Review Russell K. Red 50 by The EAR

Review by René van Es for The EAR

standmount loudspeaker

After the impressive debut of the Russell K. Red 100 no one will be surprised that Russell K. is bringing two more loudspeakers to the market: the Red 150 is a floorstander with twin woofers and the Red 50 a smaller stand mount. Having enjoyed the Red 100 immensely I opted for the smaller model to put in my study. For those who never read my Red 100 review I will explain what Russell K. is trying to do. After many years in the industry Russell Kauffman, for it is he, realised that if he was going to put his experience to good use it was time to come up with his own line of loudspeakers rather than making a living by selling other people’s. In a market full of speakers ranging from small cubes to extreme horns you have to come up with something special to get listeners involved. So, instead of making another me-too speaker with thick cabinet walls and internal damping, Russell opted for thin walls and no damping material at all. The only damping applied is done acoustically inside the Red 50 by using a perforated panel above the woofer, which also adds some stiffness to the box. The cabinet walls are 16mm MDF while the baffle is 19mm MDF and the speaker stands just over a foot high (31cm) high and is veneered with real wood or finished in a high gloss paint for a premium. Since the cabinet is much smaller than the bigger Red 100 the reflex port moved to the back and is tuned to a wisely chosen 55Hz, way above the standing wave frequencies of most rooms. The bass driver has a five inch doped paper cone woofer with a 25mm copper voice coil wound on an aluminium former. A Faraday cancelling copper ring is used in the high power ferrite magnet. The 25mm soft dome tweeter uses a ferrite magnet too, also with a Faraday ring in the motor, and has a copper clad aluminium voice coil. The dome is not protected with a mesh cover, nor is a front grill standard, so it is vulnerable to ‘inquisitive’ fingers. The units are electrically separated with a 12dB/Octave crossover in the form of an enclosed field ferrite core, with “very low DCR nominal stray fields” inductor for the woofer. The tweeter is attenuated with a misaligned Zobel network and has just one capacitor in-line with the speaker terminals.

I placed the Russell K. Red 50 on a pair of Custom Design FS104 stands with Soundcare spikes. The main music source is a Bluesound Node 2, coax connected to a NAD M51 DAC. The Node is plays files stored on my NAD M50/M52 combination over Ethernet. The preamp is an Exposure 3010S2 Pre, while power is delivered by a pair of 3010S2 mono power amplifiers. I also used an old Quad 303 to prove how easy this speaker is to drive. This refurbished amplifier delivers more than enough power for high level listening in my study but it’s not as good as the Exposures which were used most of the time. Cabling comes from AudioQuest (Ethernet), Stereovox (digital), Crystal Cable (interconnect) and Supra (power and speaker cables). Positioning the loudspeakers is an easy task. Keep them free of the side walls by at last 50cm and away from the back wall. Heavy toe-in or straight ahead positioning does not upset the sound a lot, it only changes the stereo image from deeper to wider, I found that a slight toe-in was best for my room and listening position.

Russell K. Red 50

All night long

While the Red 100 has a big fun factor and is very expressive, the Red 50 is more sophisticated. The smaller cone area results in less slam and less drive, but it gains in areas like control, precision and tonal balance. Playing the tracks from In The Moonlight by Sophie Milman and reading back my notes from the Red 100 review this becomes very obvious. On the other hand there is a lot in common between the two speakers. The easy flow of music combined with plenty of detail is very enjoyable. It’s a pity that Sophie’s voice is kept at tweeter height but she shines all the way. Her voice is surrounded by instruments and avoids the overblown bass that so many small speakers suffer from. The bass response is very even to my ears, more bass weight comes from the Exposure amps than from the Quad, but both amps are always in control. To enjoy more low frequencies I play ‘No Sanctuary Here’ from Chris Jones and wind up the volume. There’s a notable limitation of the frequency range downwards, the Red 50 does not go very deep and not a lot happens below 50Hz. Above this Chris sings his heart out against a backdrop of punchy percussion, wide stereo image and above all a lifelike performance that is a lot of fun. Who cares about the deepest notes when bass is so tight. Bass heads could add an active subwoofer (or two), which is a better solution than pushing a monitor over the edge.