There are umpteen wireless speakers around now, but what makes the Air-X 403 interesting is that it’s aimed at serious audiophiles and yet is (relatively) affordable. Startingat £2,499 for these entry-level 403s plus £349 for the base station, there’s also the option of the larger 407 floorstanders for £4,299. Elac makes very fine loudspeakers and has done some pioneering work especially with tweeter technology over the years. So we’re not talking about a consumer electronics company sticking its wireless tech into any old pair of transducers here! They are effectively active, wireless versions of the highly capable BS 403 passive standmounter.

On occasions, a design idea that notionally offersthe highest possible performance can fail to deliver on that promise in reality. In theory, a crossover is a considerable impediment to the performance ofa speaker and far less effective than having a single driver reproduce the entire frequency range. In reality, the laws of physics ensure that the single driver speaker has as many issuesas one with a crossover in terms of performance at frequency extremes. This hasn’t stopped Eclipse from becoming perhaps the best known manufacturer of single driver speakers.

For those that love music, there are going to be times where you want to hear it in other rooms apart from the listening room. One solution is to have extension speakers wired up to the main system, but that means running speaker cables everywhere. It also means having your system running full tilt when all you wantis some background music in your kitchen. A better solution is a completely separate, standalone system that doesn’t take up too much space and won’t break the bank.

The small system isn’t a new idea. Indeed, those outside the rarefied climes of separates hi-fi would probably regard it as the norm. After all, do we really need yards of pressed steel casework, acres of cables and multiple power plugs? For that reason alone, since the late seventies when Aurex sold its first microsystem, many folks wanting decent quality sound from a system taking up only a small space have eschewed traditional hi-fi. In the case of the new McIntosh, there’s an extra dimension – if you pardon the pun.