Buchardt · Bookshelf

E50

Product description
Buchardt calls the E50 its masterpiece, and the parts list is the argument: a Purifi extended-stroke woofer, a custom Scan-Speak textile dome, Jantzen Cross Coils and Superior Z-Caps in the crossover, Duelund oil-and-cotton internal wiring, Argento binding posts with no iron in them. The cabinet is the other half — 19 mm solid European wood with a 28 mm baffle, finger-jointed, CNC-cut and assembled in Buchardt's own woodshop in Silkeborg rather than veneered over MDF. Two 152 mm passive radiators do the bass, a trick the company has used since the S200 twelve years ago, and the result reaches 29 Hz from a 40-centimetre box. It is not an easy load: 84 dB anechoic (87 in-room) into a nominal 4 ohms means it wants a powerful amplifier before it shows what it can do. €4,100 a pair, shipping and duties included, sold direct with no US price.

Performance — where it sits in the catalog

BassTrebleSensitivityEasy loadCone area
Bass reachTreble reachSensitivityEasy loadCone area
E5029 Hz30 kHz84 dB4 Ω219 cm²
Median45 Hz25 kHz87 dB6 Ω219 cm²
How to read this chart

Each axis spans the range the 452 bookshelves in the catalog actually cover, so equal distance means equal difference — and for cone area and the two frequencies, which are read as ratios, equal distance means equal ratio. The dashed inner ring is where the scale starts, not zero. Ranked within a class because a bookshelf measured against floorstanders is feeble on every axis for the single reason that it is a bookshelf. Cone area is summed from the drive units — no maker publishes it. Bass and treble reach are quoted to different tolerances and only 56% of the catalog says which, so read those two axes as approximate. The grey outline is the median of this speaker's own class, the 380 passive bookshelves — same type, same side of the active/passive line, which matters because the two halves are not the same product: the median active bookshelf carries 155 cm² of cone against the passive median's 219. Median rather than mean, because a handful of very large cabinets would drag a mean above most of the class it claims to describe.

Units
TypeBookshelf
HiFi ladder position#293 of 452 bookshelf
PowerPassive
Height395 mm
Width190 mm
Depth284 mm
Footprint540 cm²
Space taken21.3 L
Weight8.6 kg
EnclosurePassive radiator
Drivers1× 25 mm tweeter (Scan-Speak textile dome), 1× 165 mm mid-bass (Purifi Extended Stroke cone)
Crossover frequency2000 Hz
Frequency response29–30000 Hz
Sensitivity84 dB
Impedance4 Ω (min 4.9 Ω)
Where to buyCheck availability ↗
Manufacturerbuchardtaudio.com ↗
Product pageOpen product page ↗

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