For the last few months, Norway’s Arendal Sound and its Tower 8 loudspeaker, the flagship model in the company’s new 1528 series, have consumed a lot of SoundStage! Network’s bandwidth: two videos on our YouTube channel—one about Arendal Sound, the other about the 1528 series—and three articles by Doug Schneider on this website about the Tower 8, the most detailed of which appeared as a full review in his December 1 System One column. The Tower 8 earned a Reviewers’ Choice award at the time this review was published and a Product of the Year award when the SoundStage! Network’s annual awards were announced, on December 15.
In his System One review, Doug describes the Tower 8 as large—53″H × 11.5″W × 21.5″D, without supports and footers—heavy, at around 175 pounds, and exceedingly well built (all high-density fiberboard). It is priced at $9500 a pair (prices in USD), which is very reasonable considering what it offers. This unexpectedly low pricing is attributable mainly to cost savings realized by manufacturing the speaker in China and by adopting a direct-to-consumer business model. Doug writes: “By eliminating the typical network of retailers and middlemen, the company avoids the attendant markup, which can be thousands of dollars. A speaker like the Tower 8 would easily cost $20,000 a pair or more were it sold through traditional dealer channels.” But he also points out some drawbacks of buying direct: “prospective buyers cannot view and audition the product in person before buying, nor can they resort to dealer support after.” To address these issues, Arendal has created a robust, responsive customer-support system, and offers a generous 60-day return window.
The Tower 8 is offered in two finish options Arendal calls Basalt and Polar (matte gray and matte white). The large cabinet houses six drivers, which take up most of the real estate on the tall, arced baffle. Doug describes the configuration in his review: “a tweeter with a 1.1″ lithium-magnesium dome, an acoustical lens directly in front of the dome, and an elliptical waveguide around the whole thing; a midrange with a 5″ carbon-fiber-and-graphene cone, an acoustical lens in front of the cone, and a sealed basket (it is open to the rear in most drivers); and four woofers, each with an 8″ aluminum cone with a ridged surface, for increased rigidity, and a massive motor system. Bass output is increased by a large bottom-venting port.” Low on the cabinet’s backside, below the binding posts, are jumpers by which the high- and low-frequency outputs can be independently increased or decreased by 2dB.
Arendal claims 89.5dB sensitivity (2.83V/m) and a nominal 4-ohm impedance, which our measurements corroborated. The driving amplifier should be capable of at least 200Wpc (at 8 ohms), Arendal recommends, but the Tower 8 can handle up to 1000W. A Simaudio Moon 761 stereo amplifier, rated to deliver at least 200Wpc into 8 ohms (and more than twice that into 4 ohms), was driving the Tower 8s in this audition, and a Simaudio Moon 791 streaming preamplifier was feeding the 761. A Marantz CD 50n streaming CD player provided disc playback. (Cabling and other accessories are detailed in the review.)
Doug was impressed by the Tower 8s’ sound from the start, describing it as bold as their appearance. He writes:
The first track I played, using the Marantz CD 50n, was Bruce Cockburn’s “Pacing the Cage,” from The Charity of Night (True North TND 150). Almost immediately, I was drawn into serious-listening mode. At the moderately high volume level set at the time, the speakers’ performance was jaw-dropping. They sounded natural throughout the frequency range, had a full, accurate bass and clear highs, and presented Cockburn’s voice perfectly centered with stunning detail. The palpable texture of his voice and dead definitude of its image left me awestruck.
When listening to “Misguided Angel,” by Canada’s Cowboy Junkies, Doug felt that the bass was in perfect balance with the higher frequencies. The Tower 8s were “reproducing what must have been 20Hz whoomphs without overpowering Margo Timmins’s vocals,” he writes, which is precisely how producer Peter J. Moore had intended it to sound, he recalled from conversations he’d had with Moore.
When he played Fleetwood Mac’s “Dreams,” from Rumours, Doug found Stevie Nicks’s voice clear, though a touch prominent, but he liked how it stood out in the mix. The cymbals were also more prominent than with other speakers he had reviewed, but not so much as to be overly bright. Mick Fleetwood’s drumming was “breathtakingly powerful and at times startlingly deep,” Doug recounts, adding that its presence across the soundstage was impressively broad.
If the room response is such that the Tower 8’s highs are felt to be disagreeably prominent, the high-frequency output adjuster—one of those two jumpers at the back of each speaker—can be set to attenuate the treble by 2dB. (It can also be set to boost the treble by 2dB, as mentioned, should something in the signal chain be rolling off the highs.)
When Doug challenged the Tower 8s with Emmylou Harris’s Wrecking Ball, he thought their performance was stellar. In his review, he praises the “reference-class clarity” the guitar and tambourine had in the opening to “Orphan Girl” and the “stunning sense of spaciousness” they conferred. One of the hallmarks of the Tower 8s’ presentation is an expansive soundstage, Doug notes. The soundstage on this track was certainly wide and enveloping, but it was also deep, which enhanced imaging.
“Effortlessness of presentation” is another of the Tower 8’s hallmarks, Doug writes. “Consistently, at all volumes, the pair produced big, dynamic sound with such ease and clarity they seemed to be coasting along, much like good horn speakers do.”
With every one of those recordings and with every subsequent musical selection, the Tower 8 proved impressive in one way or another. On Bob Dylan’s “Man in the Long Black Coat,” from his album Oh Mercy, Dylan’s voice did not succumb to distortion at high volume levels the way many other speakers do, Doug notes. On Van Morrison’s Poetic Champions Compose, the Tower 8s exhibited once more their “aptitude for casting spacious soundstages and sharp images.” Much like with the Estelon Auras, “the sound was as open and free . . . and sonic images were planted distinctly on a broad soundstage”—a remarkable achievement considering the Aura, at nearly $20K a pair, is more than twice as expensive as the Tower 8.
The Tower 8s’ presentation of Tracy Chapman’s well-known “Fast Car” was startlingly revelatory to Doug, exposing a disappointing shortcoming in the recording: “when the drums entered, excessive compression of dynamic range and a lack of depth in the bass became quite evident.” None of the many other speakers Doug had auditioned over the years had revealed this deficiency as clearly. The Tower 8s’ exceptional fidelity to the recording in frequency and dynamic range was clearly evident.
Overall, Doug found very few grounds for criticism in the Tower 8 and many for praise. He sums up his commendatory review most cogently: “The Arendal 1528 Tower 8 is an outstanding loudspeaker with exceptional styling and build quality, capable of delivering clear, dynamic, spacious, full-range sound that reveals every detail in a recording. At its price, it represents an extraordinary value.”
Doug raises one caveat in his review, concerning the listening space a pair of Tower 8s need: “a listening room should at minimum be large enough to accommodate the recommended listening distance of 13′.” And, again, he reminds prospective buyers that although the Tower 8 cannot be auditioned before purchase, it can be returned within two months. All the same, he cautions that packing and shipping these large speakers would not be a trivial task.
Those niggling points aside, the Tower 8’s high value—its high performance-to-price ratio—earned the Tower 8 its Reviewers’ Choice and Product of the Year awards. But it’s strictly on account of its high performance that this month it received a Recommended Reference Component award.
Manufacturer contact information:
Arendal Sound
Industritoppen 6C, 4848
Arendal, Norway
Website: www.arendalsound.com
