Promotional flier from the introduction of the Audio Artistry Beethoven-Elite at the 1999 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, USA

Beethoven - Elite

The evolution of the standard-setting Audio Artistry Beethoven loudspeaker series continues with the introduction of the Beethoven-Elite at CES '99.

We introduced the Beethoven loudspeaker system in 1996, pushed the concept to it's limits with the 1998 Beethoven-Grand flagship, and have now advanced the original model to a similar level of performance with a new all-active crossover design.

The newest family member is a four-way, all-active loudspeaker system. We have maintained the well proven configuration of drivers and cabinetry of the original Beethoven, but replaced all crossover filter components with low-level active circuitry located prior to the owner's power amplifiers. The new crossover/equalizer now drives eight channels of user selected power amplification configured from any combination of identical stereo, mono-block or multi-channel models.

A major benefit of this all active approach is that the amplifiers are connected via the speaker cables directly to the voice coils of the individual loudspeaker elements. Doing so eliminates the inductors, capacitors and resistors which decouple the amplifier from the sound generating components in a typical passive crossover design, allowing the amplifiers to assume maximum control over the motion of each driver. The result—unprecedented clarity, resolution of detail, transient articulation and full-range dynamic expression.

Furthermore, a deeper understanding of both the propagation of low frequency sound in rooms, as well as the psycho-acoustics of high frequency sound perception, prompted us to re-evaluate the overall response of the Beethoven-Elite, as well as that of the Beethoven-Grand, resulting in a significant leap forward in the subjective realism of reproduced music from our two top speaker systems.

Indeed, the refinements achieved with these new designs would have been extremely difficult to implement without the new all-active crossover. The Beethoven-Elite's astonishing degree of naturalness is evident even from an adjacent room. We invite you to enjoy the ultimate marriage of full-range accuracy and musical involvement made possible by the new Audio Artistry Beethoven-Elite.