Sound System One

by Alex Earl

The Sound System One by local Australian designer Alex Earl is a beautiful example of local stylish modern home product design.

Sound System One by Local Australian designer Alex Earl is a stylish modern sound system perfect for a residential or commercial environment. The Sound System One utilises high-efficiency horns and low powered single ended triode amplification with state of the art bass drivers combined in sculptural solid timber forms. The Sound System One is the stylish final result of 4 years of research and development, and a no-compromise approach to sound design- both sonically and visually.  Alex Earl and his design team have integrated top of the range compression drivers, Dipole woofers and triode tube amplifiers with crafted solid timber horns and baffles to create a system as beautiful sounding as it is visually.

Designer Alex Earl believes that recorded music is the purest form of magic.  The recording and reproduction of voice, instruments and sounds bring moments into a listening space that no longer exist and even possibly never existed.   But yet, there they are there every time a recording is played.   At least that’s how it should be. The reality is that music is a thing of joy and beauty that has been stripped of it’s plumage, and rendered lifeless and grey by the ‘magic’ of digital compression and build it small and build it cheap electronics.   It is one thing to reproduce the voice and hear words that can be understood, it is another thing entirely to have those words appear to be uttered not by a machine but by a person in the same room.

It is this uncompromising belief the magic of recorded music that lead Alex Earl to design and create the Sound System One.  The Sound System One is undoubtedly large compared to modern sound system devices on the market today, however there is an excellent story behind the size of the product. To do what Alex Earl‘s sound systems does (low powered, high efficiency, natural sound) it needs to be big.  To make the product smaller would be to compromise- take a little of this away and a little bit of that and soon the thing ceases to be itself.   The ‘thing’ is amazing music  and it’s best reproduced by big loudspeaker horns.

Making something big that serves a purpose is only half the challenge- making something this big that you’d actually want to have in your house is the other half. Alex Earl and his design team didn’t invent horn loudspeakers or valve amplifiers or figure out that low power and high efficiency can produce amazing results. However, they have put together one of the best sounding, and best looking sound systems in the world.

Alex Earl and his design team also custom make single ended triode vacuum tube amplifiers. The Sound System One horns are driven by low powered 2A3 amplifiers with no coupling capacitors- eliminating interference and delivering the purest signal to the horn drivers. Designed in collaboration with legendary amplifier builder Jereme Clingan, the Sounds System One amplifiers are point to point hand wired using the finest components including solid silver for all signal paths. The amplifiers output a mere 2.5 watts per channel, but the horns are so efficient that they can play to concert levels without distortion.

Images Courtesy of Alex Earl.

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