AudioSolutions Figaro B2 Loudspeaker Review

Founded in 2011 by loudspeaker engineer Gediminas Gaidelis, who’s also the company’s owner and chief designer, Lithuania-based AudioSolutions hand-builds all its products in Vilnius. The range is predominantly premium-priced, but the Figaro B2 standmounter you see here reaches down to what I would call the ‘affordable high-end’ sector, where genuine quality is possible for those careful with their pennies.

Gediminas tells StereoNET that a typical buyer of this product wants a good price-to-performance ratio, and also likes personalisation. “He wants the speaker to match his taste, and likes to tell the story behind it – rather than simply being proud of a brand the market recognises. Our buyer is usually proactive, living a more expressive lifestyle, and hates black just as much as we do. Of all Figaros sold, only four pairs were finished in black.”

He adds: “Here we do everything ourselves, whereas most companies only assemble components – cabinets, crossovers, drivers, etc. –that are manufactured elsewhere. We have a small factory with true professionals in their fields, working with their hands from raw materials to the finished, unique product. We are really proud of what we do, and that it’s all done here in our factory. We deliberately limit our production to five hundred pairs a year so as not to lose focus and quality control, and not to overstretch the whole operation to the point where bureaucracy takes over the art of manufacturing good speakers.”

This modus operandi allows AudioSolutions to be highly customer-focused. “We use vertical metal accents, unique satin soft‑touch finishes, and even matte chrome finishes that no one else offers. Figaro looks fresh in a crowded market and will definitely stand out if placed among other speakers”, he adds. “As the founder of this company, I felt that having just a few colour options is not enough – it’s good for distributors but not for users. So our assembly process supports a huge number of options without overstretching our factory. Today, we proudly offer over 500,000 different combinations of options per speaker pair. We assemble each unique pair and ship it to the customer within one month. Every speaker leaving the AudioSolutions factory is made for an individual person.”

Up Close

The Figaro B2 is an attractive, smallish 2-way standmounter with a cabinet that tapers slightly toward the back. It sports a 19mm silk-dome tweeter and a 152mm ER (Extra Rigid) paper-coned mid/bass driver. Gediminas explains that AudioSolutions always uses silk dome high-frequency units, “as they are simply a great compromise between weight, stiffness, reaction time, harmonic pattern – they sound natural.” It is carefully made so the dome is acoustically loaded, which he says stiffens the membrane by equalising the sound pressure around it in every direction. This system is linear, so the louder you play, the more damping you get and vice versa, he points out.

The ER mid/bass driver is custom-designed and made by AudioSolutions. Gediminas points out that paper is a very good match for a silk dome. “Like silk, it has ideal middle‑ground parameters – it is light yet stiff, has no sharp breakups, goes relatively high, and has a perfect natural roll‑off. However, typical uncoated paper is too soft, while coated or sandwiched drivers do their job but destroy musicality. Coating changes the material's stiffness and internal damping properties, thereby affecting sound propagation in the cone. We use low‑processed pulp fibres to stiffen the cone, as all the positive properties of soft paper remain, but with higher stiffness.”

The Figaro B2’s drive units cross over at 4kHz, above the region where the human ear is most sensitive, which is roughly from 1 to 2kHz. Gediminas argues that it isn’t possible to completely eliminate natural driver distortions or the phase shift in a crossover, which is mathematically tied to how the dB/octave slope is calculated, so the only way to fight this is to move crossover points away from this region. For this reason, the speaker’s mid/bass unit is what he calls an “extended band” design that extends much higher than most similar drivers.

The drive units and crossover are housed in a bass-reflex-loaded cabinet with a rear-firing port. Gediminas explains that by placing the port at the back, higher-frequency emissions are effectively filtered out. Also, owners can fine-tune the speaker's bass output by repositioning it relative to the rear boundary wall. “You can tune room gain, make the bass softer or tighter, more or less in quantity, or more precise. The rear port has been designed carefully so the speaker can be placed close to the wall.” The Figaro B2 uses a so-called ‘cabinet-in-a-cabinet’ enclosure system, which is taken from Acoustic Solutions’ upper scale Virtuoso series. It’s said to turn unwanted resonances into heat.

With its quoted sensitivity of 89.5dB, the Figaro B2 is designed to go loud with limited power, but with a nominal impedance of 4 ohms, you’ll need a solid-state amp with good current drive to get the best out of it. Recommended amp power is between 5 watts and 150W, although at the lower end of that, you’d be pushing it in anything but a small room. The claimed in-room frequency response is 42Hz to 25kHz, with no roll-off points specified.

Measuring 337x223x339mm [HxWxD], it’s a good-sized speaker for more compact listening rooms, and feels solid at 10kg. I found that my review pair worked best on my 16-inch frame-type stands, pushed fairly close to my rear boundary wall. For the purposes of this review, I used a range of sources and amplification, including my Technics SP-15 turntable, SME Series V tonearm and Lyra Delos cartridge, Chord Electronics Hugo TT-2 DAC, Sony TA-E86B/TA-N86B pre/power amp and NAD 1155/2200 pre/power amp. I had NEAT’s similarly sized and priced (to the Figaro B2) Majistra speakers on hand for comparisons, plus my reference Yamaha NS-1000M monitors.

The Listening

AudioSolutions Figaro B2 is an interesting-sounding speaker with real strength in depth. It is not something that you plug in and are instantly bowled over by this or that aspect of the performance. Rather, it’s a mature and sophisticated soul that succeeds through its sheer ability and insight. It never shouts at the listener, yet nor is it ever boring. Tonally, it’s well balanced, with no obvious bumps or troughs in its response curve and a cabinet that’s quieter than most at this price. You get the sense that every aspect of this package has been carefully tailored to work with every other, and the result is that it’s enjoyable to listen to for long periods, yet never fatigues.

For example, the big scale eighties stadium rock of Journey’s Girl Can’t Help It can screech at you in its loudest moments, especially during the cranked-up lead guitar solo towards the end of the song. Yet via the Figaro B2, there is never any sense of this. Some speakers I’ve heard lose the plot here –momentarily breaking up agonisingly through the upper midband, particularly at high volumes – yet the AudioSolutions remains civilised. But boring it is not, as the track is carried with gusto and pace, letting the listener take in the raw energy of the recording with its impactful bass guitar and powerful rhythm section pounding out the beat.

The Figaro B2 conveys the emotion of lively recordings without making them too harsh to listen to. Throughout the Journey track, it proves surprisingly detailed. For example, the piano playing is audible throughout the track, clearly identified by the way it pushes the song along rhythmically. This isn’t always a given, as I’ve tried plenty of price rivals that are just a wee bit too congested for this to be heard. Likewise, the funky pop of Fun Lovin’ Criminals’ Love Unlimited is impressively opened up. At first sight, it’s a fairly generic nineties production that’s quite compressed and processed-sounding, yet this speaker’s delicate midband makes it fun to hear.

There are no dramatic dynamic peaks on this track. Indeed, it’s quite laid back with vocals that aren’t so much sung as spoken. It can sound flat and generic through many loudspeakers, but the Figaro B2 gives a vibrant rendition. Its neutral midband and nuanced overall character make it quite hypnotic. The timbre of the sampled, looped wah-wah guitar is really well resolved, as is the lovely, textured synth glide that kicks in on every verse. Vocals are superbly carried, with real grit to the close-miked voices of both singers. The result is a highly atmospheric rendition of this quirky song.

It’s perfect for subtle, electronic ambient music like Public Service Broadcasting’s Sputnik, which sounds haunting and dramatic with great spatiality. The Figaro B2 is interesting inasmuch that it doesn’t push the music out forcefully beyond the plane of the loudspeakers – at least in my listening room. Instead, it ventures wide to the left and right and falls back further than many of its price rivals. It sounds expansive with great depth perspective, but it is never in your face. On this 2015 recording, this speaker excavates a wealth of detail, delivering a highly atmospheric sound.

This little AudioSolutions design isn’t a bass giant-killer, as the similarly sized NEAT Magistra I have to hand goes deeper and sounds fuller. Yet the pleasure of the Figaro B2 is its accessibility: you can ram this speaker right up to a rear wall, and it won’t boom at you, nor will it slur bass notes due to poorly designed drivers or cabinets. Along with its fine transparency, the tautness of its bass does much to make it so musically satisfying, as the pulsating, rhythmic synthesiser work on this track shows. The excellent-quality tweeter helps here, showing an admirable combination of transient speed, low distortion, and good dispersion.

Give it loud, raucous, heavy metal, and this speaker rises to the challenge. Saxon’s Strangers in the Night is typically best suited to large JBLs or similar horn-loaded monsters with 12-inch bass drivers. The Figaro B5 is not the most physically sounding thing I’ve heard playing this track, yet it doesn't fall apart when the volume is cranked up. Certainly, the enjoyment comes from the extra detail that it unleashes at high levels, rather than any such visceral punch in the chest. It’s unfatiguing almost to a fault, but I suspect most listeners would rather this than an appointment at the tinnitus clinic. So yes, there are punchier and gutsier-sounding speakers on sale at this price, but let’s just say that its sophistication and subtlety go a very long way!

The Verdict

In a way, it’s hard to pin down AudioSolutions’ Figaro B2, as it’s neutral and open from bottom to top. It’s a subtle, nuanced, and refined performer, yet it happily gets into the groove with every type of music. Rather than using a sledgehammer approach to music-making, it succeeds through its expressive, fluid midband. Despite its healthy quoted sensitivity, though, you do need to power it with a gutsy solid-state amplifier to give it its best, in my experience. So when all is said and done, it’s thumbs firmly aloft for this quirky but capable Lithuanian loudspeaker.

For more information visit AudioSolutions