Fluance Ri71 Review: These Speakers Hit All the Right Notes

The Fluance Ri71 speakers are simply beautiful. At 12.2 by 7.3 by 7.8 inches (HWD), they’re neither too big to feel at home on a desk nor so small that they’d look puny as part of a home theater. They are significantly larger than the Ai41 (10.9 by 6.5 by 7.6 inches) in part because they have larger drivers.

The speakers have a sturdy MDF construction (14.11 pounds for the right, 11.02 pounds for the left) with an elegant wood-grain finish in black, walnut, or white. The drivers are the stars of the show, though. On the front, you’ll find a small reflex port at the bottom. Above that sits the 5.25-inch midrange driver with a white glass fiber weave and butyl rubber surrounds. The drivers are topped with a 1.1-by-1.3-inch Air Motion Transformer (AMT) tweeter tucked away in a special waveguide. The tweeter is a metallic golden color that really pops.

The right speaker houses all the circuitry and amplification—a 120-watt class-D amplifier—and passes signal and power to the left speaker via standard speaker wire. The speakers have five-way binding posts, so you can swap out the included 18-gauge, bare-ended speaker wire with your preferred wire if you wish.

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The back of the right speaker includes all of the inputs. You’ll find an HDMI ARC input, stereo RCA inputs, a subwoofer output with an 80Hz low-pass cutoff, and a grounding post for use with some turntables. It's a shame there's no optical input or USB-C port, but the available ports still provide plenty of flexibility, especially since Bluetooth is available. A button on the rear triggers Bluetooth pairing, and the speakers support the AAC, aptX Low Latency, aptX HD, and SBC codecs, which means you can listen to high-quality audio from your phone.

The rear of the right speaker also includes some physical controls. Two dials adjust bass and treble with 6dB adjustments in either direction, and there's a volume dial at the top edge that’s simple to reach from the front of the speaker without having to search for it. The dial is clickable, too, and doing so cycles through input sources. A small LED on the front of the right speaker indicates the input source, mute status, and other details. Considering you might not want an indicator light on all the time in a home theater setup, Fluance includes the option to disable it for status indication, though it will still blink when making adjustments.

Each speaker sits on thick rubber feet, but you don't get angled stands to point them up at your ears in a desk setup. Their height and waveguides should make up for this to some degree.

Fluance includes a remote control. It’s a simple IR remote that has to be pointed at the front of the right speaker, but it’s handy. It provides power, mute, and volume controls. It also has playback controls, a button for cycling through inputs, and one to turn off the right speaker’s LED. The remote can adjust bass and treble as well. While Fluance thoughtfully added a sticker on the remote with details on which indicator light color corresponds with each input source, it lists a RCA2/USB source that doesn't exist. 

If you prefer to have the active speaker on the left side of your setup for some reason (e.g., proximity to a power outlet), you can hold the mute button on the remote for three seconds to switch its role from its default as the right stereo channel.

Thanks to support for aptX HD, you get excellent audio quality even over Bluetooth. Though we would have liked to see support for aptX Adaptive, aptX Lossless, or LDAC, the speakers do an outstanding job with what they have.

Playing The Knife’s “Silent Shout,” the speakers deliver hefty low-end. From the bass triplets to the sub-bass quarter notes, the speakers handle low frequencies with aplomb and give the tune its bouncing energy. Meanwhile, the synth melody sings out with brilliant quality. The speakers also pull off the haunting phasing between the vocal harmonies with clear stereo separation. Even amid the more boisterous parts of the track, the speakers pick out the subtleties.

As much as they can bump, the speakers don't overdo it. As the drums swell up in the climax of Bill Callahan’s “Drover,” the kick drum thumps heavily without being downright thunderous, ensuring it doesn’t overtake the rest of the track. Fluance is using digital signal processing (DSP) to juice the bass a little, but within reason, and it can always be dialed back with the EQ knob. Meanwhile, Callahan’s baritone vocals have a weighty presence. The little accents from the electric guitar and fiddle also hit with a satisfying bite and plenty of presence.

Mighty as they are, the speakers show their limitations with Kendrick Lamar’s “Loyalty.” This tune challenges with the sub-bass line that comes in at about 35 seconds. The speakers are only rated down to 46Hz, which is impressive, but “Loyalty” goes lower still, so you miss out on some of the lowest frequencies. I can hear a few of the notes come through, but they’re considerably lower in volume than they should be and fail to mesh with the rest of the track; the deepest notes are missing entirely. The speakers perform better with some of the higher notes in the sub-bass range, where they suddenly seem to pop into the mix. The rest of the track sounds excellent, but the sub-bass would definitely benefit from the addition of a subwoofer.

The speakers handle nuance and subtlety surprisingly well, considering how they like to push the bass a little. This plays to the strengths of orchestral music like John Adams’ The Gospel According to the Other Mary. Even in tracks that start out hushed, the speakers provide clear sound with enough dynamic range to feel the emotion of the track and let you focus on the instrumentation.

If you like it loud, you'll love these speakers. Each gets up to 60W of continuous power, and even listening to heavy rock dialed all the way up, they retain their quality with no signs of distortion. The volume they put out is plenty for a small home theater, too, making the HDMI ARC port all the more sensible.