A500
A compact active loudspeaker from Buchardt Audio, a sealed box with a front and a rear six-inch woofer, built-in DSP and amplifiers and a WiSA wireless receiver.
- Made by
- Buchardt Audio
Pictures © Buchardt Audio, from buchardtaudio.com.
Why it is renowned
The A500 is known for coaxing deep bass and a wide sound from a small stand-mounted box. SoundStage! Simplifi gave it a Reviewers' Choice in October 2020, called it one of the most versatile speakers its reviewer had tested, and in the reviewer's room it held its bass down to 25 Hz before falling away.1 Buchardt lists further reviews of it by John Darko, The Next Web, Audiophile Style and Erin's Audio Corner.2
The story
Buchardt built the A500 on the acoustic design of its passive S400 and spent more than three years developing it, measuring each driver at 2,700 points around it to tune the processing.3 Each speaker has a 0.74-inch fabric-dome tweeter in a deep aluminium waveguide, a six-inch paper-cone woofer on the front and another on the back, and three 150-watt class-D amplifiers in a closed cabinet.41 The rear woofer is timed against the front one so that sound reflected off the wall behind widens the stereo image.3
The drivers come from the Danish maker SB Acoustics, and the MDF cabinet has a separate chamber for each woofer.1 The speaker takes a balanced analogue input or a lossless 24-bit/96 kHz signal from any WiSA transmitter, and its frequency response and crossover can be changed with Buchardt's mastertunings.4 It came in black, white or walnut veneer.1
Sources
- Buchardt Audio A500 Active Loudspeakers and Stereo Hub WiSA Transmitter, SoundStage! Simplifi. soundstagesimplifi.com, read 6 October 2026.
- Reviews, Buchardt Audio. buchardtaudio.com, read 6 October 2026.
- Buchardt A500 Detailed Description, Buchardt Audio. buchardtaudio.com, read 6 October 2026.
- A500 Technical Specifications, Buchardt Audio. buchardtaudio.com, read 6 October 2026.
Last checked 6 October 2026, against the maker's own pages.