Presenting the new Lotus demo set of the breakthrough Rockport LYNX which dazzled the crowds at Munich this year and were recently awarded The Absolute Sound’s “Ultra High End Loudspeaker of the Year”.

The important tech to understand with LYNX is the cabinet construction. Like the flagship LYRA, LYNX is created from a single piece 84kg aluminium casting with internal stiffening ribs. This one piece continuous monocoque contains all the topology needed to build the loudspeaker so that means no joins, connections, fasteners or structural complexities which can compromise the stiffness and absolute absence of resonance and noise. Some 38kg of Rockports proprietary internal composite damping compound is then bonded to all internal surfaces of the cabinet to reduce internal resonances to zero. The internal ribs further increase the bonded surface area. The crossover is also sealed in an acoustically isolated enclosure in the base with the the same compound.

After the unique cabinet construction, all of Rockports stadout technology applies. In house constructed carbon fibre sandwich cones, a berrylium tweeter with waveguide, extensive consideration to sound diffraction characteristics and careful fine tuning of each crossover on a speaker by speaker basis.

The result is a full range loudspeaker that in the flesh does not really look that much larger than the baby entry Atria II model but the internal volume is a startling 50% greater. As delectable as the little Atria II is in its own right, with around 50% more drive surface area too, LYNX is a whole different world away, a speaker with enough scale, weight and dynamic ability for almost all customers and all rooms.

Super refined, silky delicate highs, rich and dense mids and simply the most gorgeous 3d bass, richly textured and muscular in a way that is almost unique in the industry. Like all Rockports, LYNX deliver their magic in the opposite way to many high end loudspeakers. Instead of impressing with an enhanced overly sharp treble or with a feeling of uber-openeness – a midrange that has been excessively excavated to the point of leanss and sterility – their performance is led more from the lower frequencies. This is much harder to do because the bass region is far more difficult to accurately reproduce but Rockport bass is so transparent and free from colouration and cabinet artifice that your music can finally be delivered with the weight, density and body that it truly deserves.

LYNX are a rich, muscular, opulent experience but also one with incredible speed and agility. They are as neutral as I have personally ever heard and therefore as real sounding as I have ever heard. They also exude in spades that Rockport standout trait that we have become so accustomed to – a feeling of unshakeable positional stability and groundedness, as if the music is literally emanating from a mountin of stone, deliciously three dimensional and palpable.

Lynx are an astonishing achievement, especially so at their small size. It is hard imagining why anyone assembling a world class high end system would want or need a bigger or indeed more expensive speaker than this.