Brigadier Loudspeakers
Introducing the Serhan & Swift Brigadier Mu.2
Based in Sydney Australia, Serhan & Swift are a formidable band of loudspeaker designers with one simple focus, to design and build loudspeakers that reproduce music in such a way that transcends what one would typically expect as achievable music reproduction.
Our listening experience demonstrated that the Brigadiers' have a sense of scale that belies their physical size and sonically disappear with no cabinet signature.
Music appears extremely accurate, believable and involving, creating the feeling that you are truly present to instruments in their recorded space in a very palpable way, delivering immediacy with precise timing.
Brigadier Mu.2 Loudspeaker
Serhan + Swift draw on the experience of designer, Brad Serhan who has over 30 years of speaker design experience and his business partner, electronic engineer Morris Swift and their team.
Their design rationale for the Brigadier was to produce a speaker with “heart & soul”.
Serhan + Swift have developed a truly bespoke loudspeaker utilising “low noise-floor” birch-ply cabinets and constrained layered “at source” dampening technology.
Nothing has been left to chance only the best components are used including ScanSpeak drivers, Solen capacitors and even these are hand value trimmed and pair matched before being built in, Air Core inductors are supplied over wound and then custom trimmed to hit the desired value perfectly, this time consuming attention to detail ensures that every single MU2 provides the same extreme performance.
This is not a production line speaker rather each speaker is meticulously hand crafted. The Mu.2 is available in black or white satin lacquer.
Our listening experience demonstrated that the Brigadiers' have a sense of scale that belies their physical size and sonically disappear with no cabinet signature. Music appears extremely accurate, believable and involving, creating the feeling that you are truly present to instruments in their recorded space in a very palpable way, delivering immediacy with precise timing.
The Brigadiers' have exemplary tonal balance and an uneerie ability to create a silent and visible soundstage and a performance for your ears and eyes.
They are room-friendly due to their even off-axis response, allowing the listener to hear deep into a recording layer by layer without highlighting individual aspects of the recording.
Brigadier Mu.2 Loudspeaker Revelator Mid Bass Driver
The Serhan & Swift team searched long and hard during a 5 year R&D period before settling on the final design ingredients.
One of the most obvious aspects of any loudspeaker is the driver selection and searching for the lowest possible distortion drive units, ultimately specified drivers sourced from the Scanspeak family:
- Revelator bass mid-range - also found in the Wilson Audio, Tune Tot.
- Ring Radiator tweeter.
- Rigid 'double skinned' wooden enclosure.
- Stunning satin black or white finish option.
Brigadier Mu.2 Loudspeaker Ring Radiator High Frequency Driver
After extensive experimentation with low and high order crossover configurations, a high order crossover was chosen allowing for steeper slopes keeping the drive units in “power band” and reducing out of band distortion, whilst this increases component cost dramatically the benefits are clear to hear..
Nothing is left to chance only the best components are used including Solen capacitors and even these are hand value trimmed and pair matched before being built in, Air Core inductors are supplied over wound and then custom trimmed to hit the desired value perfectly.
This time consuming attention to detail ensures that every single MU2 provides the same extreme performance.
This is not a production line loudspeaker, rather each speaker is meticulously hand crafted.
Brigadier Mu.2 Cabinet
Additional tweaks on the already excellent bass/mid driver include the constrained layer damping material used for the gasket in place of the standard Scanspeak gasket. The result has been measured at the Sydney University Research facility and is proven to reduce cabinet radiation by a massive -6dB.
A high order crossover allows for steeper slopes and so keeps the drive units in their 'power band'. Moreover, it reduces out of band distortion. As you will note throughout this piece, this is not the cheapest route, but then Brigadiers wasn't looking to make the most economical speaker; instead, they wanted to build the best they could.
For example, Solen capacitors are hand trimmed and pair matched before being added, and Air Core inductors arrive over-wound and then custom trimmed to hit the desired value accurately. All of which is very time-consuming, but it is this level of attention to detail that ensures that every single Mu.2 provides the same extreme performance.
All of the above would be irrelevant without a great cabinet, the cabinet is fashioned from 25mm birch ply chosen for its natural constrained layer damping properties (the material loses energy) the quietness of the cabinet can be heard as the fast decay to silence between notes, this make the MU2 naturally de-tailed allowing the listener to go thru layers or music rather than listening thru the noise. Micro vibration damping techniques are used and the drive unit—cabinet junction further reducing cabinet noise by some –6dB.
Each pair of Mu.2 ‘s takes 3 days to construct before being tested, run-in, and signed by chief designer Brad Serhan.
Brigadier Audio Mu.2 Specifications
Speaker Type: 2-way stand mounted, reflex loaded.
Satin black or satin white finish.
ScanSpeak 1-inch Ring Radiator Tweeter: Patented Symmetrical Drive (SD-2) motor, non-resonant aluminium rear chamber, patented phase plug design, large ring neodymium magnet offering extremely low distortion.
ScanSpeak 5-inch/15cm Revelator Bass/Mid: Patented Symmetrical Drive motor design, low-loss linear suspension, die-cast aluminium chassis vented below the spider, sliced cone (controls cone breakup), low damping SBR rubber surround.Low noise floor cabinet
Frequency Response (typical in-room response): 45Hz - 30kHz
Sensitivity: 84dB/1m/2.83 volts
Power Handling (typical music programme): 100 watts
Nominal Impedance: ~6 ohms
