Once they are broken in, they take on a totally different character.

The first quality you notice is a seamless soundstage all around you. If the DVD you are watching has good sound design -- like Dinosaur, The Fifth Element or Galaxy Quest -- you will truly lose track of the speakers and just become enveloped in the sound. The speakers essentially disappear. In Dinosaur, for example, during the opening frenetics with the Carnotaurus chasing everyone, you mostly notice the impact. But when the egg is dropped into the forest, the soundstage completely changes. The BG system manifested the switch in sound design perfectly. Not only did the picture look dark and mysterious, the air in the room suddenly sounded stifling. I’m mixing my metaphors intentionally, because that’s the impression I got. The Radia system reproduced a startling effect and did it perfectly. You could almost smell the swamp.

Another great test of soundstaging ability is the Aria sequence from The Fifth Element. Inva Mula Tchako’s voice sounded sweet and pure, with a sense of the concert-hall reverberation. When the picture switched to the fighting sequences, the soundstage changes were wholly credible.

The other entrancing element of the BG’s sound was in the realm of impulse and transient attack. Of course, these qualities show up less in film than in music. In the movies, transients are generally of the beat-you-over-the-head school. Thankfully, there are a lot of speakers on the market that do a splendid job of reproducing gunshots, bombs and crashes. On the other hand, in well-recorded, uncompressed acoustic music, few speakers will give you a sense of the leading-edge impact of the waveform.

On the slow intro to "Hotel California" from the DTS version of the Eagles’ Hell Freezes Over, the BG system catches the shimmer of Glen Frey’s 12-string guitar while Don Felder’s plucked nylon-string guitar has an impact you can feel. An even better example comes from John Martyn’s No Little Boy [Mesa 79057]. During the opening of "Solid Air," Martyn pulls some intense 12th-fret harmonics from his close-mic’ed guitar. With the Radia system, the sounds pop out of the speakers. In fact, the Radia speakers made most plucked-string instruments sound real. I play guitar about 15 hours a week and have a good knowledge of the sound of both acoustic and electric guitars. The Radia system reproduced the impact nearly perfectly.

And when it came to the bombo stuff in the big movies such as Dinosaur and The Fifth Element, the Radia produced powerful transients, especially considering the little woofers. Of course, a subwoofer is an absolute necessity with this system. But within their range, they moved an impressive amount of air. In Close Encounters of the Third Kind, during the duet between the mothership and the scientists, you could feel the impact of the notes. In Galaxy Quest, chapter 8, rockets and explosions sounded clear and clean up to 100dB. Chalk that up to the generous 93dB-rated efficiency, which means 100dB takes less than 10W. With my 105Wpc amp, that translated into plenty of sound.

Another aspect that I liked was the vocal intelligibility of the X1 center-channel speaker. No matter what poorly recorded dialogue on DVD I threw at it, the voices were always understandable and comprehensible. I attribute this to the excellent midrange response of those diminutive woofers and their tight integration with the ribbon tweeter.

The tweeter’s utter smoothness meant the highs sounded almost recessed. With normally hyped-up film soundtracks, this can be a blessing. Listening to music, though, I feel that the highs may be a little too recessed. Compared to both the real thing and my ATC SCM 50As (which cost a bunch more -- about $13,500), cymbals, for instance, sounded down in level from the rest of the sound. In the opening to Miles Davis’s "So What" from Kind of Blue [Columbia 64935], the ATCs make the cymbals truly ring. With the Radia system, they sounded a little too polite. On Steely Dan’s "Babylon Sisters," from the Gaucho CD [MCA 112 055], there is a point two minutes and seven seconds into the song where delicately pulled chimes emulate the Santa Ana winds. On my ATCs, the chimes sound like they are in the room. With the Radia, they sound slightly compressed and somewhat buried in the mix. This is certainly a design decision on the part of Bohlender Graebener. There is nothing defective about the sound. It’s personal taste. The benefit is a relaxing and easy sound. The downside is a slight lack of transparency.

The BG midrange was slightly coarse compared to the reference ATCs, but remember that this is a much more expensive speaker system. ATC has made their reputation on their dome mid-driver and nothing other than the Quads, in my experience, come close to its purity. And, again, there is that cost factor.

In weighing the ATCs against the BGs in two-channel stereo mode, the ATC held an advantage in imaging. However, when all five BG speakers were in use, the synergy simply changed the entire character of sound, freeing the image from the boxes. For this reason, I would recommend going for all five speakers rather than a stereo pair. The sound is significantly better in multichannel mode.

Is this the system for you?

Let’s enumerate the pluses. First, these speakers are great looking. The pictures don’t do them justice. The X3 especially drew lots of oohs and aahs from design-conscious visitors. Second, the soundstage is coherent and seamless. There is a definite benefit to using the same speaker on all four corners, especially with multichannel music. While it might make speaker placement more difficult, I applaud BG for sticking to their guns for the sake of a coherent soundstage. In addition, the X1 center-channel speaker produced intelligible dialogue and melded perfectly with the four corners.

These speakers are efficient enough that users with lower-powered amplifiers might really like them. Finally, there is their sonic character. Most important to me was the transient snap on plucked instruments, something I’m used to hearing only on professional monitors. The only negative I can give is they sound just slightly dull in the upper frequencies, and that with only some software. But my dull may be your relaxed.

So, are the Bohlender Graebener Radia X-Series the speakers for you? Obviously, only you can decide. They have a unique set of strengths due at least in part to their ribbon-based design. Listening to their various competitors, in comparison, will give you an idea of how this technology benefits the listener. Luckily, with 217 (or so) consumer dealers, you can probably listen to a set of Bohlender Graebener speakers fairly close to home.

Manufacturer contact information:

Bohlender Graebener Corporation
1780 Forrest Way
Carson City, NV 89706-0311
Phone: 1-888-8PLANAR (USA) or 1-775-884-1900

E-mail: sales@bgcorp.com
Website: www.bgcorp.com

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