The Rubato from the British RFC is a two-way speaker with a coaxial driver. The tweeter is located in the heart of the midrange/woofer and the sound of the Rubato therefore comes from a point source. The new speaker will be on display at the North West Audio Show taking place on June 22nd and 23rd just south of Manchester.
Reference Fidelity Components (RFC) presents itself as a small and friendly family business in Great Britain, offering specialist hi-fi services and hi-fi products. The company makes and sells cables and a range of other accessories and offers loudspeaker repairs, overhauls and refurbishments. Installation and maintenance of turntables is also offered. Paul, the owner of the company, has a background of 25 years of experience in professional technology. He has a passion for music, hi-fi reproduction and the standards needed to achieve that, as we read on the RFC website.
RFC builds speakers and the speakers say they are the result of painstaking research and design and meticulous attention to detail. “We are specialists in Vintage Tannoy speakers and offer a full range of speaker services for Tannoy speakers. “That ranges from providing perhaps the very best external crossovers available anywhere in the world, to providing cabinet upgrades and renovations, renovating and upgrading existing crossovers and new cabinet design and manufacturing,” RFC said.
RFC Rubato: two-way monitor speaker
The RFC Rubato is a design with some remarkable qualities. It is based on a new 6.5 inch coaxial driver. This consists of a central silk-dome tweeter in its own waveguide horn-loaded section, which uses a neodymium magnet. The tweeter is mounted coaxially in a 6.5 inch midwoofer, creating a true point source image that is aligned in both phase and time. A wide sweet spot is a nice addition.
The cabinet is a beautifully crafted high-quality Baltic birch veneered enclosure, which houses the point-to-point crossover. It features a front port for exceptional bass extension due to its size and ease of placement. This provides a rigid, low coloration cabinet, internally damped and braced and also housing the internal point-to-point, hand-assembled crossover designed by RFC to achieve a phase-correct and linear response with low distortion.
According to the manufacturer, the Rubato exhibits excellent, controlled off-axis directionality up to 60 degrees for a smooth and stable off-axis sound image. It is a very musical speaker with a usable bass response up to 42 Hz and can be placed close to or further away. The sensitivity is excellent at almost 90dB (1 Watt/1 meter) and a powerful amplifier is therefore not necessary. The nominal impedance of eight ohms makes control easy.
Part of the design brief that RFC set for itself for this speaker was to create a true hi-fi monitor speaker that doesn’t cost a lot of money. The Rubato benefits from remarkable clarity and detail, but without being fatiguing during extended listening. The bass performance is quite remarkable for the size, according to RFC, and a subwoofer won’t be necessary for many listeners.
A price of 1,750 euros per pair is listed on the RFC website .
RFC Rubator: technical specifications
- Type: dynamic two-way speaker with bass reflex housing (front port)
- Frequency response: 42 Hz to 19 kHz
- Sensitivity (/1 Watt/1 meter): approximately 90 dB
- Nominal impedance: 8 ohms
- Minimum impedance: 6 ohms
- Crossover: hybrid 2nd/4th order, low distortion, point-to-point construction with high-quality polypropylene capacitors throughout
- Crossover frequency: 3 kHz
- Recommended amplification: 15 Watts to 150 Watts
- Max. power capacity: woofer 240 Watt, tweeter: 150 Watt
- Dispersion: 60 degrees on either side of the axis, ultra-smooth polar response for a true cardioid response
- Dimensions (H x D x W): 400 x 300 x 240 millimeters
- Weight: 10 kilograms
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