Hi-end Kalypso speaker

The Greek nymph!

Kalypso is a new breed of loudspeaker, which sets new standards for sound quality and ease of use. It is basically an active loudspeaker with a built-in true digital amplifier with several design and construction innovations and clearly shows the shape of things to come!

The design philosophy behind the development of Kalypso is that of absolute simplicity and minimal signal path as means to achieve the highest level of naturalness and transparency in sonic reproduction. The goal was to build a loudspeaker with the least possible “signature” and degradation imposed on the music signal.

The designers of Rois Acoustics have long been advocates of the “simple is beautiful” principle in loudspeaker design. All our speakers use minimalist, 1st order crossovers, which offer the most natural and transparent operation and far better musicality compared to more complex, high-order crossovers, which may measure better.

Kalypso takes this approach to its ultimate stage: a one-way, full-range loudspeaker with NO crossover! A single, point source driver, which handles the entire frequency range from 40-20.000 Hz with extreme coherence and dynamic integrity, relieved from the temporal and spatial mismatches that plague multi-way, multi-driver loudspeakers.

The driver

Kalypso’s driver is a top-quality, 8-inch full range driver made by Tang Band, a Taiwanese company, specializing in high-quality full-range drivers. It has received very enthusiastic reviews all over the world and is regarded as one of the best in its class, regardless of price. The main sonic characteristics of this driver are its lightning fast transients and its excellent high-frequency response, challenging that of the best tweeters!

Kalypso’s driver is a top-quality, 8-inch full range driver made by Tang Band, a Taiwanese company, specializing in high-quality full-range drivers. It has received very enthusiastic reviews all over the world and is regarded as one of the best in its class, regardless of price. The main sonic characteristics of this driver are its lightning fast transients and its excellent high-frequency response, challenging that of the best tweeters! The advanced magnetic system with strong neodymium magnets, under hung voice coil and special shorting rings, drastically reduces distortion and ensures perfect cone control even in excursion limits. The special pulp cone with a moving mass of only 10g (less than half of the mass of a conventional 8” woofer) and high rigidity, offers super fast, pistonic motion for accurate reproduction of even the most minute signals. Moreover, the excursion capability of this driver is phenomenal for its kind. A whole 6 mm (peak-to-peak) of linear travel, compared to a mere 1-2 mm of most other 8-inch full range drivers. Kalypso’s driver will never “run out of steam” when asked to reproduce the explosive dynamics of live music.

The Cabinet

Kalypso’ cabinet was designed in order to fully exploit the unique sonic qualities of the driver. A 2,7m-long, folded horn with a large, front-firing mouth proved the best choice. It allows the driver to “breath” freely and move without any obstacle imposed by cavity resonances. Moreover, the internal horn walls act as braces for the cabinet, minimizing mechanical resonances and colourations.

With such “neutral” loading, the bass of Kalypso is full, even and lightning fast, with no sign of the (sometimes impressive but clearly unnatural) resonant bloat of normal bass-reflex speakers. The character of Kalypso’s bass resembles that of a large panel rather that of a box!

The Amplifier

Perhaps Kalypso’s most unique feature is its amplifier. It is developed by Audio4Soul, another Greek company and it is unique for being a true digital amplifier. It is actually a 1 stage, high-power DAC, which converts the PCM input signal into a PWM output signal and sends it directly to loudspeaker driver. This amplifier performs the tasks of a DAC, a preamp and a power amp at the same time, thus eliminating the need for all the normally required interconnect cables.

Before we choose the Audio4Soul amplifier, we made extensive listening tests and compared it with many solid state, valve (even direct heated mono's) and other "digital" (analog input class D switching power amps) amplifiers. Kalypso’s driver has such detail resolving ability, that it immediately showed even the slightest differences between amplifiers. The unique sonic qualities of Audio4Soul amplifier, proved a perfect match for Kalypso’s driver.

Being a true digital unit, Kalypso’s amplifier accepts only digital PCM signal through its digital inputs, asynchronous 24bit/192kHz USB, coaxial and 24bit/96kHz for the optical connection. So Kalypso can be directly fed by digital signal from a PC or a CD transport. Moreover, the amplifier is fully remotely controlled and is equipped with a series of user selectable, digital EQ filters (remaining in the digital domain-no DAC/ADC needed) which allow the user to adjust Kalypso’s tonal balance according to the acoustics of the listening room. This is another unique feature, which further enhances Kalypso’s versatility and user friendliness.

Kalypso is more than a simple active loudspeaker. It is essentially a complete, stand-alone sound reproduction system, requiring only a digital source. It replaces a whole chain of components (DAC, preamp, power amp, interconnect cables and rack), freeing valuable room space.

Moreover, the built-in amplifier is replaceable, offering Kalypso’s owner almost unlimited upgrade possibilities. Additional features such as battery operation and wireless data streaming are planned for the near future.

All this technical innovation would be useless if it is not accompanied by a superior sonic performance. The single-stage true digital amplifier, the absence of crossover and the non-resonant design of the speaker cabinet ensure that the music information is subjected to the minimum possible processing and degradation during its transformation from raw digital data to final sound. The sound of Kalypso is full, fast and coherent with an immediacy and an overall naturalness that conveys that magical sense of “being there” to the listener!