Fine Furniture That Rocks

The Tivoli Audio Model One delivers performance which belies its reasonable price. It is possible today to spend three times as much and get so much less. Tivoli builds a fine wooden cabinet which qualifies as fine furniture. Then they fit in the Henry Kloss-designed radio which has a tuner so accurate that withe just a little practice you can tune, then turn it on and find that you nailed the station you wanted.

The heavy driver "vents" through a tune port on the bottom of the radio for superb bass performance. This radio provides excellent sound reproduction across the frequency spectrum so it goes easily from alternative to classical with equally impressive performance.

While "only" mono, the sound is so good that I don't miss the second speaker. As Henry Kloss believed, stereo requires speakers to be physically separated and I can see his point. Put two speakers two inches apart and you might as well only have one. Henry designed a single speaker radio which simply rocks.

The radio features a tuning indicator and very simple controls - and a volume control which won't start making crunching noises after a short time.

There is a headphone output jack and an input jack for another source such as a CD player or iPod. The Model One can be operated from the AC power cord (supplies) or by a high quality 12vdc adaptor such as the one provided with the Tivoli PAL series of radios. The Model One has an internal antenna but is also supplied with an external antenna for marginal signal areas. I live in an area where radio reception is considered difficult but I get great reception with the internal antenna.

The speaker driver is quite heavy and it is a good idea to give the radio a good "break-in". Leave it on for 4-5 hours or overnight and that's it.