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My time at the recent Toronto Audio Fest (Audio show) recently brought this thread to mind. Just wandering around listening to all the different designs, from stats, to horns, to ribbons, omnis, standard dynamic designs and everything in between.
I heard the Kii Audio Three speakers for the second time. The first was a little audition at a high-end vendor, just the stand mounted portion. At the show I was there early so got a nice listen to the stand-mount plus the subwoofer set up. Both set ups had run the DSP to dial in. In both cases I had a similar impression: Very smooth and even sounding. I know some people are now using these as studio monitors and if my experience was representative, they are one of the easier-on-the-ears monitors I've ever heard.
Aside from that I wasn't particularly blown away. Did they "disappear" as sound sources more than other speakers? Well, they did that pretty well, but I'm used to speakers that have that quality in their sleep, so it wasn't near the best I've heard in that regard. Just very good. Deep bass for a stand mounted speaker? (First audition). Yes, I heard a very good minimalist recording of drums/bass/guitar/vocals and the sound was vivid, kick drum big and deep. But I didn't find anything particularly compelling about what I heard. They seemed if anything a bit on the darker-than-life side tonally, and I found the timbral quality of instruments (classical pieces etc) to be, as through many systems, a bit mono-tone where it felt like my brain had to do some conscious work to untangle one instrument from the other. (Those are the type of experiences that ultimately led me to my most recent speaker purchase, some Joseph Audio speakers, whose most salient feature to my ears is the amazing timbral exactness. It doesn't matter how many instruments enter the track, I find them all effortless to identify).
At one point I heard a particularly "live" sound coming from a room, sort of bluesy music with drums, vocals, guitar, horns. I followed it to find a room pretty well populated, lots of nodding heads to the music. I found myself liking what I heard due to the vividness of the sound. Drum cymbals popped out of the mix and rang with a sense of life, the drummer was doing rim shots that also popped in to the room in a very "live" way, vocals were very clear, horns vivid, yet not "bright" in a whitened sense, but with decent "tonal color" to the proceedings. I asked what speakers were playing and was told Zu Audio speakers.
Zu Audio Speakers??? Really?
It's a brand I know of, but have never encountered personally. I know that the brand has some fervent fans. And I know that they measure AWFUL in the stereophile reviews. And I know they are highly disparaged among the more objectivist (and to some extent DIY) crowd as essentially an idiotic, highly colored speaker design.
And yet...they drew me in with one of the more enjoyable and life-like sounds of the show!
I'm not about to run out and buy a pair, but having heard them I can certainly now understand how they appeal to some people.
And, for me, they offer a rebuke to the idea that every speaker manufacturer ought to be towing the same line, aiming at precicely the same target curves or whatever. A speaker like the Zu is serving some people's criteria in a way that other speakers tend not to. Let a thousand flowers bloom, I say.
Finally: I had some great experiences listening to the Harbeth 30.1 speakers in a couple of rooms. They were an oasis of easy-going, yet rich, organic and timbrally convincing sound. They weren't as vivid and "look at me" as many of the other speakers, but they had some special qualities that really appeal to me. I very often do a little "live vs reproduced" comparison when listening to speakers - at stores, at home, and at shows. At shows when there is a well-recorded vocal track playing through a system I close my eyes and listen both to the reproduced sound, and to the sound of real people talking (inevitably someone is talking in the room, or nearby in the hall). This always puts the reproduced vocal sound in stark relief, typically showing it to sound hardened, mechanical, artificial, edgy, and with a timbral 'color' that sounds "off" from the real voices (e.g. too dark, too light, just...not right). Many of the speakers doing vivid vocals I heard, from Monitor Audio, to Muraudio, to ATC, Tidal, and many others, immediately "failed" those comparisons. But I'll be damned, the Harbeths playing some vocal tracks passed this test better than anything at the show. Voices were reproduced with a sense of "human" organic quality, with body, clear at the right parts, soft and rich at the right parts, that was very much like the real voices in the room!
And some put down the Harbeths as being "colored" or disparage them for the wider baffle, thin-walled cabinet approach. But for me it's how it all comes out in the sound. Some of the speakers I've heard that have the wide baffles/resonating cabinet approach may be introducing canny colorations, but to my ear the end result re-introduces some of the richness and body that I hear in real life sounds, that disappears in many of the super-damped, super linear speaker designs.
I mentioned in another thread that I finally heard the Klipsch La Scala speakers at this show and I very much enjoyed their lively, dynamic, dense-through-the-midrange sound, where voices, drum snares, percussion, hand claps, synthesizers etc had a real sense of physical presence.
(And I think those speaers measure pretty dodgy).
I also got an audition of one of the crazier speakers at the show: the AER speakers. These use what look to be some Lowther-type driver, augmented by huge (plastic?) "lenses" surrounding them, focusing the sound towards the listener. Very crazy looking. No bass to speak of. But holy cow, when I got in to a close seat in the center for an acoustic guitar piece, it was perhaps the most vividly "real" sounding presentation I've ever heard of an acoustic guitar. It wasn't just the clarity, but the sense of the guitar right in front of me moving air, like a real guitar, with every pluck. Fascinating!
Anyway, again, for me this all speaks to the fact I like the fact there is such a variety of designs out there, and that not everyone is following lock-step with one type of speaker design or one set of measurement goals.
I heard the Kii Audio Three speakers for the second time. The first was a little audition at a high-end vendor, just the stand mounted portion. At the show I was there early so got a nice listen to the stand-mount plus the subwoofer set up. Both set ups had run the DSP to dial in. In both cases I had a similar impression: Very smooth and even sounding. I know some people are now using these as studio monitors and if my experience was representative, they are one of the easier-on-the-ears monitors I've ever heard.
Aside from that I wasn't particularly blown away. Did they "disappear" as sound sources more than other speakers? Well, they did that pretty well, but I'm used to speakers that have that quality in their sleep, so it wasn't near the best I've heard in that regard. Just very good. Deep bass for a stand mounted speaker? (First audition). Yes, I heard a very good minimalist recording of drums/bass/guitar/vocals and the sound was vivid, kick drum big and deep. But I didn't find anything particularly compelling about what I heard. They seemed if anything a bit on the darker-than-life side tonally, and I found the timbral quality of instruments (classical pieces etc) to be, as through many systems, a bit mono-tone where it felt like my brain had to do some conscious work to untangle one instrument from the other. (Those are the type of experiences that ultimately led me to my most recent speaker purchase, some Joseph Audio speakers, whose most salient feature to my ears is the amazing timbral exactness. It doesn't matter how many instruments enter the track, I find them all effortless to identify).
At one point I heard a particularly "live" sound coming from a room, sort of bluesy music with drums, vocals, guitar, horns. I followed it to find a room pretty well populated, lots of nodding heads to the music. I found myself liking what I heard due to the vividness of the sound. Drum cymbals popped out of the mix and rang with a sense of life, the drummer was doing rim shots that also popped in to the room in a very "live" way, vocals were very clear, horns vivid, yet not "bright" in a whitened sense, but with decent "tonal color" to the proceedings. I asked what speakers were playing and was told Zu Audio speakers.
Zu Audio Speakers??? Really?
It's a brand I know of, but have never encountered personally. I know that the brand has some fervent fans. And I know that they measure AWFUL in the stereophile reviews. And I know they are highly disparaged among the more objectivist (and to some extent DIY) crowd as essentially an idiotic, highly colored speaker design.
And yet...they drew me in with one of the more enjoyable and life-like sounds of the show!
I'm not about to run out and buy a pair, but having heard them I can certainly now understand how they appeal to some people.
And, for me, they offer a rebuke to the idea that every speaker manufacturer ought to be towing the same line, aiming at precicely the same target curves or whatever. A speaker like the Zu is serving some people's criteria in a way that other speakers tend not to. Let a thousand flowers bloom, I say.
Finally: I had some great experiences listening to the Harbeth 30.1 speakers in a couple of rooms. They were an oasis of easy-going, yet rich, organic and timbrally convincing sound. They weren't as vivid and "look at me" as many of the other speakers, but they had some special qualities that really appeal to me. I very often do a little "live vs reproduced" comparison when listening to speakers - at stores, at home, and at shows. At shows when there is a well-recorded vocal track playing through a system I close my eyes and listen both to the reproduced sound, and to the sound of real people talking (inevitably someone is talking in the room, or nearby in the hall). This always puts the reproduced vocal sound in stark relief, typically showing it to sound hardened, mechanical, artificial, edgy, and with a timbral 'color' that sounds "off" from the real voices (e.g. too dark, too light, just...not right). Many of the speakers doing vivid vocals I heard, from Monitor Audio, to Muraudio, to ATC, Tidal, and many others, immediately "failed" those comparisons. But I'll be damned, the Harbeths playing some vocal tracks passed this test better than anything at the show. Voices were reproduced with a sense of "human" organic quality, with body, clear at the right parts, soft and rich at the right parts, that was very much like the real voices in the room!
And some put down the Harbeths as being "colored" or disparage them for the wider baffle, thin-walled cabinet approach. But for me it's how it all comes out in the sound. Some of the speakers I've heard that have the wide baffles/resonating cabinet approach may be introducing canny colorations, but to my ear the end result re-introduces some of the richness and body that I hear in real life sounds, that disappears in many of the super-damped, super linear speaker designs.
I mentioned in another thread that I finally heard the Klipsch La Scala speakers at this show and I very much enjoyed their lively, dynamic, dense-through-the-midrange sound, where voices, drum snares, percussion, hand claps, synthesizers etc had a real sense of physical presence.
(And I think those speaers measure pretty dodgy).
I also got an audition of one of the crazier speakers at the show: the AER speakers. These use what look to be some Lowther-type driver, augmented by huge (plastic?) "lenses" surrounding them, focusing the sound towards the listener. Very crazy looking. No bass to speak of. But holy cow, when I got in to a close seat in the center for an acoustic guitar piece, it was perhaps the most vividly "real" sounding presentation I've ever heard of an acoustic guitar. It wasn't just the clarity, but the sense of the guitar right in front of me moving air, like a real guitar, with every pluck. Fascinating!
Anyway, again, for me this all speaks to the fact I like the fact there is such a variety of designs out there, and that not everyone is following lock-step with one type of speaker design or one set of measurement goals.