New to the UK, Canadian speaker company Hansen Audio is making its debut with a £13,000-a-pair design called The Knight. Standing just under 100cm tall, and using twin 18.2cm mid/bass drivers and a 25mm woofer, The Knight is part of a range including a standmounter named The Elixir, The Wizard centre-channel and The Dragonslayer subwoofer, and even floorstanding models going right up to the curvaceous The King V2, with a five-driver array.
The Knight speakers are built around custom-made components engineered, designed and manufactured by Ontario-based Hansen: the company makes all its own drive units, cabinets and crossovers.
The tweeter is mounted on a 6mm thick dispersion plate, the woofers use what the company calls an 'Exotic multi-layer composite sandwich cone', with in-house motor system and chassis, giving 'sound wave deformation prevention', and the cabinet is of a Composite Matrix design, with an additional 'Cloaking Device' layer within to lower distortion.
Even the simple, first-order crossover - one of the benefits of being able to control driver design as part of the engineering process - is of a proprietary design, featuring 'V2 Driver Assimilation Technology'.
The speakers have 87dB/W/m sensitivity and 6ohm impedance, and have a frequency response of 29Hz-23kHz. They're distributed in the UK by Metropolis Music.