Active, uncomplicated, customizable in design and a stylish problem solver to boot: The M3 from GGNTKT is a prime example of the advantages of active speakers – a speaker that tempts its listener to kick over the traces from time to time!
In case you haven’t noticed, I should take this opportunity to make a confession: Having tumbled into the hi-fi world from the general direction of recording and studio technology, I’ve always been drawn to active speakers. A mixing console, a pair of speakers – and there you go: a solid front end. At the beginning (i.e. sometime in the late nineties), however, I was irritated and shocked when I witnessed the emotional trench warfare between supporters of passive and active concepts. In response, I did the only sensible thing from my point of view – I sat back and watched the hustle and bustle with interest or even amusement. Why am I telling you this? Because a conversation with GGNTKT Managing Director Roland Schäfer really drove home many of the “pro activa” arguments to me. I would even go as far as to say that when listening to the professionalized hi-fi hobbyist, you can’t help but conclude that active technology is superior. Are you fretting and fuming at these words? Do me a favor and humor me for just a few more paragraphs – everything else should fall into place naturally.
Schäfer is a career changer. He originally came from an agency background, but he always had a (sometimes more than ambitious) soft spot for active hi-fi loudspeakers. We first crossed paths in 2017 when he presented his compact active Schanks loudspeakers in the Newcomer section of the HIGH END. He had taken the classic route there via the tour de force of DIY. Analog at first, then with a steadily growing number of digital ingredients, until he arrived somewhere near today’s GGNTKT philosophy. He amicably parted ways with his companions from the Schanks era, as their philosophies had proven incompatible. Instead of building “classic” speakers, he was looking for an interface between hi-fi and a modern living environment. Roland Schäfer always tried to take inspiration from role models such as Porsche, he tells me in the interview. The brand squeezes every last bit out of the concepts of its cars while strictly adhering to the iconic design specifications. Whether the cars are ultimately viewed as works of art or sports cars doesn’t really matter – the aspirations behind each of these perspectives are more than satisfied.
The GGNTKT models, first the compact M1 and now the floor-standing M3, were created by industrial designer Fabian Ghoshal, who took the necessary design specifications from the developers and put the colossally large M3 into a beautiful yet surprisingly unobtrusive package. The strikingly flat housing design was intended to be integrated into any living environment with as few issues as possible. The active floorstanding speaker has a rear woofer that doesn’t produce bass, but – on the contrary – is a central component of the “Constant Directivity” concept. Phase-rotated and offset in time to the woofer at the front of the cabinet, it cancels out the bass components at the back of the M3. A distance of just a few centimeters is enough for the “Terminator” to do this. The large floorstanding speaker can therefore be placed close to the wall, but since the anti-woofer’s work is regulated by the integrated DSP, it doesn’t necessarily have to be – when it comes to placement, anything goes – which is more than unusual for a speaker of this size and performance class.
The manufacturer’s cheerful color scheme is aimed in a similar direction – albeit with a completely different theme. The M3 is available in six wonderful finishes. Individual color requests, including two-tone, veneer, gold plating or high-gloss coating, are gladly taken into consideration. The respective surcharge and the time required for implementation must of course be discussed, but here too GGNTKT tries not to put any obstacles in the way of its customers’ ideas.
For a small company, the ambition to design everything itself, right down to the smallest technical details, is quite extraordinary. The tweeter, for example, is a compression driver with a 56-millimeter ring diaphragm that comes from professional audio. Roland Schäfer explains to me that this little guy produces an incredible 113 decibels of sound pressure, and that it is adapted for use in the M3 according to the supplier’s own specifications. With GGNTKT, the tweeter sits in a striking waveguide, which fans out the radiation together with the wide front section. This is absolutely essential: although the floorstanding speaker reacts to position and toe-in just like any other speaker, as a “quasi-on-wall” model it is highly likely that it will end up aligned with its back straight to the wall. This works excellently, as I find out in the listening test – the almost linear illumination is closer to 60 degrees instead of the usual 30 degrees in front of the speaker. And if you do want to point the M3 towards the listening position for maximum presence, you can simply turn the tweeter down a little.
Meanwhile, the bass-midrange driver and subwoofer are made entirely in-house. Schäfer explains to me that he had to spend what felt like an eternity looking for a suitable supplier. Initially, he spoke to the “usual suspects”, but with them everything revolved around unacceptable purchase quantities before they could have a say in the design – and even then, the variation possibilities were only within definable manufacturing tolerances. Finally, he found a Spanish supplier with whom he was able to tailor a 21-centimeter paper cone and the long-throw woofer (26 cm) to the M3. The rear woofer is basically identical to the one at the front.
As with the smaller M1, the electronics come from Anselm Görtz’s own brand Four Audio and we have already come across them several times. Among other things, it is used in the excellent active speakers from Genuin Audio. During the Ava test, Anselm Görtz told us that he had a customer on hand who not only wanted to take a deep dive and adapt his modules perfectly to the loudspeaker concept, but even made his own adjustments to the loudspeaker concept after initial tests. In fact, Four Audio and GGNTKT were already up to their necks in the development of the M3 at the time. And lest you think that these are ordinary Class D amplifiers from OEM production: Four Audio sees itself as a development office and painstakingly adapts the amplifiers to the needs of the respective loudspeaker – only the back plate is the same. In the case of the M3, two modules with 250 watts each (tweeter and “upper” bass driver) and two woofer amps with 500 watts each were agreed upon. The total power available is specified as “only” 1000 watts, as the two smaller drivers in particular never tap into all the power their respective amplifiers have to offer. Incidentally, there is a version of the active speaker for extremely large rooms, the “M3 S”, whose woofer amplifiers have been scaled up to a hefty 750 watts.
On the input side, the M3 only offers one analog XLR and one digital AES input. The latter is preferable, as it feeds the signals seamlessly into the integrated DSP network and the excellent high-bit D/A converters downstream (24/96), which are located practically directly in front of the power amplifiers. Roland Schäfer explains to me that he wanted to keep the inputs as simple as possible. The market offers a plethora of variable output DACs with sufficient inputs or with analog/digital preamps in every price bracket, offering every imaginable feature set, so there’s no need to complicate the active devices. “It’s better to do little and do it right,” he notes. The same applies to his sound philosophy: the M3 has been trimmed for absolutely coloration-free linearity – this makes it easier to shape the final character on site (i.e. at the customer’s). The calibration is extremely flexible, but is generally limited to the range below 300 Hertz. In principle, everything can be controlled via the small touch display, but the M3 also offers a USB device connection for setup, which was designed solely as a service socket for remote software.
Before we could gather listening impressions, we had to get a minor problem out of the way: As the M3 is individually customized or painted according to customer requirements, GGNTKT has no stock. And the available demo and show samples were all on the road during the autumn trade fair season. Fortunately, Reinhard Weidinger not only has a pair of M3s in his Munich store “Hörzone”, but also an excellent listening room there. As the active afficionado and owner of the hi-fi store explained to me on the first of my two visits, he didn’t want to simply get the highly customizable active loudspeaker in the usual black or white. He had a wonderfully matt carmine red version made, which you won’t find in the manufacturer’s catalog. As I was using the infrastructure of his listening room, the usual accompanying equipment details will be omitted this time. The M3 was driven via the MU1 streamer from Grimm Audio, which was connected to the amazingly sonorous (and, in my opinion, grossly underrated) RME ADI 2-DAC. From there it went in the analog domain via XLR to the speakers. The wiring? “Properly assembled bulk cables”, as Weidinger explained to me. A good loudspeaker like the M3 must sound excellent using completely normal studio cabling. If the customer likes it, it can only get better later with more high-end cabling. A thoroughly likeable concept, in my opinion.
The M3 demonstrates the full spectrum of its capabilities from the very first track. I listen to “Green Chimneys” from the Monk tribute album A NYC Tribute. The wild percussion in the intro swirls dynamically and explosively through the well-damped, almost bone-dry listening room. Soon a combination of sparkling piano chords and hard-blown saxophones sets in, which can sound quite cutting and harsh on forward-sounding chains and repeatedly cause me to lower the level by a few decibels. On the velvety M3, however, I withstand the intro effortlessly and shortly afterwards I am almost shocked at how sharp and nailed down the double bass materializes in the middle of the stage. I then switch to Beethoven’s Seventh (Beethoven: Symphonies Nos. 5 & 7, Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra under Carlos Kleiber) and listen spellbound to the gradually increasing volume and level of the Allegretto (2nd movement). You can sense the dimensions of the concert hall and almost physically feel the tension building up, confirming the old adage that nothing can replace dynamics except more dynamics. And at around 119 decibels, the M3 has plenty of it.
Finally, I “modernize” my choice of track and start “Alles in Allem” by Einstürzende Neubauten. The bell-like wafting textures in the intro to the track already show that things are more synthetic here. The sounds waft all around me, short, crackling pulses underlay everything with a hint of rhythm. The web of sound stops abruptly and sustained chords take over the stage, creating a strange atmosphere, at the center of which Blixa Bargeld’s distinctive voice can be heard. Even though I still can’t fathom what exactly he is trying to tell me with the lyrics, I have goosebumps on my arms. I use the vivid and realistic voice as a test sample, slowly move my head up and down, then switch to the outer positions of the wide sofa. The slightly angled-in M3 illuminates the listening room excellently, and at least tonally I don’t notice any differences. For me, this is an incredibly important characteristic of a loudspeaker, as I don’t spend my evenings stiff as a board, but rather – perhaps even with a glass of wine in my hand – “lounging around” in front of my system in constantly changing poses.
After many more tracks, I finish with “Insomnia” by Faithless. And at a level that not only invites the team in the listening area to listen in, but probably also one or two passers-by outside on the street. I don’t see the slightest problem with this at this point: the M3 also masters the techno anthem so confidently, balanced, brutal and, above all, emotionally gripping that it would be a shame not to let the others take part.
GGNTKT M3 active loudspeaker
Concept: 4-way active loudspeaker with DAC, DSP network and room correction | Inputs: 1 x AES (XLR), 1 x analog (XLR) | Driver complement: 56 mm ring diaphragm compression driver (tweeter), 21 cm paper fiber cone driver (bass/midrange), 2 x 26 cm long-throw subwoofers | Enclosure: CNC-milled bass reflex enclosure made of solid chromate (moisture-resistant MDF) | Amplifier: Class D | Power: 2 x 250 W (tweeter, bass/midrange), 2 x 500 W (subwoofer) | Distortion (THD+N 1 kHz@1 W): 0.003 % | Dynamic range: 119 dB (A) | Frequency response (-3 dB): 29 Hz to 20 kHz | Finishes: Graphite black and pure white as standard, special colors steel blue and anthracite grey or automotive metallic paint azure silver blue and night violet; other colors on request | Dimensions (W/H/D): 50/126/20 cm | Weight: 70 kg each | Warranty period: 2 years (3 years after registration) | Price per pair: around 25 000 €
GGNTKT
Luise-Albertz-Straße 2
53340 Meckenheim
Telefon +49 2225 9989689
info@ggntkt.de