Recently, the new BLOCKAUDIO Shelf Block loudspeakers have been presented at the High End show in Munich. Not very surprisingly, that from there they found their way straight into my listening room.

The High End in Munich had ended just a few hours before, and the BLOCKAUDIO team, Jiri Nemec and Daniel Oudes, brought their latest creation directly afterwards to my home. BLOCKAUDIO is known to our readers particularly because of their spectacular pre/power amp combo, which Dirk Sommer celebrated in 2017 undoubtedly as amplifier discovery of the year. With these components a huge effort was made, and each of the 90 kilograms weighing monoblocks deliver 200 watts in pure Class A mode. Anyone who would have expected loudspeakers from BLOCKAUDIO to fill half of the living room is in any case surprised that the Czech company is launching a compact loudspeaker to the market instead. I asked Jiri Nemec why a speaker like this has been built. We love small speakers, he said, with great sonic capabilities in the fields of spatiality, truthfulness, dynamics and timing. The Shelf Block has been developed and refined over the years. According to their manufacturer, some innovative technologies are being used, which make their debut here. Primarily in focus is the cabinet concept. BLOCKAUDIO regards these speakers as an absolute state-of-the-art product.

In fact, the BLOCKAUDIO Shelf Block is a wolf in sheep's clothing, comparable to a situation in which a Porsche Turbo doing it’s pace on the highway at 300 kilometres per hour is prompted by a supposedly much slower, but tuned VW Golf to leave the fast lane. The Shelf Block is purest understatement, but if you look at it closely, you will of course recognize the extraordinary effort that has been made here. When you carry these compact speakers into the living room, then at the latest it becomes clear that many inner values must play a significant role here. The Shelf Block accounts for no less than 77 kilograms of weight, whereby its supporting stand alone shares 48 kilograms of the total. Would you ever have believed this by merely looking at the pictures? I think, you wouldn’t.

The speaker support called Stand-Block shows off adjustable feet on top and bottom, following the same design as used in the BLOCKAUDIO pre/power amp combination. The top-section is made of a "sandwich-like" plate incorporating three rubber dampers. The back-tilted upright column is filled with sand, which explains at least part of the weight. My home has already seen quite a few speaker stands in its past, but not a single one has been so lavishly crafted and has bombproof-like anchored itself in my listening room as this one.