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Audioswift4/15/2023 Again, I have to keep telling myself: This is a budget speaker, this is a budget speaker. A simple crossover lives behind a Plexiglas cover on the other side of the cabinet: one inductor, one custom-made capacitor (I can tell because it has a picture of a bird on it), and one expensive little Caddock resistor, the latter mounted in its own heatsink. Each is held in place with Torx-headed wood screws, driven right into a tapped baffle that's CNC-milled out of solid, kiln-dried ash (which is what they make Fender Telecasters out of). The Swift's drivers are a 1" impregnated fabric-dome tweeter and a 4.5" bass/midrange unit with a plastic-coated pulp cone and dustcap, both drivers made by Vifa. (There's some debate surrounding this topic, of course-when isn't there?-but a few obscure old-timers suggest that a "true" transmission line is sealed, and thus makes no contribution to the sound.) (When I told Meadowlark founder and chief designer Patrick McGinty about my review premise and requested a sample pair of Swifts, his response was cautious: He still doesn't go out of his way to promote this or other Meadowlarks as being especially SET-friendly, their efficiency being a simple result of what he considers good design practices.)Īs in all other Meadowlark speakers, the rear wave of the Swift's low-frequency driver plays into a folded transmission line: a long and typically well-damped labyrinth whose purpose has more to do with lowering the driver's resonant frequency than with asking the rear wave to contribute much in the way of sound output. Meadowlark Audio's new entry-level speaker, the Swift, seems cut from the same cloth: a smallish, floorstanding two-way with a minimalist, first-order crossover, and with specs that suggest at least a fair match with low-power tube amps. Although it was never marketed as a SET-happy speaker as such, the Kestrel happened to've been introduced when lots of hobbyists were looking for just that, and before long Meadowlark.well, took wing. Meadowlark's first-ever product was the Kestrel, a speaker noted for a sensitivity and efficiency slightly higher than average-it combined a 90dB sensitivity with a sensibly high and flat impedance curve-along with a very reasonable price of just $1250/pair in healthy 1995 dollars. (They're in Watertown, which is about 100 miles from where I live-although I haven't visited them yet.) The truth is, Meadowlark is only about nine years old, and just recently moved their factory to upstate New York. Before I'd even hooked them up, these speakers already seemed to exude competence, craftsmanship, and professionalism to see them was to assume that the company has been in business for decades, carefully refining what they do year after year. You look at something like the Meadowlark Swift and you think, How can they sell this for only $1195/pair?Īs I lifted them out of their carton and stripped off the packing, I had to laugh: The Swifts are made-and packaged-to absurdly high levels for this kind of money.
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