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 November 15, 2006
Role Audio Windjammer Loudspeakers I don’t envy the job of speaker designers today. Not only do people want their speakers to sound good, they want them to look really good too, which usually means small, stylish, unobtrusive, and well finished. This is in stark contrast to not so many years ago, when it was expected that speakers would be not much more than large, boxy eyesores. This shift in priorities took flight with the rise in popularity of flat-panel video displays, which are much slimmer and look more refined than the large, obtrusive, CRT-type TVs that they’re rapidly replacing. Basically, today, people want their audio components to look as good as their video gear. The problem with this shift is that what makes a speaker look good isn’t necessarily what makes it sound good. The key to successful speaker design, then, is to minimize sonic compromises in favor of styling selections. Enter the Role Audio Windjammer, a floorstanding speaker designed to blend style and small size with sonic substance. Role Audio is the sister company of NSM Audio, which is known for making some very-good-sounding traditional box-type speakers; the Windjammer is the second-most-expensive of Role’s six speaker models. Description The Windjammer is 39" tall by 5" wide by 6.5" deep, and weighs only 22 pounds. It’s made of MDF and has carefully rounded edges. Its price of $1295 USD per pair is for the basic, all-black version, which looks good if you want a speaker that’s all black. The price rises to $1495 if you want the real-wood side panels my review samples were supplied with, which provide a bit of contrast and help give the Windjammer a bit more of an upscale look. Overall, I found the Windjammer very attractive and quite well finished -- precisely what you want in a living room, which is where I evaluated the speaker for part of the time. By making the Windjammer tall and slender, Role has attempted to make it visually unobtrusive, and they’ve succeeded. There are two problems with such a shape, however. First, a speaker only 5" wide doesn’t permit the use of big drivers to supply big bass. The Windjammer is a two-way design with a 1" fabric-dome tweeter atop a woven-carbon-fiber woofer that measures just 4.5" across -- quite a bit smaller than the 6.5" woofers found in typical two-way bookshelf speakers of the same price or less. To work around this limitation and extend the Windjammer’s bass response, Role Audio employs a transmission line -- basically, a super-duper port that uses the back wave from that tiny woofer to substantially extend the bass output. (Technically, there’s more to a transmission-line design than that, but for the scope of this review, it’s simply important to know that it’s a way to extend the bass range.) Role Audio rates the -3dB point in the bass at 35Hz. Second, when a speaker is this tall, narrow, and shallow, it’s usually unstable. Role provides a base plate of 1"-thick MDF that screws to the Windjammer’s bottom and is a bit wider than the enclosure, making the speaker sufficiently stable on hard surfaces. But those with deep-pile carpets should definitely use the supplied spikes to give the Windjammer a sure footing. The Windjammer’s tweeter and woofer are very close together, which is why the specs refer to the Windjammer as a "quasi-point-source" design. In other words, it’s close to being a point source without quite being one (a coaxial driver, in which the tweeter is mounted within the woofer, is a point source). And the crossover is said to be a first-order design, meaning that phase shifts are minimized. By taking such measures, it’s obvious that Role is attempting to optimize the speaker’s imaging, which closely spaced drivers and first-order crossovers are believed to improve. However, first-order crossovers also have tremendous driver overlap, which usually limits power handling, particularly for the tweeter. The Windjammer can be biwired via the dual sets of inputs on the bottom rear of the cabinet, or single-wired by using the supplied jumpers that connect the two sets of posts to each other. The full-length grille covers the drivers nicely and makes the front baffle look sharp, but the tweeter is protected by mesh and the woofer is hard to damage unless you poke it pretty hard, so some might choose to leave the grilles off, especially as the speakers sound better that way. The Windjammer is magnetically shielded -- you can place it close to a CRT display. The Windjammer’s sensitivity is rated as 86dB -- not all that low, but not that high, either. The minimum impedance, though, is said to be 9 ohms, which is a little higher than normal. This means that the speaker will need a decent amount of power to play at high volume levels, but that the power amplifier won’t have to deal with too tough a load. As a result, even receivers, which often struggle with low-impedance speakers, could be used with the Windjammer, as could many tube-based amplifier designs, provided they put out a reasonable amount of power. Role recommends something rated from 25 to 150Wpc, and, as you’ll see below, I successfully used the Windjammers with one amp rated at 20Wpc, which seemed plenty to get the speaker up to appreciable volume levels; I also used one rated at 150Wpc, but that was overkill. Role Audio is one of a growing number of manufacturers that sell factory-direct, though they do mitigate the risk of buying sound unheard with a 30-day money-back guarantee (Role Audio also has some dealers in Canada and the US). I was surprised to see that they offer a ten-year warranty on all of their speakers -- the industry standard is five years, and these days many companies offer only one or two years. Hats off to Role, then, for standing behind their products, and for supplying a guarantee to ensure that their customers are happy. (Make sure to contact Role, or visit their website through the link supplied below, to find out all the conditions for their guarantee and warranty.) Setup Because of the Windjammer’s proposed dual role of looking and sounding good, I tried it in two different rooms in my house. First, I used it in my reference listening room, driven by the outstanding Simaudio Moon i-7, a 150Wpc integrated amplifier, with a Slim Devices Transporter serving as the source. (With a computer running Slim Devices’ SlimServer software, I have a music server that can stream CD-quality sound wirelessly to wherever in my house the Transporter is located.) Speaker cables were Nordost Red Dawn Rev.II, and Nirvana S-L interconnects joined the Transporter to the Moon i-7. The other setup was in my living room. Again I used the Transporter as a source, this time hooked up (via the same Nirvana S-L interconnects) to the excellent and innovative Flying Mole CA-S3, a 20Wpc integrated amplifier that I reviewed earlier this month. However, the speaker cables had to be changed to runs of solid-core wire from Gallo Acoustics with no terminations on the amplifier end; the Mole’s unique binding posts accommodate only bare wire. I know -- weird. Sound Overall, the slender Windjammer was easy to set up, was reasonably flexible in terms of placement options, and was surprisingly fleshed out in the bass no matter where I placed it, leaving me with no real desire (thankfully) to insert a subwoofer into the system, even in my larger-than-average rooms. Bass freaks may want a sub anyway -- the Windjammer has good bass extension but is nowhere near full-range -- but all I need to be satisfied is decent enough weight in the bottom end, and the Windjammer supplied that. For example, when I streamed full-resolution WAV files of Johnny Cash’s new American V: A Hundred Highways [CD, American B000276902], I was impressed with the Role’s bottom-end heft. Admittedly, some may find that bottom end somewhat bloomy, not tight and well-defined -- something I can forgive based on the fact that the designers of loudspeakers such as the Windjammer are trying to balance styling objectives with sound quality. Tall, slim speakers such as these often sacrifice bass and end up sounding thin, even tinny. That the Windjammer did not sound thin or tinny is a definite plus on its side. The Windjammer’s midrange was sufficiently fleshed out and its highs were quite tidy at reasonable listening levels, but became congested when pushed too hard -- you can get only so much output from 4.5" drivers. My biggest concern here was that although the midrange had presence and a degree of richness, it also exhibited some hollowness, something I was able to mostly overcome with speaker placement, as you’ll see below. The Windjammers imaged extraordinarily well, giving a highly defined stage that placed musicians in space with pinpoint precision. On Mariza’s Transparente [CD, Times Square TSQ-CD-9047], I marveled at how well these speakers laid out the stage with laser-like, rock-solid placement -- Mariza’s voice was smack in the center with no hint of smear. From left to right and from front to back, the Roles mapped out the soundstage with uncanny accuracy -- in that aspect of their performance there was no compromise at all. Mariza’s voice, too, had a nice purity to it, and the acoustic instruments were rendered with delicacy and good detail. I quickly learned, then, that the Role Windjammer was a balancing act of strengths and weaknesses: good in some areas, not so good in others. But one thing I appreciated as I moved them from room to room, and within each room, was how easy they were to set up -- they sounded reasonably good wherever I placed them, and I could then get them to sound a lot better by carefully adjusting their positions. For example, in my reference room, I pulled them well away from the walls, pretty much leaving them on their own in the room to see what they were capable of without the room "helping out." It was in these positions that they imaged liked lasers, and the bass was still quite deep -- impressively so, given the room’s size and the speakers’ distance from the walls. However, it was here that I also sacrificed some midrange fullness, to the point that the sound was a bit hollow in the midrange and not as airy on top. The Windjammers were decent in this kind of setup, but I knew I could get better overall performance from them. In my living room, I placed them on either side of my wide front window and 4" away from -- i.e., very close to -- the wall behind them. They looked very attractive like that -- not only did my wife not complain, she asked that they not leave -- and still provided good center-fill. And while at first I thought the speakers’ close proximity to the wall might make the bass overblown, that wasn’t the case at all. They sounded richest in those positions, and like larger speakers than they actually are. Furthermore, the midrange filled out just a little more and lost most of the hollowness I’d heard in my reference room. And with hard surfaces close by, the highs became a touch more airy, which I thought also improved the sound. Nor did the Windjammers’ imaging suffer -- the speakers were now about 9’ apart, yet voices and instruments were still rock solid in space, depth was excellent, and there was no gap in the center. In fact, they sounded best in these positions, and looked great to boot. Which, I guess, shouldn’t surprise me -- a balance of good appearance and good sound is what the Windjammer was designed to provide. Comparison In my opinion, one of the best "sound and style" loudspeakers on the planet today is Mirage’s Omnisat v2 FS, which I reviewed in June 2005 and still use today. At its price of $1000/pair, the Omnisat is a direct competitor to the $1295/pair Windjammer. The v2 FS, though, while outstanding in many ways, is also an example of the tradeoffs necessary to have good sound and high style at an affordable price. For example, the v2 FS’s bass is decent and well controlled but doesn’t go all that deep -- it has me itching to use a sub. The Windjammer, on the other hand, is not lightweight down low, and while it can’t do what even a high-quality small sub can, it’s quite fleshed out for a "sound and style" speaker
The next thing to know about the v2 FS isn’t so much about a tradeoff as it is a warning. The v2 FS is an Omnipolar design, meaning that it radiates its sound through 360 degrees. This results in a sprawling soundstage that’s even more spacious than the Windjammers’, but not as well-defined. I could never say of the Mirages -- as I do of the Roles -- that they "image like lasers." Furthermore, because of the way Mirage speakers "spray out" their sound, you don’t want to place them close to walls -- in fact, you need them at least a foot or two away, which means you need to get the speaker farther out into the room. The front-firing Windjammer, on the other hand, seems to sound best when placed close to the wall behind it (at least in my room). Depending on your needs, then, one speaker might be better than the other, and such a choice is a reminder that there’s much more to consider with speakers such as these, which balance looks and sound, than with traditional designs that mostly emphasize the sound. Conclusion Role Audio’s Windjammer looks good, takes up little space, and still retains audiophile-type hallmarks such as good overall sound quality, generous heft in the bass, and razor-sharp imaging. This doesn’t mean that you can’t find a better-sounding speaker at this price, or for less; there are plenty of great-sounding, similarly priced speakers. However, most of the better ones are larger and are far more obtrusive -- they dominate the room, instead of blending into it the way the Windjammer is designed to do. For a combination of sound and styling, the Role Audio Windjammer is certainly worth auditioning. …Doug Schneider Role Audio Windjammer Loudspeakers Role Audio Website: www.roleaudio.com
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