Intro
Contents
Starke Sound. Have you heard of them before? We certainly hadn’t. We receive a lot of enquiries here at Alpha Audio, but we’re often unable to act on them. The email from the American company Starke Sound piqued our curiosity enough, so we had a pair of monitors flown over. More specifically, the Starke Sound Beta7. A compact loudspeaker with an attractive price tag. Does the Beta7 have that typical American sound – big and bold – or can we also expect some refinement and elegance? Let’s check it out!
Build and appearance
Testing a product from an unknown manufacturer is always a bit of a gamble. On the one hand, it’s fun to discover a new brand, but on the other, you never know if it’ll be any good. Starke Sound is a relatively young company from California that mainly designs loudspeakers and was established in 2009. The Beta7 belongs to the affordable Brio series, which also includes a smaller Beta5 and a subwoofer. In addition, there’s the Halo series, which targets the higher end of the market. Their P-series is aimed at the home cinema market, for which Starke Sound is well known in North America.
The Beta7 is a classic, rectangular speaker without many frills. It does however come in a number of attractive finishes, such as the ‘Aoki Flaxen Grey’ we received. It’s a sort of grey-striped finish with a touch of white mixed in, which looks great in both classic and modern settings. I quickly got used to the colour. The other two versions available are a traditional ‘Shadow Black Ash’ and a modern ‘Euro Oak White’.
The 29 mm soft-dome tweeter features a so-called HEMF motor to minimise distortion. HEMF is a patented process that combines neodymium magnets with rings made of ferrite, a type of ceramic. Surrounding the tweeter is a large waveguide to ensure better dispersion of the high frequencies, and at the rear we see a large bass reflex port and a pair of sturdy speaker terminals.
The Beta7 weighs 8.3kg and measures 35cm in height, 21cm in width and 34cm in depth. Quite deep, then. We’re talking about a 4-ohm speaker with a sensitivity of 87dB, though we believe that last figure might be a little lower. The frequency range sits between 39 Hz and 23 kHz, but the bass starts to roll off significantly around 50 Hz. There are two stands available on the website, including a rather unusual tripod. The choice is yours.
There are occasional promotions on the website; it’s worth keeping an eye on them, as there aren’t many European distributors yet. Our pair arrived undamaged, however, thanks to the excellent packaging provided by Starke Sound. The only thing that’s a bit outdated are the holes used to attach the front panel. That’s a bit of a shame. Otherwise, there’s nothing to fault in the finish.