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Published May 1, 2002

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Heybrook HB2 Loudspeakers

When it comes to audio we really do live in the best of times and the worst of times. Radio has become a vast wasteland -- even if you're lucky enough to live within broadcasting range of a station transmitting music you want to listen to, chances are it sounds awful. Schools have cut music education as a cost-cutting measure and children are growing up unaware of any music dating before 1985. Pfui -- don't get me started.

Yet, professional-quality high-resolution source material has never been easier or cheaper for the average Joe to come by, and hi-fi, even very good hi-fi, has never been more plentiful. In fact, the average level of speaker building has grown so sophisticated that all but the finest loudspeakers of a decade ago would seem hopelessly colored today.

And it's amazing how much of that has trickled down to the most affordable levels of audio. Especially in the UK, for instance, the most tightly contested price point for loudspeakers is the $200 to $300 range. Over there, if a speaker company can't compete in that price range, it hasn't a chance of making any money -- and the competition is brutal. A company can't just churn out a cheap box stuffed with any old driver. It actually has to be good.

Except for the products of a few large speaker companies though, most of those savings evaporate by the time they get over here. There's shipping and all those extra middle men to account for, so most British speakers end up costing about twice their UK prices by the time they reach consumers here. So when I learned that Audio Advisor had struck a deal to buy the remainder of Heybrook's 2000-model loudspeakers, I was intrigued. After all, that just might mean us Yanks could get a real bargain for a change. Sure enough, I paged through Audio Advisor's website and discovered the two-way stand-mounted monitor, the HB2, was selling for $299.95 per pair, which is about 40% less than they sold for in the UK!

Examinations are formidable even for the best prepared

Never much of a presence over here, Heybrook has been manufacturing audio equipment since 1978. The company has produced well-regarded source components and amplifiers in addition to loudspeakers. Heybrook has never been flashy or trendy. If anything, it has been considered a little on the dull side, stolidly soldiering on with its well-designed, acoustically sound, nicely made products. If the company was a character in a '40s movie, it would have been played by Ralph Bellamy.

The HB2 is a large speaker, given its price. It's 17.1"H x 9.4"W x 11.4"D. My pair came clad in a wood-grained vinyl identified by the carton as "beech." The HB2 has two front-firing ports set to the sides and below the 1" soft-dome tweeter, and slightly above the 6.5" Kevlar midrange/woofer. The speaker is biwirable, utilizing four plastic-nutted, but still quite respectable, binding posts.

In a departure from most loudspeakers in its price range, the HB2 employs a first-order crossover. Heybrook feels that the first-order network's lower parts count allows the amplifier to exercise greater control over the drive units.

I auditioned the HB2 with the Perreaux E160i integrated amp and ECD2 CD player, as well as a system with higher-end aspirations that included the Audio Research CD3 CD player, Blue Circle BC3 Galatea preamp, and Ayre V-5 power amplifier.

The best is yet to be!

Fresh out of the box, the HB2s sounded a bit light in the bass, which also happened to be the consensus of the British reviewers who had covered it. Not wishing to prejudge them, I determined to vigorously work the speakers in order to see if the woofer might loosen up a bit. Not having the luxury of a leisurely audition, I resorted to an old reviewer's trick, which originated, I believe, with Stereophile's Thomas J. Norton.

I placed the speakers with their drivers facing one another and wired one out of phase with the other. I then turned the volume up high and threw a down comforter over them. I put Stereophile's burn-in track (Stereophile Test CD 3 [STPH 0065]) on infinite repeat and left the room. I wouldn't have wished to remain in the room with the speakers blaring like that. But from even one room over, the phase difference and the comforter pretty much took care of any audible signal.

Sure enough, eight hours later, the spectral balance had shifted significantly. The speakers did, in fact, have deeper, more prominent bass than before. Of course, if really deep, articulated, physical bass response is your priority, the HB2s probably aren't the speaker for you -- but then neither is anything else below $1000 per pair.

About the best thing God invents

John Williams' The Magic Box [Sony Classical SK 89483] is precisely the kind of material most inexpensive speakers reduce to a screechy mess. Williams' clear, ringing string tone came through the HB2s unscathed -- in fact, the HB2's tweeter seemed particularly in synch with the warmth of the string overtones and the rich cushion of air they seemed to float on.

Nor was the mellow, woody bloom of the instrument scanted. The HB2s may not be the last word in bass extension, but they sure as shootin' reproduced an honest low E -- and as a result were capable of preserving a sense of Williams' real-life size and sound.

On certain ringing tones, such as Francis Bebey's sanza and the fork-struck pop-bottle of the makossas he composed, the tones were startlingly present in the room. It always sounds like such a nerdy thing to say, but moments like that affect you in an almost physical way -- it's about as close to magic as we rational denizens of the 21st century can get any more.

Hoping to get a better handle on the speakers' low-end capabilities, I pulled out the second disc of Little Feat's Hotcakes & Outtakes [Warner Archives R2 79912], cueing up the band's superb live version of "Spanish Moon." Nobody will ever claim that they can feel Kenny Gradney's loping bass lines slamming into his or her chest through the HB2s, but his bass still sounded full and hefty. It wasn't as powerful as you would get from a speaker with a larger woofer, of course, but it was tight and fast.

I listened, as I am wont to do, to Coleman Hawkins' lambent saxophone flickering softly in and out of the melodic byways of Body & Soul [RCA 68505]. This is, in many ways, the ultimate late-night listening -- my favorite tracks are from the 1947 sessions with Tadd Dameron's moody arrangements and a glorious band that included Fats Navarro, J.J. Johnson, Max Roach, and Hank Jones. The disc's transcendent moment -- other than the Hawk's heart-achingly beautiful solo on the disc's title track -- is Dameron's "Half Step Down, Please," which gives everybody a chance to solo. Hawkins is in good company, but as usual, his solos are exquisitely formed, multi-faceted gems of improvisation. The Heybrooks captured Hawkins' breathy warmth and huge, raspy tone. They also managed to give his saxophone an appropriate beefy bigness. This is nuanced performance that comes as a shock for $300 per pair.

The best test of truth

My longtime reference for a speaker in this price range is the no-longer-produced B&W DM302, which knocked me out when I reviewed a pair for Stereophile. They combined great sound with innovative engineering and have remained a staple in my study and bedroom systems ever since. The HB2s are much larger than the DM302s -- it would take four of the B&Ws to equal the cabinet capacity of the Heybrook.

But the B&W sounds much bigger than it looks. It has a punchy dynamic sound that some listeners will find better suited to certain types of high-energy music than the Heybrooks. The HB2s lacked the overall force of the B&Ws, but they had played deeper in pitch and possessed a warmth that worked extremely well with unamplified acoustic music, whether classical, jazz, or folk.

On the other hand, the B&Ws tracked individual instruments within a mix with greater clarity. The HB2s emphasized ensemble sound over detail -- perhaps indicating mild excess in the warmth region. It certainly isn't a serious coloration, more like a suggestion of one.

On "Spanish Moon," the B&Ws nailed the bounce and swagger of Gradney's bass line, while the Heybrooks softened it a bit. On the other hand, the Heybrooks imbued it with more of a woody tone and more actual bass tone.

I like the B&Ws; I own 'em after all. But for all their bounce and verve, I preferred the overall sense of ease and space that the Heybrook's delivered. And let's face it, it's a bigger speaker with a bigger sound -- B&W might have put a half-gallon of speaker into the DM302's one-quart frame, but the HB2s can actually accommodate a full gallon. If I were comparing the two today, I'd opt for the HB2s in a heartbeat. People who value a sense of propulsion over ease, of detail over instrumental blend, of drive over amiability might well decide the question in favor of the B&Ws.

The best of life is but intoxication

No matter which way you would lean, the Heybrook HB2 is a great deal. An intelligently designed, generously endowed overachiever, the Heybrook HB2 is ridiculously good at an extremely affordable price. When you can buy this much loudspeaker for only $300 per pair, maybe it really is the best of times.

...Wes Phillips
wes@onhifi.com

Heybrook HB2 Loudspeakers
Price: $299.95
Warranty: Two years parts and labor

Available in North American through:
Audio Advisor
4717A Broadmoor SE
Kentwood, MI 49512
USA
Phone: 1-800-942-0220

Website: www.audioadvisor.com

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