Rival
Refined and Effortless
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The Rival is a three-way, hybrid horn/bass-reflex loudspeaker, with high sensitivity, wide bandwidth, superb build quality and a sound that can best be described as ‘effortlessly powerful’.
Utilizing the same internal components and extremely high build quality found in my flagship Vittora loudspeaker . . .
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. . . the Rival has a very similar sound signature as the Vittora.
A true horn speaker, with lightning fast dynamics, presence and immediacy. It is a speaker that combines effortless power delivery and refinement – a rare combination.
The Rival delivers a sound that is musically engaging and easy to love. You can sit for hours and listen to music without fatigue or annoyances that are often found in lesser horn speaker designs.
Truly a speaker you can live with long term.
Quartered Bubinga Veneer
Placement Flexibility
The Rival is room-friendly and can be positioned against a wall, in a corner, or pulled out into the room. It is front-ported which allows the greatest flexibility in placement since the port does not rely on, nor is affected by, walls behind or beside the speaker.
The sensitivity and ease of drive make the Rival capable of filling a very large room whereas the superb integration ensures it will also work in an intimate, near-field setting.
Details and Specifications
- 15” high-power and high-sensitivity woofer – bass reflex configuration, ported
- Wooden midrange horn with a known Tractrix flare, 2” throat, designed and built by Greg Roberts
- High quality 2” outlet midrange compression driver with a 3-1/2” phenolic diaphragm
- Elliptical tweeter horn with a known Tractrix flare
- High quality 1” compression tweeter driver
- Custom made crossovers, high quality components, hand-wired , adjustable, final voicing done while comparing directly to a Vittora speaker
- Bi-wire or Bi-amp at the input terminals
Sensitivity: 100db
Recommended amplifier power: 3wpc (min.), 100wpc continuous (max.)
Bandwidth: 32Hz – 20kHz
Impedance: 6ohm
Dimensions/Weight:
- Type I, 41-1/2” tall, 19” wide, 16” deep, 125lbs
- Type II, 41-1/2″ tall, 19″ wide, 16-3/4″ deep, 135lbs
Quartered Bubinga Veneer with Premium gray cloth
Sound Signature
With a frequency response of 32Hz – 20Khz and a sensitivity of 100db (2.83v/1M), The Rival delivers glorious, full range, tactile sound from as little as a couple watts of power.
The Rival exemplifies the “Volti” sound signature you’ll hear in all of our speakers:
- Effortless power delivery
- Wide dynamic range
- Finely resolved articulate mid-range
- Immersive, room-filling sound
- Pinpoint imaging and wide soundstage
- Sings-with-one-voice driver integration
- Full-range bandwidth
- Tight, deep bass
- Accurate tone and timbre
Beauty, Built To Last
Volti Audio is known for building beautiful speakers. I also put an emphasis on durability and longevity.
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Finish:
The Rival comes with real wood veneer applied in a vacuum bag for a glass-smooth surface. I use a “permanent” two-part glue to bond the veneer to the cabinet. By contrast, many manufacturers use PVA glue or contact cement, which are not ‘permanent’ glue bonds.
Volti Audio is known for beautiful finish work. The lacquer finish used on the wood veneer of The Rival cabinets is catalyzed and designed to resist damage from UV light. I use a medium-rubbed lacquer finish to allow the character and texture of the wood grain to show through, so you always know you’re looking at a real piece of wood.
The durable textured paint finish used on some panels of The Rival is a commercial grade coating designed to handle wear and tear better than typical paint finishes. This coating is easy to clean and is not scratched or damaged as easily as smooth, glossy coatings.
Cabinet:
You will never find MDF or ‘flakeboard’ used in the construction of a Volti Audio speaker cabinet. I think of my speakers as 100-year products, and I use the finest wood, adhesives, and fasteners in the construction of my cabinets. The Rival cabinet is built from 1” thick Baltic Birch plywood, fully braced, and properly damped. I welcome comparisons to any other speaker – especially in the same price range as The Rival.
Components:
Driver and crossover components are ‘Pro-Audio’ grade, meaning they are very durable and capable of being used a lot harder than they ever will be in your home. This means that even at full rated input power, the drivers are only working at a fraction of their capability, and will last a very long time because of that. The Rival woofer for instance, is capable of continuous 600 watt input – ten times what it will ever handle with full rated input into the speaker. And unlike woofers with rubber surrounds, it has a resin impregnated cloth surround that will last for decades.
Cloth:
The cloth used on the grills of the Rival is of the highest quality woven fabric that is stretched tightly over 1/2″ thick Baltic Birch frames and secured in place with plenty of staples. These grills are a beautiful part of the look of the Rival that will also last for decades.
The Rival speakers truly do offer both Beauty and Durability
Craftsmanship . . .
. . . is the quality that comes from creating with passion, care, and attention to detail. It is a quality that is evident in every aspect of the Rival speaker.
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The materials used in the Rival are meticulously selected for their physical beauty, durability, and sonic characteristics.
The look, feel and sound of the Rival is the combination of great craftsmanship, great materials and attention to details.
Consider the workmanship and high quality materials for the grill frames. They align and snap onto the cabinets with magnets and are made from a solid piece of ½” thick Baltic Birch plywood, cut by CNC, sanded, primed, painted, and then covered with a durable cloth.
Go ahead, find another speaker on the market at any price point that is made with 1″ Baltic Birch plywood. Most cabinets are made with inferior materials, such as MDF or ‘flakeboard’
Take a look at the crossovers in other speakers, even ones costing many times more than the Rival. You probably will not see the quality level of components used, nor will you see one of the very nice features of the Rival; crossovers that are separated into two plates inside the cabinet to minimize interference between the low and high filter components.
Many other quality details can be found on Rival speakers, like laser cut Lexan input plates with high quality five-way binding posts (bi-wire-able), drivers mounted with machine screws and inserts (rather than wood screws into flakeboard), the use of ‘No Rez’ brand damping material, and polyurethane ‘lifetime’ adhesives.
Components
The use of higher quality (more expensive) components results in a more refined sound. Nowhere is this more evident than with the components used inside a horn speaker. Other companies use $20 midrange compression drivers made in Taiwan. That’s not the Volti Audio way of doing things.
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The Rival features a very high quality tweeter driver with a voice coil diameter of nearly 2″ wrapped around a dome-shaped composite diaphragm and a powerful neodymium magnet for fast, smooth, and extended response out to 20Khz. The tweeter lens attached to the driver has an oval shape and tractrix flare. Like all Volti tweeters, they integrate high frequencies without the annoying and harsh sounding peaks that other high-sensitivity horn tweeters exhibit.
The Rival features one of the finest sounding midrange compression drivers money can buy. These drivers have a 2” outlet, a 3.5″ phenolic diaphragm, and a neodymium magnet. Other companies love to spout statistics about the superiority of metal diaphragms in their midrange drivers. Phooey! I’ll take the natural sound of a phenolic diaphragm over a metal one any day. You would too, if you had the opportunity to sit and compare them as I have. The Rival has a midrange horn that I build out of wood, with a 2″ throat and a modified tractrix flare. This combination of driver and midrange horn used in the Rival is where the music lives!
The Rival features a cutting-edge woofer, with low distortion, high sensitivity, a neodymium magnet, cast-aluminum frame, and a host of other features that all work together to help the Rival produce tight, low bass. At audio shows, more than one person has commented to me about how ‘right on’ the bass is with the Rival. While other speakers have impressive bass sound, the Rival offers the experience of listening to music with impressive bass. It is an important distinction.
The Rival features hand-built crossovers with very high quality Metalized Polypropylene Capacitors, 14ga hand-wound copper inductors, and metal-oxide resistors, all mounted on separate high and low frequency wooden boards that are carefully located within the cabinet to reduce vibration and interference with driver magnets. These Volti Audio crossovers are the key to the great integration and overall voicing you hear from the Rival.
The Rival is able to reproduce nine-full-octaves of rich, smooth, ultra-low distortion sound because of these great drivers and components.
Value
Like all Volti Audio loudspeakers, the Rival has an exceptionally high parts and labor cost relative to the selling price.
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Our chosen business model is to sell direct to our customers, without dealers or distributors. This essentially cuts the price of our speakers in half compared to loudspeakers sold through dealers.
The quality of materials, the craftsmanship, the meticulous finish work, and our direct-to-customer sales approach make Volti Audio loudspeakers the best value for money loudspeakers available.
Photos
Photographs of Rival speakers from all angles showing our different wood veneer finishes and grill cloth options HERE
Press and Testimonials
Read what Customers and the Press have to say about Rival speakers
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Wood Veneer
Click Here For Wood Veneer Information
It’s a tough choice!
Yeah, I’m so glad I don’t have to choose! I’m lucky — I just go into my stock and pull out a pair of speakers in whichever veneer suits my fancy at the time. So I get to enjoy a variety of beautiful wood veneers in my system at home. But for you, the decision can be a difficult one. Here are a couple of things to consider.
Pictures almost always show the wood veneer up close, but the grain pattern will look very different from your seating position. So focus on the color and how busy or plain the veneer is first, then get into the details of grain structure and texture.
Don’t try to match other wood you have in your home. It almost never works. Wood species vary so much in color, texture, and grain structure that it’s highly unlikely any veneer we put on a pair of speakers will match the old hutch your grandmother passed down to you. Contrast is good.
Don’t forget about texture. Many veneers have beautiful texture that doesn’t always translate well through photographs. I’m right here looking at them, so just ask and I’ll help you decide.
Highest Quality
I buy my real wood veneer from suppliers in raw form — the actual thin leaves of veneer that have been sliced from a log, or sometimes rotary‑cut. The leaves are sequentially stacked, usually 24 per bundle, or “flitch” as it’s called. I buy a flitch and have it shipped to my veneer processor.
My processor does a lot of the work that I get credit for. They take the raw leaves and book‑match them in pairs or quads to form a sheet or panel. To do this, they carefully trim the width of each leaf and glue the thin edges together. How, I don’t know — but it’s impressive how tight they get the joint. I often can’t find the seam when I’m doing my layout and cutting the panels. Then they apply a thin paper backer to the leaves to provide stability.
This method of buying raw veneer and having it processed costs a lot more than buying pre‑made sheets, but I really like being able to choose the size, grain structure, and color of the veneer, and then ask my processor to custom‑trim and lay out the leaves to make the panels look the way I want — at least as much as Mother Nature allows!
Volti Audio primarily sells speakers that are completely finished and in stock. Please go to our In‑Stock page and have a look at what’s available. The pictures you see there are of the actual speakers in stock, not generic photos. My advice is to pick the pair you connect with right away and don’t overthink it. The more people you ask for an opinion, the harder it becomes to make a choice.
Choosing Your Veneer
If you just can’t find what you want from the speakers we have in stock, then let’s build a pair for you using veneer I already have, or by ordering veneer and having it processed for your speakers. Please understand that there will be a wait time — usually two to four months — and there may be an extra cost associated with this service.
A good way to find the type of veneer you’d like is to scroll down the In‑Stock webpage, where you’ll see a wide selection of veneers we’ve used on previously sold speakers.
Grill Cloth
Black Stretch
Standard grill cloth is a black stretch cloth made by Mellotone Fabrics. Unlike many other black grill cloths which can look a bit washed out or even a bit purple in color, the Mellotone cloth is very dark black in color, and we like using it for this reason. It is the most acoustically transparent of the cloths we offer.
Black Weave
Dark Gray Weave
For an additional charge of $500 we offer several premium options. The Black Weave and Dark Gray Weave cloths have a great vintage look with a richness and texture that is beautiful. One of the nice things about this type of cloth is that it does not show dust or cat hair like the black stretch cloth does. It is also the most durable cloth we use, and will likely last for decades on your speakers. Excellent acoustic transparency.
Tan Mix Weave, Light Beige, and Gray also available for a $500 upcharge. Again, there’s a richness and texture here that adds a lot to the overall look of our speakers. They are sold to us as acoustically transparent, but are noticeably thicker, and do have a tendency to make a slight, but noticeable difference in the high frequency transmission. Fine to leave on for most listening, but when it really counts – you know those late night sessions when the AC power is clean and you’re in the zone with the music – you’ll want to remove the grills. Easy to do, just pull the bottom out and they drop right off the magnets.
Tan Mix Weave
Light Beige
Gray
Click For More Grill Cloth Information
Please note: Due to the thickness of the Light Beige, Tan Mix Weave, and Gray cloths, if you play your music with the grills on and at a high volume level, it is possible for the air from the excursion of the woofer to cause the cloth to move against the wood frame of the grill, which can make a fluttering or buzzing noise. We have had only one customer complaint about this. He said it was happening at a moderate volume level with only one particular song that he likes to play often. I sent him a pair of black stretch grills free of charge. That’s when I added this note here and in my policies page, to let my customers know ahead of time that there is the slight possibility of a problem with these thicker grill cloths. I don’t want to discourage you from buying these beautiful cloths, but just to warn you that if you play particular songs at a high volume level, you may have to remove the grills. We do not have this problem with the more acoustically transparent cloths.
Two Rival Models To Choose From
Rival
The Rival offers classic styling with beautiful wood veneers and vintage-style cloth grills.
Over the course of the year 2025, I have been quietly making improvements to the Rival design. This model now has a few cosmetic differences from pictures you’ll see here of previous Rival speakers. The changes are not significant, mostly in the front baffle of the cabinet behind the grill and how the drivers mount, and in the rear of the cabinet and the removable panel. Overall dimensions and weight remain the same. Small changes have been made to the sound signature of the Rival. Changes to woofer-cabinet integration, along with small changes to the crossover make Rivals from 2026 and beyond the best sounding I’ve built to date.
Bosse Cedar with Premium Light Beige Cloth
Rival – Special Edition
The Rival Special Edition is offered with beautiful curved-sided cabinets built with uncompromising quality, premium veneers, premium cloth, and the highest level of performance.
They even come with matching, veneered, curved-sided external crossovers.
Rosewood
Rival Pricing
A pair of Rival with black stretch grills – $18,000
A pair of Rival Special Edition (includes Premium grills) – $25,000
There is no sales tax except for speakers shipped or delivered to a Tennessee address.
Rival speakers may be delivered for a fee, please inquire. If delivered, the crates are optional.
Custom Wooden Crates needed for shipping $700
Rival speakers ship via truck freight with liftgate and inside‑delivery service. Please note that “inside delivery” does not mean bringing the speakers into your home. It refers to a level of service above standard curbside delivery, where the pallet is left at the end of your driveway. With inside delivery, the driver will use a pallet jack to move the pallet across a smooth surface and place it in your garage or another accessible area outside your home.
Typical shipping costs are approximately $700 East of the Rockies and up to $1,200 West of the Rockies. Please contact me for an exact shipping quote.
Are you ready to experience Rivals for yourself?
If so, please go to our “Speakers In Stock” page and have a look at the Rival speakers that are ready to go.
After you’ve decided which ones you’d like, please send an email to Greg Roberts of Volti Audio, voltiaudio@gmail.com and provide your full name, full shipping address, and phone number and I’ll write up an invoice for you and send it back by email. The invoice will provide itemized pricing, shipping cost and payment options.
I look forward to doing business with you.
If you’ve got any questions about this process or the Rival speakers, or if you’re interested in a pair of Rival speakers finished in a different veneer, please don’t hesitate to reach out to me. I’m at your service.
Greg Roberts
Direct-To-Customer Sales
What does that mean exactly? It means you are buying Volti Audio speakers directly from the manufacturer with no distribution costs and no dealer markups. The price you are paying for your pair of Volti Audio speakers is about half what the cost would be if sold through a dealer, and that is a major reason why Volti audio speakers are an exceptionally good value.
Rival speakers easily compete with any high-end hi-fi speaker on the market today. I’m sure you’ve seen those expensive hi-fi speakers – $80K, $280K or even more! Go ahead. Go to a show and sit in front of the beautiful and very nice sounding Big Acora Granite speakers for a few songs. Then, come into the Volti Audio room and sit in front of the Rivals. I bet you’ll be very impressed with how the Rivals perform by comparison. My point being that these compete easily in the high end with speakers costing multiples of what Rivals cost. If the Rivals were sold through a dealer with typical dealer markups, the price would be somewhere in the neighborhood of $35K. Buying direct from me is a lot less money.