Fluance Signature Series 3-Way Floorstanding Speakers Review

Signature Series Hi-Fi Three-Way Floorstanding Speakers Introduction

The Fluance Signature Series Hi-Fi Three-Way Floorstanding speakers have had something of a tumultuous history since their launch in early 2016. Initial enthusiasm about the specifications, features, and the nice finish for the low cost gave way to mixed reactions from reviewers and owners once the product was in hand. Our investigation into what was heard to be shortcomings in the sound revealed a problematic crossover. The crossover was redesigned, and the Signature Series Three-Way Floorstanding Speakers were relaunched in the fall of 2016. In this review of the relaunched Fluance Signature Series Hi-Fi Three-Way Floorstanding speakers (which we shall hereafter simply call the Signature Towers), we will see if the crossover redesign managed to rectify the weaknesses of the first units while retaining their strengths.

Fluance Signature Series Tower Speakers

Unpacking and Setup

The Signature Towers arrived at my doorstep well packed. They were double-boxed and the speakers were placed in a thick plastic covering and surrounded by large foam blocks. The packaging had taken a beating, and it was obvious that the carrier had not babied these shipments, but the speakers were in mint condition thanks to the smart packing. The manual that Fluance provided is pretty generic and seems to be the manual for all Fluance speakers, but it does give intelligent advice for placement and setup. One part of the setup is the assembly of the outriggers, and Fluance includes instructions for that, so it is a simple and easy process.

Appearance

Signature tower image courtesy of Aaron Wallace

The Fluance Signature Towers are not small speakers, at four feet high, eleven inches wide (fourteen inches wide with outriggers), and fifteen inches deep. They will not disappear in whatever room you place them in. This is not to say they look bad; on the contrary, the tapered cabinet, glossy front baffle, and slick driver array make this speaker look much more expensive than it is. It is a large speaker, but a tastefully finished one. With grille on, the speaker is a black monolith, but a handful of nice touches do distinguish it. The embossed cursive signature at the top and metal Fluance emblem down below are aesthetic touches one would expect to find on pricier speakers, as are the polished wire posts on the back. Even the floor spikes on the outriggers look attractive. My favorite visual element here is the sleek bass drivers. I can’t think of a nicer looking tower speaker at this price. It may be that, given the speaker’s sheer size, Fluance had to go the extra distance in terms of aesthetics to make this a more acceptable speaker for more people.

Design Overview and Build Quality

Signature tower driver images courtesy of Aaron Wallace

The “Three-Way” in the Signature Tower’s name is split between two 8” woofers, a 5” mid-woofer, and a 1” dome tweeter, with crossover frequencies at 530 Hz and 2,600 Hz. The 8” bass drivers use polypropylene cones and are claimed to have ‘long throw’ by the marketing literature, but I am not sure what their definition of ‘long throw’ is. Nonetheless, two 8” woofers would seem to offer more displacement than other similarly priced tower speakers. The 5” glass fiber woven mid woofer uses what Fluance’s literature calls a “pointed dome” but, since it is fixed to the pole piece, it is really a phase plug; as long as it serves to improve the driver’s performance, I don’t care what they call it. The 1” silk dome tweeter is embedded in a shallow metal waveguide and uses a neodymium magnet and ferrofluid cooling which are fairly standard features of dome tweeters these days. Notably, one of the complaints of the first Signature Towers was that the bass-to-mid crossover was too high, at 1,200 Hz, which allowed the mid-woofer to only play a relatively small range of frequencies, but we see this has been rectified with a more sensible 530 Hz.

The cabinet build quality is not bad considering the price. The enclosure is MDF, of course, and Fluance calls it “audio grade MDF” (first time I have heard of that grade of MDF). The side and rear panels are 0.7” thick, and the front baffle is a more impressive 1.4” thick. Window bracing is used in the cabinet, and one nice touch is that the drivers have separate internal enclosures. The mid-woofer and tweeter occupy their own sealed compartments in an effort to keep other driver’s back waves from interfering with their smooth operation. The speaker is bi-ampable for those who want to amplify the bass section separately from the midrange and tweeter section. This may help to reduce distortion slightly. The cabinet is chock full of polyfill for damping internal waves. Two 3” ports are flared on both ends and have netting covering the internal end that keeps stuffing from blowing out and objects (or critters!) from entering the cabinet. This looks like a good idea for those with children who like to hide things; most of the stuff they can cram in the ports won’t fall into the cabinet. The Signature Towers come with a very sturdy set of outriggers. The outriggers use floor spikes, but the spikes do not have a sharp tip, so they should be safe to use on hard floors without being a scratching hazard. The cabinetry is not as heavy-duty as one sees in higher-priced speakers, but it is good for its price, and there is some details in its construction that go beyond what you expect to see for the cost.