Highline Bobby S
A SPEAKER THAT GROWS WITH YOUR NEEDS
Our smallest speaker of the High Line family, with similar qualities as the big ones and an astonishing price/performance ratio. The High Line “Bobby” S is a compact full range speaker with 80watt sinusoidal power handling.
Power
SPL: 88 dB
Impedanz: 4 Ohm
Frequency Range: 45 Hz – 24800 Hz
Crossover Frequency: 2400 Hz, 6/12 dB
design
Material: Wood
Colors: The colors of the housing and horn can be chosen individually
Weight: 13,5 kg (per piece)
Dimensions: Height: 395mm Width Front: 230mm Width Rear: 280mm Depth: 290mm
In developing the Bobby S horn loudspeaker, we started from the basic idea of building a coherent and relaxed-sounding high-end loudspeaker with an excellent impulse response. For this purpose, the speaker should be compact and also suitable for smaller rooms. For the high frequencies we chose horns, because they allow a perfect adaptation of the membrane movement to the air. Compared to a normal loudspeaker, which has to move all the air in the room directly, we achieve a significant increase in the level of fine information with the horn.
We have deliberately avoided increasing the efficiency by using compression drivers. For our taste, this often results in a somewhat thin and harsh sound. Instead, we have invested many years of development in perfect matching between horns and drivers to achieve maximum sound finesse.
For us, the essentials for a good sounding hi-fi speaker are excellent frequency response, linear phase, and perfect transient response. The horn speakers of the Highline Bobby S series are the best proof that we can build such Hi-Fi speakers. With the wide range of Hi-Fi accessories from Stein Music, even the last details can be tickled out.
Almost incidentally, the Bobby S horn speaker has also become a noble design piece that enhances any living space: The body is trapezoidal and tapers from the back to the front, where it measures just 23 centimeters. With black or white piano lacquer, discreetly rounded corners and the prominent tweeter horn, the speaker is a real eye-catcher. However, it is also possible to use other colors on request.
Highline BOBBY horn loudspeakers: a modular system
You can equip the Highline Bobby S Hi-Fi speakers with specially designed bass extensions. The Bobby Bass Extension is specifically designed to perfectly extend the capabilities of the Bobby S and Bobby S Signature horn speakers to the size and power of a floorstanding speaker.
The Bobby Bass Extension is a passive box with an integrated crossover that is perfectly matched to the Bobby S horn speakers. It has just the right height and the same trapezoidal shape to serve as a stand for the Bobby S. With the bass modules you can build a Bobby M or L. Add a Bobby Bass Extension under the Bobby S and you get a Bobby M. Place another Bobby Bass Extension on top of the Bobby M and you can enjoy a Bobby L.
Reviews: What the press says about the Highline Bobby S Hi-Fi speaker
“The Bobby S Ultimate fit the bill for audiophiles who want the best two-way stand-mounted speakers available today and are most highly recommended.”
“The SteinMusic High Line “Bobby” S is a visually highly attractive two-way speaker, whose acoustic star is the horn tweeter: With it, the trapezoidal box succeeds in a wonderfully vivid and impulsive reproduction, which provides a lively, detailed sound image and develops an almost magical effect, especially in the reproduction of voices.”
High Line Bobby S Review – U-Audio
Driver
— FINELY SELECTED AND MODIFIED
The bass speaker is a 6” speaker with a carbon coated natural fiber cone, and extremely little mechanical losses. As a tweeter we use a horn loaded silk dome tweeter, which is also carbon coated.
The diaphragms of the bass and the tweeter are also both treated with SteinMusic Maestro lacquer. This treatment gives both a very natural sonic signature, which is equal all over the entire frequency range that the Bobby S is able to reproduce.
We source those drivers from one of the best manufacturers, and besides the cone treatments we further modify and optimize them in many aspects to reduce mechanical losses and get an open sound with lots of detail and no colorations.
The bass speakers in detail
– Vented cast aluminum chassis for optimum strength and low compression
– Proprietary cone material with natural fibers
– Soft low damping rubber surround for transient response
– Non-conducting fiber glass voice coil former for minimum damping
– Extended copper sleeve on pole piece for low inductance and low distortion
– CCAW voice coil for reduced moving mass
– Long life silver lead wires
– Vented pole piece for reduced compression
The tweeter in detail
– Copper cap for reduced voice coil inductance and minimum phase shift
– Non-reflective rear chamber with optimized damping for improved dynamics
– Flow optimized vented pole piece for optimum coupling to rear chamber
– Fine weave soft fabric dome for smooth frequency response
– Saturation controlled motor system for low distortion
– CCAW voice coil for low moving mass
– Long life silver lead wires
– Low resonance frequency
Wiring
The internal wiring is made of the finest solid core copper conductors. The diameter for the bass is 1mm, for the tweeter we use exactly the same style of conductors but decreased the diameter to 0,5mm. The result is a better resolution of the higher frequencies, maintaining a coherent overall reproduction.
Crossover
— HANDMADE AND DEVELOPED INHOUSE
Before designing a crossover we have carefully matched and adjusted the drivers so that we may get best results with a simple configuration here, which ensures no detail of the music will get lost in this part of the speaker. Components Each component of the crossover was chosen after extensive listening tests.
The most critical capacitor for the tweeter is an oil impregnated foil capacitor. We have decided for our sonically favorite cap of the Mundorf range. These we get as raw windings and further process it in our company according to our ideas and experience to achieve a unique fine, expressive sound without colorations.
The coil in the bass section is made out of individually insulated stranded wire, and as resistors we only use our favorite parts made by Beyschlag. In addition to the classical components used in a crossover, we also use our proprietary made InLine Matrix components to get rid of magnetic distortions.
Housing
— MANUFACTURED IN OUR WORKSHOP
The housing is a vented box with short tubes in the front behind the high range horn. It is wider in the back than in the front in an exactly defined ratio that we empirically found out to be the best solution here. One important aspect of this construction is that we will not have standing waves between the side walls. Another is that in combination with the 40mm thick back wall it gives the housings an enormous stability against unwanted housing resonances.
This allows us to work completely without any internal dampening material, which does not only absorb unwanted resonances but also always sucks out energy from the music. The Bobby S are equipped with solid walnut feet for a transparent but organic sound.
Terminals
Two pairs of speaker terminals at the Bobby S speakers allow the use in bi-wiring or bi-amping. The choice of speaker terminals was a result of long listening tests of different models. We finally decided for a sturdy version that allows the use of banana plugs or spades.
At the terminal plate, you find two toggle switches where the character and volume of the high frequencies may be set, depending on the positioning and characteristics of the listening room and personal preferences.
Specials
All drivers, crossover components, terminals and cables are processed with a special in house developed technology reduce material stress, and so increase the conductivity for complex signals. In addition, we do use our unique quantum physical approach that you also find in our E-Pads. Also we use the SteinMusic InLine Silver devices in the crossover to avoid magnetic distortions.