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Where the Rhapsody 200 is more suited for largish rooms, the Rhapsody 130 was supposed to be happy in a somewhat more modestly sized environment. Our main listening room upstairs measures roughly 14.5 x 7.5 x 3.5 meters and the downstairs listening room is 7.5 x 5 x 3.5 meters. The smaller room also sports a suspended acoustic ceiling and ASI resonators.


Gediminas sent us the Rhapsody 130 in semi-gloss burned oak veneer adorned with a matte black plinth and matching top and spine. The veneer was very coarse and though not our personal favorite color, its porosity was a bold step removed from all the super-smooth shiny competitors. All three drivers of this 2-way system mount to a sub-baffle clad in animal-friendly leatherette. Low down the spine a copper plate mentions make, model and serial number and holds a pair of Chinese WBT-type 5-way terminals.


As do all Rhapsody models, the 130 uses a Seas Excel silk dome tweeter and SB Acoustics paper cone mid/woofers. In the 130 the latter are pair of their 6.5" Danish-designed Indonesian-built units. As we learnt at the 2012 Warsaw show from SB Acoustics’ David Stephens, SB Acoustics incorporates knowledge gathered by the design team’s members from their many years at Scanspeak and Vifa and combines that know-how with the high production consistency and excellent quality of the Sinar Baja Electric company of Surabaya. Thus the SB in the company’s name.


To enhance bass response AudioSolutions added a large frontal port. When peaking through it we saw that it's not a straight pipe pointing directly at the rear baffle. Instead it bends down a little. With the help of a flash light we could discern the interior of the boat-hull shape cabinet which proved to be far smaller than the outside. The reason for this discrepancy is multi-layer cabinet construction which combines MDF and plywood to total 28mm for each side wall and no less than 50mm for all other panels. Further decreasing internal volume is damping material which our port peek identified as foam and felt.


In true Rhapsody family style all filter parts are potted in solid resin to reduce resonances. These parts are specified as high-quality components like Jantzen air coils to combine into a 3rd-order slope. To counter inherent phase shift the speaker must be tilted back slightly. With two mid/bass woofers at different distances from the tweeter’s center we of course wondered how this would add up once the 130 were brought to life. The tweeter picks up at 2.450Hz and extends to 25KHz according to the specifications. With the aid of the port, the lower end allegedly reaches a respectable in-room 32Hz while 91dB is the overall sensitivity. After a week of acclimatization we placed the 34kg 1244 x 399 x 566mm speakers at the long wall of the room. In-between we used a small rack with a PS Audio PWT CD transport and one of our Devialet D-Premier all-in-one class A/D champs. With 2 meters between them and 50cm from the front wall toed in for these dimensions, this ought to have been a decent starting point.