Bending iron
English-born American Joseph Anton Hofmann once created an ‘Iron Law’ for audio design. Three important attributes of any loudspeaker system are inextricably linked, he said: low-bass reproduction, enclosure size, and sensitivity (or efficiency). Optimising any two of these attributes, he said, would inevitably compromise the one that remained, such that it is impossible for a single design to satisfactorily deliver all three.
KEF, the 61-year-old UK speaker company, has clearly been tangling with this assertion.
“When designing a small subwoofer, the choice has to be made between high efficiency and low frequency extension,” admits its white paper, issued to accompany the new and remarkably compact KC62 subwoofer. “To create a subwoofer that can deliver the maximum performance for the minimum of space, KEF R&D worked to push the compromises as far as possible. After all, Iron Laws cannot be broken, but they can certainly be bent.”
Equipment
The engineering behind the KC62 needs to bend the Iron Law because this is a small subwoofer, pretty much a 25cm cube, yet KEF’s specs rate it down to an incredible infrasonic 11Hz at -3dB, and still with
