I received a delivery of the new Arylic BK651 loudspeakers, they were very well packaged and would need seriously bad freight handling to damage the contents.
Upon opening and on first inspection I see that the cabinet design is very minimalistic in its approach an in my view I think that speaker’s physical dimensions fall toward the larger side of what I’d consider as bookshelf-sized speakers.
The light oak timber veneer finished enclosures appear to be well constructed and the magnetically attached fascia grille is nice.
The two drivers are recessed flush with the veneer, upon removal of these and looking inside the cabinet the only internal stiffening is a small single MDF cross brace. As the Arylic documentation shows the MDF is 18mm thick and there are 20mm thick ‘polyfil’ type synthetic dampening material pads on the side walls of the enclosure.
The woofer/mid driver has a pressed steel chassis, the air motion transformer tweeter has cast alloy frame, the full driver specs are published in the DIY section of the Arylic website. There are no signs of a OEM on either driver.
The crossover is mounted to the base of the enclosure, it’s a basic crossover with air core inductors, wire wound resistor, a ceramic, a polyester film and a bipolar capacitor.
Looking at the rear of the enclosure there are the speaker connectors and a port. The plated brass binding posts are similar to ones that I have used previously with no issues, weird though, the ones in these speakers had steel nuts.
The port is 50mm diameter, it is a cardboard tube with flared moulded plastic ends, I can only assume that the cardboard tube has been trimmed for bass tuning upon assembly. Using a port length calculator it appears that this port is tuned to appropriately 48hz
Listening. After extensively sampling numerous and varied music genres, my impression is that these speakers are enjoyable, but like most fairly compact speakers they have limited bass depth, a somewhat exaggerated midrange and in this particular model, lively, bright and slightly piercing high frequencies. This is my first time listening with this type of air motion transformer tweeters so I can only compare with more conventional units.
They were very easy speakers to drive to loud listening levels with low apparent distortion, the low end frequency appears to drop off a little under about, I’d say around 70hz, so combining with a subwoofer would improve the listening experience.
The listening (or dispersion) area appears to be fairly narrow, although as the speakers are not really suitable for critical listening, I wasn’t overly concerned with this.
As the ports are rear facing, I would suggest that the speakers are placed at least 150mm away from a wall behind them for the ports to function properly extending the bass response.
There are a few giveaways that the speakers have been built to a budget or price point, a cast alloy frame on the woofer/mid range would have been nice and the use of a bipolar cap when a film cap could have been used for very little more.
So, are they considered reference quality? No, but I would recommend them as excellent “everyday speakers” for playing background music on a regular basis and they do offer very good value for the price.
