A new prince?

Ding dong ding dong, Christmas is less than a month to go. Boy! I love Christmas as we wind down the year. A shopping season has begun, yeah. Look what I've just bumped into; A new prince is born? Buchardt Audio S400. Now, I know that audiophiles are far from comprehensibly agreeable in any audio matter. Nevertheless, this's a small young company from Denmark founded by a young man, 30 years old Mads Brogaard Buchardt has rocked the audio media. No a lot of information to be found on their website; Buchardt Audio. To be honest, what they do isn't any different than the rest, designed in Denmark, outsourced the box manufacturing to China, assembled the speaker in Denmark and sells directly to the consumers worldwide. They are smart not to have the total assembly in China to prevent the design being copied and sell parallelly in another brand. To ship to the consumer worldwide, a home trial for 30 days and free return shipping if you're not happy, I'd say they are rather bold and risk-taking because there'll be some fellas who are not serious about ownership and take a free ride. Shipping isn't cheap and not to mention the heavy administrative work.

Well, being a new company you need to be bold and take chances, what more competing in an overcrowded and highly competitive market segment. They are head-on with the big boys with a global dealer network, KEF, Pro Ac, B&W, ATC, Harbeth, Dynaudio, Elac and others, to name a few. So, Buchardt Audio has to bang on excellent price-performance to beat the odds to chip away a slice of the market share. For all we know, the world will always have a place for high price-performance products. I'm a proponent of such product due to my upbringing, not everyone born rich. Nothing brings more excitement than this.

Strange enough, Buchardt Audio S400 resembles Amphion Argon 3S design in similar fashion, both spot a Constant Directivity Control waveguide tweeter, Buchardt sport a 6 in mid/woofer driver while Argon 3S a 6.5 in, both utilise a passive radiator except the placement of tweeter-mid/woofer driver. Both are the mirror image of each other. S400 employs silk dome tweeter, Argon Amphion Argon S3 titanium tweeter. See the price advantage when you cut the middleman, the bulk of saving goes to the consumers.

Buchardt S400, USD1895 per pair

Amphion Argon S3, USD2795 per pair

Buchardt Audio S400 was officially debuted in North West Audio, England on 23 Jun 2018. Looks really cool in black, a 0.74 in soft dome tweeter in CDC aluminium waveguide, a 6 in aluminium mid/woofer driver and 5 in x 9 in passive radiator in a 365 x 180 x 240 mm box. Speaker impedance is rated at 4 ohm, frequency response to range from 33 - 40.000 Hz +/- 3db. The figure is rather optimistic. Each speaker weights at 9kg. Buchardt Audio even published some measurements for the freaks, if you know what they mean in sound. No, you don't. 

Crossover components, air coil inductors

 Here's a teaser: https://www.facebook.com/685855514768848/posts/2068275149860204

Google Buchardt Audio S400 on youtube, there are some satisfied user reviews there. One of them even went as far to say S400 competes favourably against with Joseph Audio Pulsar with a MSRP USD7700, USD1895 per pair Buchardt Audio S400 is nonetheless super value. If my memory serves me well, Joseph Audio Pulsars were played in KLIAVS many years back in JW Marriot Hotel, they were driven by Gato Audio AMP-150 then. That system imaged like crazy, what more with a high-end sound to boot.

CE certification

So, my friend got super excited hearing the news and might just place an order with Buchardt Audio next year. I'm all sweaty because I'll be blamed for S400 misbehaviour. Not a spot to be, I gain nothing but everything to lose, me and my big mouth! Electronics wise, his amp has enough juice to crack S400. The question is how much better his sound will get, no one knows. In short, USD2000-3000 is the sweet spot price range for bookshelf monitor to attain a commendable performance, quality costs money. Technology advances, new is better than old.