Ramsa have certainly launched themselves into the UK music market with a vengeance. These tiny monitors are rated at no less than 160W of continuous music each!

Ramsa seem to design every product to do at least two different jobs and this speaker is no exception. It can double as a stand-mounted live monitor, a desk top nearfield monitor or even a small PA system. To give you an idea of its size, the WS-A10E-K measures only 250mm x 155mm x 156mm and it is slightly tapered, shaped rather like a small monitor wedge. The cabinet material is some sort of plastic and the whole thing looks like a tiny Bose speaker with a metal grille fixed over the front panel.

Parameters

The single driver is a 120mm full range long throw unit with a very flexible surround and the rear panel connections offer a choice of jack or spring terminals. Unusual in a cabinet of this size is the fact that the enclosure is ported.

Because of the small physical size of the enclosure, the bass response is not likely to be very impressive and this was confirmed by the manufacturers frequency response curve which shows the output power to have dropped by around 5dB at 50Hz after which it plumets rapidly.

Likewise the high end shows a pronounced dip at around 10kHz and the mid-range response is not particularly smooth, their being a significant dip between 1 kHz and 2kHz, right where it is likely to affect vocal sounds.

Performance

Initially I set up these speakers with no EQ and on switching from my main monitors, I was immediately hit by the lack of bass. Even though I was expecting it, it still came as a surprise, rather like listening to a three way hi-fi speaker with the woofer disconnected. Still, not to be deterred, I cranked up the level and was impressed to find that the power handling figures were pretty near the truth which with an efficiency figure of 88dB for 1W at 1m is loud! Still the sound was thin so I decided to experiment with a little EQ and this is where things started to get interesting.

Using the desk EQ to give around 12dB of boost at 45Hz, a little cut in the midrange and a bit of high end boost, the sound came to life and the bottom end started to develop a bit of a kick. The surprising thing is that even with these levels of boost, the speakers were still quite happy and the overall level was far more than I would have been comfortable working with before any noticeable distortion set in.

"It's definitely worth considering feeding a pair of these speakers with a graphic equaliser connected in line."

Because these are again effective point source speakers, the imaging was good and the optimum listening angle seems to be within 45 degrees in either plane with no significant change in spectral balance. Above 90 degrees the off axis high frequency response deteriorates somewhat.

Conclusions

The frequency curve of these speakers is remarkably like that of an unequalised Bose set up and I can't really recommend them for studio use in their unequalised form. However, because of their very high power handling, good imaging and wide listening angle, they are worth persevering with and it's definitely worth considering feeding a pair of these speakers with a graphic equaliser connected in line to flatten things out a bit. Initial setting up should be fairly easy as you just need to look at the published frequency response curve for the speakers and check the response at each frequency marked on the front panel of your equaliser. For example, if the bottom band on your graphic is 50Hz, see how much the speaker response is below the average at that frequency and then apply the same number of dBs of boost. Do the same for all channels and you will probably find that you have a curve with boost at the high and low ends and a dip in the upper mid-range. Of course this procedure doesn't take your room acoustics into account but it does give you a good starting point and the more bands of equalisation you have, the more accurate your setting up is likely to be.

If you do any live work then these speakers make even more sense because they are powerful enough to use as stand mounted monitors or even as a PA system for pub acts, solo artistes or folk bands. Ramsa is going to be a name to watch in the future.

The WS-AE10E-Ks cost £140 per pair including VAT.

Further details are obtainable from: Panasonic UK, (Contact Details).