Graham Audio VOTU Mirama floorstanding loudspeaker

By: Alan Sircom [hi-fi+ Issue 242]

Graham Audio is renowned for its modern recreations of both popular and lesser-known BBC loudspeaker designs. Under the guidance of Paul Graham and designer Derek Hughes, whose family lineage traces back to very beginnings of the BBC loudspeaker concept, Graham Audio has produced domestic versions of some of the finest loudspeakers from the late 1950s to the early 1970s and has also expanded these designs into newer models. Additionally, there’s the VOTU, or ‘Voice of the Universe’. The original model, launched in 2018, was an offshoot of the SYSTEM3D ‘effect fill’ loudspeakers created for the Royal Opera House in London. The new VOTU Mirama floorstander elevates that design to a new level.

From the outside, the VOTU Mirama appears to have little in common with traditional BBC design, but a closer inspection reveals this is not the case. The lessons learned from reviving the LS5/5 extend beyond a sizeable stand-mount monitor loudspeaker conceived in 1967.

Derek’s pen

As with all of Graham Audio’s designs, the VOTU Mirama is from the pen of Derek Hughes, Derek is perhaps the last direct link with the loudspeaker engineering section of the BBC Research & Development team in Kingswood Warren. His father, Spencer alongside designers and engineers like Dudley Harwood, helped create those classic thin-walled monitors that were so closely associated with the BBC. Although their legacies have been passed down to subsequent generations of loudspeaker designers, that straight family link is gone in most places. Derek is the last of the line.

The last version of the VOTU and this are very different, suggesting Derek's pen still has a lot of ink left to give. Yes, the link to SYSTEM3D is still there, but it's a more distant link than its predecessor. Where the predecessor was an integrated unit, the VOTU Mirama uses two connected cabinets. This is a thoroughly wise idea given the full VOTU Mirama stands 164cm tall (or one Daniel Radcliffe in imperial measurements) and weighs in at a beefy 110kg (242lbs or 17st 4.5lbs in old money).