Falcon Acoustics

M10 Standmount Loudspeaker

$2,295 MSRP

Who'd have thought that in 2023, people would actively seek out loudspeakers with drive units designed fifty years earlier? It feels like the whole hi-fi world is going seriously retro now. We have a vinyl revival that's seeing LP records outsell Compact Discs. Yamaha is making amplifiers that hardly look any different from those it was selling in 1977. Mission is 'reimagining' its first-generation speakers from the nineteen seventies. And don't forget Falcon Acoustics, which, after releasing its own version of the BBC LS3/5a nearly ten years ago, is now doing its own retro speakers featuring drive units based on meticulously remanufactured KEF drivers – designed back in the decade that fashion forgot!

With the M10, this specialist British manufacturer wanted to do something similar to the BBC mini-monitor, but with its own unique twist. The result is a beautiful but decidedly old school-looking standmount speaker measuring 316x185x260mm [HxWxD], weighing in at 7.5kg. Its gorgeous cabinet is made in the same Italian factory as the Falcon Gold Badge LS3/5a and is finished in a choice of natural Walnut or Rosewood.

Designer Jerry Bloomfield tells me, “we still haven't seen anyone who can achieve the same cabinet quality for the price”. Round the back, you get a classy-looking pair of 4mm nickel-plated binding posts. Its styling is classic nineteen seventies British – which means neat, sober, functional and well proportioned – and done to an exceptionally high standard for a British-made product of this price.

Apparently, it is the baby of the company's new M series, which Jerry says will eventually comprise five models in total. The M10 uses the 125mm Falcon B110 mid/bass unit – more of which later – whereas the three larger models will feature the yet-to-be-launched 200mm Falcon B200 bass driver. Incidentally, the top M50 sports a Falcon B139 bass unit, two Falcon B110 midrange drivers and a 25mm soft dome tweeter – it's as if the clocks stopped in 1976!

Back to the M10, and, according to Jerry, it's aimed at “people starting out with their first system, upgrading their system, second system purchasers, above all they are aimed at purchasers who want a more traditionally voiced British speaker that brings the musicians into the room.”

That “traditional voicing” is more central to this speaker even than its retro looks – it's the entire raison d'être. Falcon Acoustics manufactures new versions of classic seventies KEF drivers, both for owners of classic speakers that use them and for its own range of contemporary designs. The story behind the company's remanufacturing of these drivers is too long to go into here, but suffice to say that painstaking attention to detail is shown, and the quality, in my opinion, is better than what KEF was able to make back in the day.

Paired to a new example of the remanufactured classic B110 mid/bass driver is a 25mm M range custom soft dome tweeter made to Falcon specification by SEAS. These go into the aforementioned cabinet, which is ported at the rear – unlike many nineteen seventies speakers, by the way, and the BBC LS3/5a specifically. The hi-fi community is divided over the merits of bass reflex ports. They can work very well and increase a loudspeaker's sensitivity and/or bass extension, or they can screw up the timing and/or phase integrity of a speaker and introduce bass boom and/or port chuffing. As ever, it ain't what you do; it's the way that you do it!

In the case of the M10, I'd say that the rear reflex port has been done very well. It doesn't seem to introduce any sonic nasties, and the speaker worked well just 15cm from the boundary wall in my listening room. It gives a much-needed boost to the sensitivity figure, which is a claimed 86dB/2.83V/m – when the closed-box (infinite baffle) LS3/5a is closer to 82dB using similar drivers and cabinet. This is a perfectly useable figure for any current solid-state amp and should be manageable for some of the more feisty tube amps too. Nominal impedance is said to be an amp-friendly 8 ohms, and the claimed frequency response is 40Hz to 25kHz (+/- 3dB), which again is very decent. Power handling is put at 100W, something you'd never see in a real seventies speaker – it would be closer to 25W!

THE LISTENING

To those who complain that modern loudspeakers sound too bright, too analytical and too forensic, try this. It's a fascinating combination of old and new – inasmuch as you get a smooth, svelte and quite a silky sound that doesn't punch you in the face or etch itself into your inner soul. Instead, it's more standoffish and discrete, more of a traditional gentleman, you might say. Yet whereas many nineteen seventies designs bearing the original KEF B110 driver – and there were many – could often sound soft, plodding and lacking in musicality, the M10 does not. Think of it as a hybrid of the best of old and new.

That doesn't mean that the M10 is absolutely perfect; far from it. No speaker is, and each has its limitations – but the clincher is where the compromise is drawn, and here I think Falcon Acoustics has done a shrewd job. Partner it with a modern streaming source and any number of current mid-price amplifiers, and it will fit right in. It lacks the starkness of rivals such as the Monitor Audio Gold 100 yet still digs deep into the music to deliver an engaging and involving listening experience.

Supertramp's Breakfast in America is a case in point. Although widely celebrated as a late-period prog rock classic with excellent production values, it can sound a bit forward – it was, of course, mastered for playing on sumptuous sounding seventies turntables. Yet through my reference Chord Hugo TT2 DAC – which is tonally neutral – and an Exposure 3010S2D integrated – a teensy bit on the warm side, but not much – the M10 gave a perfect tonal balance. As a result, Rodger Hodgson's near-falsetto vocals lacked the sting you'd get through a modern speaker with metal dome tweeters and/or mid/bass drivers. Instead, the response was smooth and had no nasty areas where the drive units crossed over.

Frequency extremes were as impressive as the midband. Bass was surprisingly fulsome for a speaker of this type and size, with a touch of warmth around – I'd estimate – the 120Hz region, which covers upper bass guitar notes. It lent a little extra weight and body to this small speaker, which helped to pep up rock and pop recordings. Extension was decent, and there was no boom; bass guitar started and stopped quickly. Up top, treble was smooth and couth with no nasties; its only sin – if you can call it that – is a slight lack of air and space compared to rivals such as the NEAT Ministra, which use ribbon high-frequency units. All the same, the ride cymbal work on Rush's Subdivisions rock classic was a pleasure to behold, being crisp, subtle and propulsive all at the same time.

Soundstaging is also impressive. This speaker sounds bigger than it is, with a wide and open nature that propagates sound all around your room. In this respect, it seems considerably less shut-in than the venerated BBC LS3/5a, no matter which version we're talking about. There's no sense of squeezing the sound out through a toothpaste tube, which you can sometimes get with small bookshelf speakers. It made for an expansive rendering of the post-punk strains of Nürnberg's Zorki; this Belarusian band reminds me a lot of early Simple Minds and The Chameleons with its haunting, atmospheric rock. Despite the heavy bass guitar work, the M10 wasn't thrown off course; it dug into the slightly murky mix and threw out a wide recorded acoustic that was surprisingly ethereal for such a small speaker. Additionally, it displayed good depth perspective, inviting the listener to peer deep into the mix.

The only downside of the M10 is one that's a result of its physical size more than its design. You can't put large amounts of power into it and expect it to behave in a linear way. With the muscular Elipson A2700 power amplifier driving my Hugo TT2 direct and the volume really cranked up, there were some signs that this wee speaker was sitting on dynamics. Normally very perky – and well up for communicating the relative difference in level of a softly struck hi-hat cymbal and a hard-hit rim shot, for example – things softened up at flare-flapping levels. This took away some of the visceral impact of the crescendo to Kraftwerk's Tour de France, but it's only to be expected from small boxes. It's just a reminder that it's designed for small to medium-sized listening rooms, not larger ones like mine.

THE VERDICT

There's nothing to fault about the Falcon Acoustics M10, and much to like. It gives standmount speaker buyers a greater choice, offering the option of 'opting out' of the modern fashion for forward, thin, stark-sounding designs. Moreover, it has a real charm of its own; you can, for example, go from listening to very high-end speakers to these and not feel you're particularly missing out on anything – such is their friendly, agreeable nature. Highly recommended and well worth an audition.

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