High End 2023 • Hot Product

Crystal Cable’s successor to its Arabesque Minissimo speaker is the Minissimo forte, shown here with and without its optional top cap. The price has not yet been nailed down, but it is expected to be around €20,000 per pair, with no US price available.

The teardrop shape looks much like that of the earlier speakers, but the stand is entirely new and much improved in looks. The aluminum stand is designed to be decoupled from the cabinet and to hold the electronics for a newly designed passive/active crossover that obviates the need for coils and is said to provide better sound than from a more typical passive crossover. That, of course, requires that the speaker have its own power cord, running from the bottom of the stand. The redesigned cabinet is filled with a newly developed layer of internal-resonance-reducing material, looking much like that used for room treatments, only on a vastly reduced scale.

The sound, produced with top-end Siltech gear and Crystal cables, was “crystral clear” and seemed quite a step up in quality from the last generation of the Minissimo, as good as that was.