It feels good when a manufacturer tries to do something different and then goes on to accomplish it successfully. This is the story of Audire, another Indian manufacturer (good to see that number increasing). After their first product line up of single driver floorstanding speakers, Audire has promptly come up with their first bookshelf speakers, the Callisto. We were keen to catch a glimpse of the Callisto that seemed ready to take on the market by a storm.

OUT OF THE BOX
Almost contrary to all the Audire speakers we have seen, which have always been simple and minimalist, the Callisto is a little off the path with it's curved shape (unlike the other boxed ones) and inclination towards its home made aesthetics. The veneer can easily blend with your furniture, but though quite common looking, it stands apart as far as the size is considered being a little larger than all the other bookshelf speakers. This anomaly is courtesy the single full-range driver that has its own requirements from the cabinet. We will discuss the requirements in detail in the next section.

TECHNOLOGY
A full-range driver is responsible for reproducing the entire audible spectrum by itself, from the good low frequencies to the best high frequencies. This rather weighty demand is in absolute contrast of sorts when we consider the conventional principles and theory of the acoustic transducers. Thus in order to achieve the desired results. the full-range driver is associated with considerable tweaking and modifications to the driver as well as the cabinet. For the Callisto, the guys at Audire procure the drivers from Fostex, Japan but give it a very personal touch with their improvisations to the original driver design.

At a close look at the driver, you can notice the absence of the dust cap to avoid distortion or colouration of the actual performance of the driver by the dust cap. However, they have employed the use of a cloth dust cap on the inner layer of the main cone that protects the voice coil from dust and fine particles. Concentric to the main cone. you can see a small whizzer cone, which is responsible for conveying the high frequency content. The whizzer cone is coupled to the voice coil to take on the high frequencies from the cone. The entire assembly works as a mechanical crossover within the driver.

Another feature that plays a very important role in the overall performance of the speaker is the cabinet design. It is responsible for the bottom end (below 150-100 Hz) as the full-range driver is practically not able to touch these levels. In the Callisto, the cabinet enclosure is a one-inch thick wall and is made up of a combination of Marine ply, Marine MDF and Real Hardwood placed strategically to attain maximum cabinet stability and reduce structural resonance. The anomalous (as we have described) shape of the cabinet is to compensate the problem of standing waves. Let us see how these modifications affect the Callisto's
performance as we move to the next section.

PERFORMANCE
After a prolonged break in time, we regarded Callisto's unusual size and were concerned about its placement in our room. We placed it on relatively shorter stands around 9 feet away from each other with a small toe in of about 10 degrees. The purpose behind using shorter stands was to get our ears on the same level as the drivers. We started off with the track "IGY" (International Geophysical Year) from Donald Fagen's 'The Nightfly' recorded in 1982; one of the first fully digital recordings of popular music. It is considered to be one of the best engineered albums till date and is still used by studio engineers to calibrate their monitoring systems.

With Callisto, the first thing that grabbed our attention was the clarity and crispness of Gordon Grody's vocals. Locked at the centre. the vocals came across as very lively and true to life with even more soothing background vocals that accentuated the pleasant experience. As far as soundstaging and imaging was concerned, we had to work hard to get that right. We found the dispersion on the drivers a little less than normal and hence had to again tweak its placement. We solved the problem when we toed in the speakers by 35 degrees while maintaining the distance between the listening position and the speakers to around 2.5 metres.

Satisfied with the placements, we were pleased when the speakers just opened up as if by magic and it felt as if the Donald Fagen's studio artistes were playing just
for us. We moved on to the next track, "Jamaican Fairwell" from 'The Essentials of Harry Belafonte', We chose Harry Belafonte as his vocals are enriched with expressions and emotions all through the album. Here as well, the Callisto rendered the vocals with excellent effectiveness and finesse. Coming to the frequency response, the mid-range had no problem and same was the case with the low highs.

We observed a lack of high frequencies and a tad extension to the high and low frequencies (ranging from 250-500Hz), which sometimes resulted in a boxy sound. But this problem is prevalent in any single driver speaker because while making an effort to reproduce the entire audio spectrum, occasionally there is a cancellation or summation of certain frequencies which leads to this kind of a sound. As we played the '3 Guitars' by Chesky Records, the Callisto again gave us a glimpse of its ability to render detail with utmost resolution. The guitars sounded crisp and loaded with impressive resolution and spark.