Rocky Mt 2007: Cain & Cain’s New Wall-O-Sound More Realistic
October 19th, 2007 — By The Absolute Sound
By Chris Martens
The Walla Walla, Wash.-based firm Cain & Cain announced one the first new products to be released since the tragic and untimely death of company founder Terry Cain, who died at age 47 on December 10, 2006.
The new model, called the Wall-O-Sound or “W3� (for Walla Walla Wall of Sound, $3300/pair), is both visually and sonically striking and offers bass performance that few other full-range, single-driver, back-loaded horns can match.
At first glance, the Wall-O-Sound looks much like a shallow, 30� wide x 42� high wooden room divider with a single, full-range Fostex driver planted at its center, up near the top. But on closer inspection, that “room divider� turns out to be a sophisticated enclosure housing a cleverly folded tractrix-type horn that opens to the side.
The W3’s unusually wide front baffle and large internal horn combine to give the Wall-O-Sound dramatically deeper and more realistically-weighted mid-bass than is typical of designs of this type.
The upshot is that the W3 offers the sonic purity and cohesiveness for which the better full-range horns have long been famous, plus bass performance few other full-range horns can match—sort of like having your sonic cake and eating it too.
Cain & Cain attributes the W3 design to Gordon Rankin of Wavelength Audio, though it is said that the late Terry Cain also had a hand in the design and was able to hear the initial prototypes shortly before his death.
Once you hear what the W3s can do you may feel, as we do, that they stand as a worthy tribute to a man whose products, creativity and craftsmanship brought much joy to his fellow music lovers. Read more from Rocky Mountain Audiofest 2007.
