Two years ago, hi-fi+ spoke to English singer-songwriter Stephen Duffy, frontman of country-folk band The Lilac Time, and a founding member of Duran Duran, about his long-lost late ‘70s / early ‘80s group The Hawks, as well as other projects.
He told us: “My last record, The Lilac Time’s Return To Us, wasn’t about Brexit, but it was very current politically. I sat on that for two years and thought, ‘Oh God – this is going to seem so out of date by the time it comes out’, but now it seems more relevant than it did when it came out because of everything that’s going on.”
Now he’s back with Dance Till All The Stars Come Down – the title comes from a line in a W.H. Auden poem – which is The Lilac Time’s first album since 2019’s Return To Us and the eleventh since they released their eponymous debut in 1987. It’s a record that’s more relevant than ever, despite some of it being written in 2015.
Speaking about the album’s first single, ‘A Makeshift Raft’, which was inspired by Syrian refugee, Alan Kurdi, drowning while attempting to reach Greece in 2015, as well as Trump becoming the Republican party presidential candidate, Duffy says: “It’s the first song I wrote for the album. So ‘first’ in fact, it could’ve been on the last album, Return To Us.”
He adds: “I started writing in 2015, when three-year-old Alan Kurdi drowned with eleven others trying to reach Kos and was photographed being carried off the beach his corpse had reached.”
Like the rest of the album, ‘A Makeshift Raft’ doesn’t feature conventional drums or bass.
“This is the one song I almost broke with the precept of no drum kits,” says Duffy. “For my sins I erred toward a bass drum, but the precept endured.”
First song, the dramatic, ‘50s tinged strummer, ‘Your Vermillion Cliffs’, opens with a wonderfully melancholic line Morrissey would be proud to have written: “I’ve never liked my birthdays, they always make me sad.”
Second single, ‘The Long Way’, is a pithy rebuke to Tory voters – “Who votes to be homeless / To be unemployed / Who votes for kindness / To be destroyed / They offer just hatred / Or suicide” – while the gorgeous and romantic ‘On The Last Day of the Last Days of Summer’ (“Dance ‘till all the stars come down / Stay with me until there’s no else around”) has acoustic, Lennon-style guitar picking as heard on ‘Julia’ from The White Album.
‘Candy Cigarette’ features some delightful bluesy-folk mandolin playing that harks back to those great Rod Stewart albums from the early ’70s.
The whole record is acoustic, stripped back, sparse and intimate – rustic country-folk.
Very much a family affair, The Lilac Time comprises Duffy, his brother, Nick, and wife, Claire.
Ben Peeler plays pedal steel guitar and the songs have been beautifully mixed and mastered by the Grammy-winning John Paterno, who has worked with The Lilac Time since 2015 – his other clients include Bonnie Raitt, Badly Drawn Boy and Robbie Williams.
Duffy, who turned 63 this year, says the final song, which is the poignant, reflective and nostalgic ‘The Band That Nobody Knew’ – “That was our time in the shade / No one but the driver got paid” – is about the dysfunctional relationship he had with touring.
It recounts his time on the road: “I loved how it felt / Between towns / And all the ups and the downs / The acrobats dropped by the clowns.”
Explaining his thinking, he says: “It was just being out there, thinking about the next deal and the next album. This is our next deal and this is our next album. I hope you enjoy it as much as we did making it.”
Duffy believes Dance Till All The Stars Come Down is the best album The Lilac Time have ever made – he might just be right – and he says he wrote each song as if they were to be the last one ever written. If he never wrote another song, it would be such a shame, but when he makes albums as good as this one, you can forgive him.
In the 1990s, a Welshman called Richard Lord had an idea about bass. That idea became the REL (after ‘Richard E Lord’) range of subwoofers. Those first subs – Strata, Stadium, Stentor – put REL on the UK map. But the product that ‘broke’ REL internationally was the Strata III in 1998. And REL’s latest model is the Classic No 98, essentially the Strata III brought up to date.
This could have gone one of three ways. REL could have simply remade the Strata III once again. It could have made a poor pastiche of the Strata III. Or it could take that classic product and see what modern-era REL could do with the design. REL took the high-ground option and viewed 1998 through 2023’s design lenses.
Original Concept
The original REL concept was a sealed enclosure with a relatively low-power Class A/B amplifier and a long-throw bass driver. Where most subwoofers tend to use a port to stretch a loudspeaker’s deep bass properties, Richard Lord’s clever idea was to use a bigger – but sealed – inch-thick cabinet. This meant the Strata III and 98 use a 250mm bass unit. Back in 1998, that driver was a VIFA unit. The company could have ‘raided’ the driver from its T9X design but has instead made its own paper driver unit specifically for the 98.
In fairness to late 20th Century REL, the low-power Class A/B design was more of a necessary evil than a design decision. Commercial Class D designs were still a year or two away. Building several hundred watts of Class A/B amp into the Strata III would have been stupidly heavy, prohibitively expensive, and would run alarmingly warm.
REL of 2023 knows its way around Class D amps, and a new 300W model is used in the 98.
In recent years, the brand has shied away from the wood veneers that were such a feature of ‘OG’ REL. Most modern RELs are black or white and often a rich black piano gloss. However, exploring the company’s past without a walnut veneer wouldn’t be right. The No 98 has a deep matt walnut veneer finish and rolled edges, especially on the top and bottom plates. The shiny REL badge on the middle of the top plate and the square feet are the only visible differences. Even the rear panel comes close to looking like a Strata III, although the current logo looks less like a child of the 1970s.
Same as it ever was
Setting up a REL is the same as it always was. For audio, use the high-level settings (the supplied cable helps, and there is an upgrade that is worth treating yourself to). Connect this cable to the loudspeaker terminals. Now turn the subwoofer down until it is at the limits of audibility (then turn it down one more notch for good measure). A good way of checking this is to use a well-recorded piece of music with a solid walking bass. Adjust until the REL sub makes that bass come alive but doesn’t thicken or slow the sound. Check back in a few weeks; you’ll probably turn the sound down more.
What REL has done here is successfully blend old and new. REL subs were a revelation for music lovers wanting to add some reinforcement to the sound, but they probably weren’t the deepest or most neutral subs around. However, some still crave that early REL warmth… or at least the idea of it. Most find them a little too warm for today’s systems and want something with some of that characteristic old-REL performance, but with the speed and depth of modern designs. The Classic 98 balances those demands well.
There’s some of that lovely warmth still in effect. The first REL designs gave the midrange more space but there was always a sense of adding a bit of creamy richness too. The 98 doesn’t have that warming-up effect to anything like the same effect, but it sounds more direct and deeper than its 1990s archetype.
More speed!
More importantly, though, the Classic 98 has the speed of modern REL designs. That paper cone driver moves a lot of air at very great speed; faster than I remember its 1990s predecessors doing. It wouldn’t be a fair comparison using a 25 year old subwoofer as its ‘provenance’ is always unclear (a polite way of saying, “it could well be completely screwed”), but this sounds less warm and even more in time with the sound than I remember hearing with any 1990s REL model at the time, and I do recall them well.
The warmth of older REL designs was, in hindsight, possibly a lack of control over the bass. The Strata III was an unbraced cabinet with OK wadding and as much power as could be used to grip that driver at the time. While the cabinet remains unbraced, the thicker wadding, the more controlled, more dynamic cone and a lot more power on tap all make for a faster, tighter, and deeper sound, with just a trace of that warmth.
I find this the perfect foil to the Revival Audio Atalante 3 two-way stand-mounts tested in issue 216. The easy roll-off of these loudspeakers – reminiscent of classic British BBC-style loudspeakers of the last century – is a perfect blend with the REL Classic 98. Bass reinforcement from this subwoofer is more in line with REL’s long-standing guidelines of just enough to underpin the sound, thereby letting the midrange and treble of the main loudspeaker shine through.
While the Classic 98 can do good bass ‘oomph’, like the Strata III of a quarter of a century ago, that’s not the point. This is sound reinforcement, not simply confined to bass, and that’s what makes this great for audio.
Not just rose tinted
Richard passed away in 2017, aged 78. He would be extremely pleased about the Classic 98. It’s a distillation of his ideas, combining what made the Strata III such a hit 25 years ago, with what REL does so well today. It’s so much more than just a rose-tinted view of the past; it honours what made REL the company it is today. And finally, for classic speaker lovers, you can do no wrong with the Classic 98.
There is a lot of talk these days about the vinyl revival. But it strikes me that there is another revival that is every bit as significant – the valve revival. Now, some may argue valves never really went away, and to an extent that is true, but there has never been such a wide choice of good tube products as we have today.
I used to be a transistor man back in the day, and way back then many of the valve amps being touted as wonderful didn’t live up to the billing. Now, though, we have a choice of some excellent tubed products from the likes of Audio Note, Leben, Rogers and Icon to name but a few. To that list, we can add Balanced Audio Technology (BAT), and their 55W VK80i valve integrated amplifier, which is the subject of this review.
This is the first product from BAT that I have reviewed, but the company itself, based in Wilmington in the USA, was founded back in 1995 by chief engineer Victor Khomenko and general manager Steve Bednarski, both of whom previously worked for Hewlett Packard.
Tubes, tubes and more tubes
The company produces tube preamps, transistor and tube power amps and two integrated amps – one valve (VK80i) and one hybrid, the VK3500i, which has a tube input stage and transistor output stage. It also makes two phono stages and a DAC. Its top mono valve power amp, the VK80t, sells for around £20,000 and its top tranny model, the 500W REX500 mono power amp weighs in at around £45,000. The VK80i I am reviewing here sells for a more modest £9,995.
As the company name suggests, they are firm believers in using fully balanced circuit designs and the VK80i is no exception. On its website, BAT’s chief engineer Victor Khomenko is quoted as saying: “One day, Steve came to me and told me he’d bought a preamplifier that featured something very unusual – a balanced circuit. My immediate response was, ‘That’s the only way to build a circuit’.”
BAT believes that balanced circuits offer significant benefits, which is why professionals use balanced circuits in studios and for live performances. These are improved signal integrity, reduced noise and enhanced channel separation. They say that by using positive and negative phases of the audio signal, common-mode noise and interference are effectively cancelled out. They say it also offers higher signal handling capabilities and increased dynamic range.
And so, the VK80i sports one balanced XLR line level input as well as three standard RCA phono inputs, selectable with the row of push buttons on the left of the front panel. There is also a large rotary volume control on the far right as well as a mute button to its left and an LED display that tells you the volume level and which input is selected.
Feedback? No thanks!
Also central to BAT’s designs is its zero global feedback approach. They say that by not feeding the output signal back to the input signal they preserve the natural characteristics of the audio signal, enhancing transparency, dynamics and tonal balance.
The VK80i is a hefty item weighing some 20.4kg and its exposed valves means that it is probably best kept out of reach of young children. It is rated at an impressive 55W and sports four 6C33C-B triode output tubes in push-pull configuration and four 6SN7 input tubes. The spec sheet says it delivers this power into either 4ohms or 8ohms and separate taps on the output transformer mean that there are three sets of speaker connections on the back for loudspeaker impedances of 3–4ohms, 4–6ohms or 6-8ohms. BAT says the amplifier is capable of driving even difficult low-impedance loads.
As well as balanced circuitry, the VK80i also offers fuse-less protection and intelligent automatic biasing. The design has just the one regulation mains input fuse, other than that it relies not on fuses but on electronic and thermal electronic protection circuits to guard against users driving the amplifier too hard into clipping.
BAT also says that it has side-stepped one of the traditional headaches with tube amps – namely the need to readjust the bias current of the output tubes. The VK80i uses intelligent circuitry to automatically compensate for changing line voltage and ageing valves. Each of the four output valves has its own circuit.
BAT-ting well above average
Knowing that the review sample of the VK80i was well run in, I could dive straight in and satisfy my curiosity as to whether the sound quality of this product matched its obvious high build quality and good looks.
I used the VK80i with a number of speakers – the excellent Perlisten S4B standmount speaker (also distributed by Karma AV) as well as two other favourites of mine – the Russell K Red 120Se and Audio Note AN-J LX Hemp.
I tried a variety of source components. Not having a phono stage – BAT make one, but it was not supplied for this review – and so I used a Puresound P10 with a Music Audio First Reference step-up transformer to amplify the signal from my Audio Note TT3/Arm Two/Io1 record-playing setup.
I also used an Innuos Statement streamer through a Chord Dave DAC, as well as an Audio Note CDT Five CD transport and DAC Five Special.
Rather usefully, I also had to hand a comparably priced and well-respected transistor amp that I know well and that would serve as a useful benchmark.
Encouraging
Initial impressions of the VK80i were encouraging. And what better to search out on Tidal on the Innuos but one of my fave Ben Sidran tracks from his Bop City album, ‘It Didn’t All Come True’. Sidran’s voice on the VK80i had warmth, reality, emotion and range, while piano had presence and was well balanced in the mix, while the bass line was full and tuneful. A quick switch to the transistor amp saw the sound become a bit cold, less emotion-packed, his vocals less human, the bass line less fluid.
I couldn’t help but throw my favourite track from my favourite Bruce Springsteen album, Darkness on the Edge of Town, on the TT3 platter next. ‘Racing in the Streets’ is an emotionally charged ballad and beautifully recorded with great vocals from Springsteen and a beautiful solo piano accompaniment on the opening bars.
On the VK80i, it was atmospheric, moving, powerful – his vocals had soul and the piano had power but with finesse. The sound collapsed inwards slightly on the tranny amp. The piano was somehow smaller, not so real. Drum rimshots as the track progressed were less crisp than they were on the VK80i and the deep, tuneful bass line was certainly tight on the transistor amp, but lacked the fullness, movement and character it had on the VK80i. There was no doubt in my mind which I enjoyed more. Definitely the BAT.
Using the CD player next, I reached for sax genius Dave Koz’s wonderful album The Dance and played the track ‘The Bright Side’.
Koz is one of my favourite saxophonists, along with David Sanborn, Eric Marienthal, Art Pepper, Gerald Albright and Grover Washington to drop but a few famous names, and he is really in the groove on this track. His alto sax had just the right degree of bite and body on the VK80i compared with the colder, less insightful rendition on the tranny amp. Percussion was snappier, tighter, the bass line fuller on the BAT and the whole impetus and flow of the track was more convincing on the VK80i. And this track has it in spades – they are all top class musicians, and they really play well together to give the song a special coherence and impact. And while it was OK on the transistor amp, everything just seemed to snap into place on the VK80i.
Finally, it was the turn of guitarist Peter White to thrill me with his lovely rendition of the old Johnny Nash classic ‘I Can See Clearly Now’ from his Groovin’ album. This track has a real sparkle, life and rhythmic lilt that carries the listener along in a melodic and delightful way and has the wonderful added bonus of a guest appearance from a jazz guitar favourite of mine, Jonathan Butler. From the first few notes he plucks on his guitar, I could instantly hear the style of his play and his unique sound. Don’t ask me what it is, but there it was! On the transistor amp, it was not so well delineated. Sure, he was there, but lacking the sparkle and focus.
Simply musical
After you listen to a few tracks, patterns usually emerge and listening to the BAT VK80i was just the same. And it did not matter which speakers I was using. The musical performance, power and grip of the VK80i meant it drove the Audio Note, Russell K and Perlisten speakers equally well to sensible levels with complete control.
The VK80i proved itself to be a very competent performer. The sound was coherent and tuneful, giving plenty of insights into what is going on in the music. It took on one of the best transistor amps I know at this kind of price range and showed it a clean pair of heels. I liked it a lot and have no hesitation in recommending it as an excellent buy.
Thank you to Home Media in Maidstone, Kent, for their assistance during this review.
Technical specifications
Type Zero-feedback, balanced integrated valve amplifier
Back in 1979, a Danish music lover called Ole Klifoth founded a company called Audiovector. His goal was to make a loudspeaker that brought together all the good qualities of the best loudspeakers of the time and iron out all the wrong bits. So, no biggie, then! The first model was a giant eight-driver, six-way trapezoid design. The more manageable three-way Trapez followed soon after and proved a hit. And now, 45 years later, it’s back and brought up to date in the Audiovector Trapeze Reimagined floorstanding loudspeaker.
Why would Audiovector recreate its first commercial success? Simply because it’s still in the public domain. Audiovector fans—especially in Europe—swear the Trapez is the best speaker ever. Times change, and floorstanding loudspeakers look very different from the wide-baffled designs of yore. However, some still feel the move to more svelte tower speakers loses as much as it gains. The Audiovector Trapeze Reimagined floorstanding loudspeaker addresses these concerns without falling into the trap of being a pastiche.
The new Trapeze Reimagined is a three-way, Isobaric Compound Bass-loaded floorstanding loudspeaker design. It uses a 12-inch high-power mid/bass driver (with an eight-inch driver in an isobaric configuration), a five-inch high-speed midrange, and an Audiovector SEC Air Motion Transformer (AMT) tweeter designed explicitly for this loudspeaker. That relatively short description unpacks several things, the most notable being the Isobaric Compound Bass design.
While isobaric loading is not unique, Audiovector has developed a unique solution to the design. The term implies ‘equal’ (‘isobars’ meaning ‘equal pressure’, derived from the Ancient Greek word ‘isobares’ meaning ‘of equal weight’). This unique approach to isobaric loading sets the Audiovector Trapeze Reimagined apart, piquing the interest of audio enthusiasts and potential buyers.
A typical isobaric chamber has two identical drive units, laid cone-to-magnet in phase, with both units in identical sealed enclosures. This configuration ensures the pressure between the cones of the two drivers is equal, and they act in parallel, effectively behaving as one larger driver with twice the enclosure volume. The result is a deeper bass response than what you would typically expect from a given drive unit size. It’s like having two smaller loudspeakers perform as one larger one, but with half the compliance and impedance, a unique advantage of the Isobaric Compound Bass design.
Redraws the rules
The Audiovector Isobaric Compound Bass redraws these rules by using a smaller internal driver in a larger volume cabinet to partner with a larger external driver and a port between the two chambers. Pressure is equalised between the eight-inch internal driver and the 12-inch unit. This chambered internal construction couples the masses of the two drivers, making it somewhere between a classical isobaric and a bass reflex solution. However, the result is functionally the same and delivers a good combination of weight and speed. Audiovector uses a similar system in its tower loudspeakers, such as the R6 Arreté and R8, and delivers uncanny bass levels from a relatively narrow-baffle design, so it’s not without precedent.
That eight-inch internal driver is met by a 12” bass unit at the front of the cabinet. This bass driver is a custom design manufactured to Audiovector’s specifications. The membrane is a lightweight yet stiff, long-fibre paper cone with a corrugated ‘concertina’ surround. It uses a 4”, hysteresis-free, fully vented voice coil. It also features an aluminium/magnesium chassis. The bass unit crosses over to the midrange at a relatively high 500Hz, which is rare in any sized drive unit but almost unheard of in a 12” unit.
Blisteringly fast
The midrange must be fast enough to handle that blisteringly fast AMT tweeter. The five-inch custom-made Trapeze Reimagined midrange driver uses a lightweight, impregnated paper cone, once more featuring a ‘concertina’ surround instead of the more commonplace rubber half-roll design. Like its big bass brother, it also features a hysteresis-free voice coil and a chassis made from aluminium and magnesium. However, in this driver, the magnet is a powerful vented circular Neodymium magnet, and the design includes a copper induction shorting cap on the pole piece.
Audiovector has long been a proponent of AMT designs, and the company claims its open-back Air Motion Transformer tweeter is the only one remaining true to Dr Oscar Heil’s original design. The pleated membrane uses an extraordinarily light and well-controlled mylar membrane with aluminium leading strips and powerful N 51 Neodymium magnets. Mylar was chosen because of its good internal damping and inherent low distortion. Audiovector perfected its etching process to produce the diaphragms for its current range. This is mounted to the cabinet with a clever three-point installation system, and its front fascia is made of aircraft-grade aluminium, milled with a circular pattern.
Audiovector Trapeze Reimagined: Occam’s crossover
Audiovector designed the crossover network to meet the problem-solving principle known as Occam’s razor. Attributed to 14th-century English philosopher William of Occam, it’s popularly stated as ‘the simplest explanation is usually the best one’. The Trapeze Reimagined’s crossover is simple (although no simpler than it should be!), developed for the loudspeaker, and uses high-quality components. It sports custom capacitors, which use polypropylene dielectrics with a tin-flashed copper foil, which are ‘double cryogenically’ treated and selected to have less than ±0.3% tolerances. Its copper inductor coils are also subjected to the same ‘double cryo’ treatment because one cryogenic treatment takes simplicity too far!
The Audiovector Trapeze Reimagined also uses high-quality film resistors instead of the more commonly used reactive wire wound resistors in the tweeter section. There is also an Audiovector x Duelund bypass capacitor for the AMT’s extreme high-frequency component.
Throwing shapes
Loudspeaker designers constantly try new cabinet designs to help reduce internal standing waves. A conventional rectangular cabinet is uniquely designed to promote such internal resonance. Something as simple as a lute or boat-shaped enclosure can help. However, just as non-parallel walls can make for better-sounding rooms, so non-parallel internal surfaces of an enclosure help reduce internal standing waves. This is where the trapezoid shape of the Trapeze Reimagined does so well. By angling that front baffle, the cabinet is effectively a standing wave-free zone.
However, to correctly achieve that goal beyond its non-parallel shape, there’s some deceptively complex alignment of the acoustic centres of each driver. This has another benefit alongside the substantial reduction in standing waves; the correct placement of those drivers’ acoustic centres contributes to creating 6dB/octave slopes between the drivers. The less perfect the positioning, the more complexity goes into the crossover network. Also, by angling the front baffle and the drive units on that baffle, toe-in is achieved while the rest of the loudspeaker is parallel to the rear and side walls. Not only does this aid installation, but it fits well with many listeners’ domestic demands.
A big hardwood, high-density board cabinet also allows for lots of bracing. It doesn’t necessarily need lots of bracing (once again, the thin-walled cabinets of BBC designs famously had ‘minimal’ – British understatement for ‘bugger all’ – internal bracing), but the Audiovector Trapeze Reimagined takes advantage of bracing to help lower cabinet-induced distortion and coloration.
Audiovector Trapeze Reimagined: Compatibility
A lot has changed in the audio world since the Trapez first appeared 45 years ago. Most notably in amplifiers, the prevailing technology was a solid-state Class AB amplifier with a moderately good damping factor. Connecting a loudspeaker to a single-end triode design with a very low damping factor or a behemoth power amplifier with an extremely high damping factor was still some years away. Fortunately, Trapeze Reimagined is one of the few designs that factor in an amplifier’s damping factor, with a three-position switch on the rear panel.
You can also use this like a tonal compensation switch, taking some of the tautness from a dry-sounding amplifier. The effect is noticeable, but given I spent an hour or so thoroughly enjoying the Trapeze Reimagined in the wrong position for the amp used, it’s neither a deal-breaker nor a speaker-destroyer if you leave it in the middle position. It’s worth experimenting, though.
And that word ‘enjoying’… well, it often comes up when playing the Audiovector Trapeze Reimagined. It’s not a fussy loudspeaker, even though it’s worth experimenting with accurate placement, partnering equipment and that damping factor switch. But Trapeze Reimagined is the opposite of the stuffy audiophile loudspeaker that only springs to life when fed beautifully recorded music.
No shame
This is the loudspeaker you can happily surf through Tidal’s or Qobuz’s less salubrious sections, put on a musical horror, and enjoy. Play ‘Just a Gigolo/I Ain’t Got Nobody’ by Louis Prima or ‘All Star’ by Smash Mouth (I have no shame), and it raises a smile. Play ‘La Mer’ by Julio Iglesias, and you start sauntering across a room like you are Colin Firth in the closing scenes of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. Or play Infected Mushroom or Iron Maiden and start headbanging until something bursts. It’s that kind of speaker when it wants to be.
Given the Isobaric Compound Bass, I’m trying not to make it sound like word-association. Still, I can’t help thinking about the old Linn Isobarik loudspeaker when listening to the Trapeze Reimagined. In the late 1980s, I used to sell Linn ‘briks’. They did a lot wrong, but what they did right few other loudspeakers could do. That still holds, although the ‘did a lot wrong’ part in today’s market will arguably weigh heavier.
Doing it right
So, what did Linn Isobariks do right? They made bass at once deep and visceral and rhythmically ‘bouncy’. Everything else sounded like a slow, one-note drone by comparison. And if you liked that staggeringly good, forceful bass, you would likely overlook the Isobarik’s lack of stereo imaging, relatively weak vocal articulation and midrange clarity, and its treble that could sound underwhelming or screechy.
The Audiovector Trapeze Reimagined is a Linn Isobarik with the nasty bits smoothed off. It’s got that same sense of a visceral, ‘meaty’ and rhythmically precise bass, but this time coupled to a midrange that expresses itself beautifully and a treble that is at once detailed and never peaky sounding. Like most Audiovectors—and like most wide-baffle designs—it gives an excellent presentation of stereo imaging. And it all hangs together beautifully.
Take it down a notch
Playing more informative pieces of music reveals a loudspeaker of depth and subtlety, too. Imaging is first-rate, with the loudspeaker creating an image slightly more profound than it is wide but still cast wide of the loudspeaker cabinets. ‘The Ghost’ by Anna B Savage [in|Flux, City Slang] has an atmospheric mix of natural and synthesised instruments with her voice front and centre. It’s easy for the mix to leave her almost removed from the music because she’s close-mic’d. Still, the point of the track is to be claustrophobic and intense, and the Audiovector Trapeze Reimagined presents that effortlessly.
Unlike many high-end designs, it’s a detailed and honest performer, but the detail is not thrown at you. It’s a more compelling and coherent sound than that, and you never feel the interaction between drivers or any tonal shifts as you move through the registers. It just sounds natural, ‘right’, and always enjoyable.
As with many of the best loudspeakers, it gets the midrange very right, but the Trapeze Reimagined never pushes this midrange clarity and absence of coloration. ‘Entr’acte’ from Caroline Shaw and the Attacca Quartet’s Orange [Nonesuch] shows this midrange at its best; it swings between pizzicato and glissando, with moments of attack and other Phillip Glass-like repetition. Get the midrange wrong, and it sounds like the string quartet is warming up. The Trapeze Reimagined locks your attention to the point where finding another track before it ends would seem like musical heresy. The same applies throughout; listen to ‘Peace Piece’ by Bill Evans [Everybody Digs Bill Evans, Riverside], and the world stops for six and a half glorious minutes. Even though the improvisation falls mainly in the middle registers, the bass brilliantly roots the sound in place.
Normal rooms
The downsides are few and trivial. This is a loudspeaker-sized, shaped, finished, and priced for ‘normal’ listening rooms rather than an oligarch’s winter palace. As such, it doesn’t reach the lowest octave where 64’ organ pipes live. But those deepest bass notes are often more of a curse than a blessing. You usually need to control and contain them. The Trapeze Reimagined is small enough to be used in homes where space is at a premium. This is as ‘full-range’ as you need in such rooms, and anything else is excessive.
Audiovector’s Trapeze Reimagined are barely on the high-end nursery slopes. You can buy power cords that cost more than these loudspeakers. Still, I suspect they will have the same staying power as the Trapez of almost half a century ago. And it’s the same motivation in people who still play their music through Linn Isobariks today. The Trapeze Reimagined is a loudspeaker that stays in your system. You could move up to some seriously high-end electronics and not feel a burning desire to upgrade the loudspeakers.
More or better?
Sure, spending more gets you more. However, if there’s one thing you take from this review, it’s that ‘more’ doesn’t always mean ‘better.’ The bass has impact and slam. The overall sound is coherent, with a simple sense of fun. This makes the Audiovector Trapeze Reimagined floorstanding loudspeaker a tough act to follow. No matter how much money you spend on your loudspeakers.
A wide-baffle loudspeaker will always be a minority interest in today’s audio world. For good or ill, most people buy slimline tower loudspeakers today. For those people, many options are open to them… including several from Audiovector’s range. But some see slim loudspeaker design as a sonic misstep. But not all want the easy-going, laid-back sound of a pair of BBC-derived designs either. For those who want something that plays music with fun and force, those who want something that can produce detail and danceable tunes, and for those who wish to bass that has depth, slam, and a wicked sense of rhythm… the Audiovector Trapeze Reimagined floorstanding loudspeaker is calling you.
May 2, 2024 (Montreal, Canada) – MOON will be demonstrating its new 861 power amplifier and 891 network player/preamplifier at this year’s High End Munich show. The two new products are at the pinnacle of the North Collection, and they offer a premium performance that displays the very best attributes of the renowned MOON sound.
In MOON’s room at the show, an 891 network player/preamplifier will be paired with two 861 power amplifiers. This combination will deliver all the power and finesse to satisfy the most demanding visitor. A pair of Dynaudio Confidence 60 loudspeakers will be connected to the MOON system by a full set of Nordost Valhalla cables, and a Nordost QBase Reference QB10 will manage the AC signal. HRS (Harmonic Resolution Systems) furniture will allow the 861s and 891 to perform exactly as MOON’s engineers intended.
The MOON 861 features the groundbreaking MOON Distortion-Cancelling Amplifier (MDCA) circuit, and delivers unparalleled control, transparency, and tonal richness. Every detail, from its iconic front panel to its sophisticated construction, reflects MOON’s four decades of engineering excellence.
The MOON 891 network player/preamplifier comprises a streaming DAC, phono stage, and graphic interface. The brilliant 5” colour screen on the front of the 891 displays volume and input selection, enables the extensive setup menu, and showcases cover art and metadata. The iconic BRM-1 remote offers supreme system control.
The MOON team will host a series of demonstrations in its room throughout each day of the show and visitors are warmly invited to walk in, settle down and enjoy the music.
Other manufacturers at the show will also be demonstrating MOON’s products. The 791, 681 and 641 will be heard in Dynaudio’s room and the 791, 641, 681 and 888 will be playing in the Raidho & Scansonic HD Dantax Radio room.
Etienne Gautier, MOON CCO, said, ‘We are delighted to be able to present the MOON 861 and MOON 891 at High End Munich. They were demonstrated at the recent Montreal and Axpona shows where they were loved by the North American audience. I am certain that they will be just as well received in Munich. Our room at the show has been designed to offer our visitors a relaxing environment in which they can experience the very best MOON products and enjoy our renowned Canadian hospitality.’
High End Munich takes place from May 9-12, 2024, at the MOC Event Centre Messe München, Lilienthalallee 40,
80939 München, Germany.
MOON will be in room C120 on the first floor of Hall A (A 3.1).
April 2023 – Origin Live is reaching a milestone this year: The companies Turntables and Tonearms are finally playing in a room at the Munich High-End show where they are exhibiting with German Distributors High Fidelity Studio in rooms A 4.1, F126/F127.
The High Fidelity Studio system will include Origin Lives Conqueror tonearm mounted on the Sovereign-S turntable, which has been making some highly regarded rounds of the British press recently. With its ultra-low friction bearing (ask for a demo if you want to see a platter spinning for three minutes with no drive), its high-mass sandwich plinth, decoupled belt drive, and its multi-layer platter, this is a great representation of the company’s design ethos. The Sovereign-S and Conqueror will play alongside a static display of three other OL decks.
Other debuts include the first sighting in Europe of the Renown, Origin Lives’ ultimate expression of the tonearm. The company has pushed its tonearm design philosophy to the extreme in the tonearm’s noticeably extended, hollowed yoke and bearing assembly, and in the material composition and coatings of the arm tube. Familiar elements are present, such as the dual pivot bearing, inner/outer pillar VTA flywheel, and falling weight side bias as well as a newer addition also available on the Agile Tonearm; the asymmetric Multi-Layer Counterweight. Engaging with concepts used on their Turntables Multi-Layer Platters and the new Strata Multi-Layer Platter Mat the counterweight employs, you guessed it, multiple layers along its flat planes to reduce resonances through vibrational interference.
When you spend enough time looking at super high-end tonearms, you’d be forgiven for thinking that aesthetics must be crucified to achieve the highest performance. Not so with the Renown, possibly the most elegant tonearm in the category, while making no compromises in its form-follows-function design. The resulting product is one of the finest performers in the world and a masterclass in the company’s house sound of naturally tuned, highly dynamic, separated, and detailed, three-dimensional musical reproduction.
The Ultra-high-end tonearm is available for £26,000 worldwide.
It’s with great pleasure that the company invites visitors to the Munich High End to stop in and view the efforts of the family-run British company, where members of the family will be happy to field questions, discuss the products, and give demonstrations.
Our second and final round-up of the best in show at AXPONA 2024. Cited at the Schaumberg Convention Center in the north-western suburbs of Chicago, AXPONA has not only grown from a regional audio show but has also become the biggest audio show in the US, rivalling the audio industry’s CES and the Munich High-End show. Every audio enthusiast and industry professional should be aware of this growth and significance in the audio industry.
We’re often swift to criticise the music in shows because we move from room to room. You become quick to pick up musical trends. And in fairness to AXPONA 2024, while there was still a predisposition toward late 1950s jazz, there was a broader music spread in many rooms. We also noticed the trend toward high-end integrated amplifiers instead of pre/power designs finally reaching US audiences. This ‘big integrated’ concept has been trending in Europe and Asia for some time, but the US audio buyers – often with fewer space issues – have stayed with pre/power amp systems. We’re beginning to see that trend also reach the US.
Both musical and amplifier trends reflect the demands of new audio buyers. A new generation of buyers are not as interested in the music of their parents or grandparents… and that’s a good thing. Similarly, those carving out their lives in big cities rarely have the space for a ‘man cave’. Systems that deliver the goods without compromise but take up less space are now proving as popular to those living in downtown Chicago as to those living in a chic la septième apartment in Paris.
Another important consideration at this show is the significance of good partnerships. In particular, companies like Cardas Audio and VPI dominated the show thanks to their products being used in various rooms where people needed a turntable or good cables. This was a record for Cardas Audio, as its cable products were in more than 20 rooms. By being a ‘friend of the industry’ in that way, the products get as much exposure as having your room. It’s a trick learned by Lateral from the UK, as its stands were used in several rooms equally well.
Off-piste events – which have become increasingly important at Munich High-End and even the Bristol Audio Show – are relatively thin on the ground because of the relative paucity of rival spaces near the Convention Center. However, the show coincided with the launch of Musical Artisans store in nearby Skokie, IL, and the store had an evening party that was more than just an excuse for a slice of really good pizza. Honest!
There is no pecking order here. This is a ‘part two’ simply to break up the show’s highlights for the readers. We have a deliberate and conscious ‘reset’ as we enter each new room. That way, a $2,000 pair of loudspeakers gets the same gravitas as a pair of $200,000 loudspeakers.
Air Tight
Air Tight’s first power amplifier was the ATM-1. The ATM-1S followed this and was made up to 2023. The latest iteration of the popular EL-34-based push-pull amplifier is the $13,975 ATM-1e, which features a new output transformer and choke, and a new circuit design featuring an extremely accurate bias meter. It sounded really good in Axiss Audio‘s system comprising Reed vinyl and Soulution front-end and the new, $13,475 Franco Serblin Accordo Goldberg loudspeakers.
ATC
To celebrate the company’s 50th year in production, British loudspeaker experts ATC launched a strictly limited edition of its popular SCM20ASL active standmount, in a striking blue lacquer with matching royal blue Napa leather front baffle. Just 150 pairs of this $13,999 SCM20ALS Limited Edition loudspeaker will be made. Even rarer, the company also launched its C4 Sub Mk2 Limited Edition. Designed to match the two-way, just 20 active subwoofers will be made.
Aurender
The $22,000 Aurender AP20 combines streamer, DAC, and Class D dual-mono amplifier as a complete one-box high-end solution. The ‘just add speakers’ approach certainly worked, as it sang sweetly in the company of a pair of Wilson Audio SabrinaX loudspeakers. As an elegant and sophisticated modern music system, this had to be one of the best.
Ayre Acoustics
We usually hold to a ‘what’s new’ policy in show reports, but the ‘what’s good’ sometimes bubbles up. Ayre Acoustics’ CX-8 CD player ($5,450), QX-5 Twenty DAC ($15,000), KX-R Twenty preamp ($40,000) and MX-R Twenty monoblocks ($48,000/pair) were both a fine sonic and visual match to YG Acoustics’ Carmel 3 floorstanding loudspeakers (£29,800/pair) and Argento Audio cables.
John DeVore has been splicing his orangutans! DeVore Fidelity‘s new O/bronze ($30,000 per pair) bridges the gap between the O/96 and O/Reference. It uses the O/Reference tweeter and a combination of O/Reference chassis and O/96 motor system in the mid-bass driver. It also uses O/Reference crossover parts. The O/bronze is the same design as the strictly limited Twenty design. DeVore also showed the first of the short-run Komuro designs, the 300B-based, seven-watt K300S ($20,000) with a EMT turntable source, Mola Mola preamp Box equipment support and AudioQuest cabling.
ESD/AURALiC
Winner of the “It’s not home, but it’s much!” award, the giant system from ESD Acoustic from China was huge. It featured a five-way horn system, active crossovers, mono power amps, power supplies for the crossover, dual mono preamplifier and more. Normally, this system would cost around $1.7m, but thanks to the extensive use of lacquer, it came in at a whopping £4m! Dwarfed by the system, in the middle you can just see an AURALiC ARIES G2.2 Streaming Transport feeding a VEGA 2.2 DAC and a LEO GX.1 clock.
Garrard
Rhythm Distribution showed the Garrard 301 Advanced turntable, complete with SME Series V tonearm ($54,000) coupled to an Ortofon MC Diamond cartridge ($9,999). This was used with a Goldmund Mimesis PH3.8 NEXTGEN phono preamp ($48,000) and a Lumin X1 network player ($13,990) into a Goldmund Telos 690 integrated amplifier ($36,000) into a pair of Tannoy Stirling III LZ special edition loudspeakers ($12,500/pr) and matching supertweeters ($2,195).
Goldmund
In an adjacent room, Rhythm was also showing the Asteria Wireless Active loudspeakers ($95,000 per pair). Running from a Lumin U1 network streamer ($5,799) and a Goldmund Mimesis 11 Wireless Hub ($16,000). This system shows the notion of making a good wireless audio system is not a myth, contrary to the suggestions of others.
Infigo Audio
This was a new one to me, and I found their system entirely captivating. So captivating, in fact, that I completely forgot to take note of prices! However, the Infigo Audio Method 4 DAC, Method 7 preamp, and Method 3 Class A mono amps sounded sensational when played through the powerful room shaking $50,000/pair new Aphrodite loudspeakers from Alta Audio. These electronics could make me a Methodist!
JMF Audio, Ideon Audio, Stenheim
There’s a bit of a theme here. Stenheim loudspeakers were seen in more rooms than ever at AXPONA. JMF Audio and Ideon Audio were also in several rooms. And they were all making good sounds. So when the three companies met in the Fidelis Distribution and Audio Skies room, magic was sure to happen. Sure enough, the Ideon Absolute Epsilon Meta DAC ($49,900), Meta Stream streamer ($24,000) and Time clock ($11,000), coupled with JMF’s $39,000 PRS 1.5 preamp, the dual mono stereo HQS 6002 power a,p ($45,000) and PCD 102 power filter ($22,000) made a pair of $48,000 Stenheim Alumine 33E floorstanders sing… almost $27,000 of JMF Audio cables and a $35,000 ictra design Proto AS three shelf rack helped too.
Joseph Audio
It’s a shame we at hi-fi+ only get to hear Joseph Audio’s loudspeakers at shows, because they always show a lot of promise. Here, the $52,000 Pearl Graphene Ultra three-way floorstander was driven by a J.Sikora turntable and Doshi Audio amplifiers in a large room. The room was constantly crowded – always a good sign – and the overall performance was powerful, deep and always musically satisfying.
Kanto Audio
Kanto Audio showed off its entire line of small active loudspeakers, including the forthcoming active REN design. First seen at the Bristol Hi-Fi Show, this was the first US outing for the prototype REN, which will be eARC compatible, should cost $599 and be available from July. Kanto’s marketing guru Brett Smalley was on hand showing off the colour scheme for the upcoming pocket rocket!
Lateral and Lumin
All the L’s, all at once here. Lumin was showcasing a range of components, including P1 and T3 Network Music Players, U2 Network Music Transport with X1 linear regulator, L2 Network Switch and 160W AMP. These all sat on the excellent new Counterpoint flagship stand from Lateral. Away from the line-up of L’s, these drove Magico A5s extremely well, and power was fed from a Puritan transformer.
Linn
Linn showed up in two rooms; its own room showcasing a complete top-end Linn system (including the rare Jony Ive-tweaked 50th anniversary LP12) and passive with active bass version of its $66,000 360 loudspeakers driven by the Klimax DSM streamer/pre ($42,000) and Klimax Solo 800 mono powers ($90,000 per pair). Elsewhere, the Klimax DSM/Solo 800 combination were driving a pair of YG Acoustics Sonja 3.2 ($99,000 per pair) loudspeakers and lots of Cardas Clear Beyond cable to great effect. Of the two, I think I preferred the Linn/YG room on balance, but both were good.
Marten
Marten was flipping between the Parker Duo DE stand-mount loudspeakers ($13,995/pair, stands £3,895/pair) and the Parker Trio Diamond floorstanders ($39,995) at the show. I heard the Trio Diamond. Both speakers were played through an Aurender N20 server ($12,500) into an Esoteric K1X SE acting as a DAC ($37,500), into a Constellation Audio Pictor preamp ($32,500) and Taurus Mono amps ($29,000/pair). Given Marten and Jorma work very closely together, the room bristled with Reference and Statement cables from the Swedish brand. This was one of the highlights of the show for me, a combination of grace and energy, with a bass that was neither exaggerated nor understated and a tonal balance that was just about perfect!
Musical Artisans
A 45-minute drive from the Convention Center, Musical Artisans new store in Skokie didn’t even have a name on the door. It’s that new. Inside, however, the store is brightly lit and has some of the best brands – and best listening rooms – money can buy. Sometimes a lot of money: a full-on CH Precision or Nagra system does not come cheap. The store showcased a carefully curated line of brands from Ayre on up… including the excellent Engström Arne.
Quintessence Audio
While we normally concentrate on individual brands, Chicago-based dealer Quintessence Audio pulled out all the stops in several of its rooms. New products of note include the new 891 combination preamp and streaming DAC ($25,000) and matching 861 stereo power amp (also $25,000) from MOON by Simaudio. This was fed by the new Clearaudio Signature turntable ($5,000) with Tracer tonearm and Hana Umami Blue cartridge ($2,500). This sat on a Critical Mass Systems Ultra Q equipment rack ($19,460) and was connected to a pair of Wilson Audio Sasha V loudspeakers ($52,000 per pair) by $32,850’s worth of Kubala Sosna Sensation cables.
There was a very strong British contingent at AXPONA. While some products were hardly new, they were shown for the first time in the US this year. One thing that seemed a common feature was the UK products tended to be a little different and at the more affordable end of the spectrum. Ruark’s $4,499 R810 High Fidelity Radiogram is a perfect example. With HDMI ARC/eARC, AirPlay, Chromecast, Spotify and TIDAL Connect built-in, support for hi-res files and more, this is more than just another soundbar, and really does hark back to the radiograms of the 1950s and 1960s, just more up to date. Proof that audio can look traditional and act radical.
SOTA
The prototype of the SOTA Orion Emerald turntable (from $22,500) is a direct-drive design that is the first deck from the brand to accommodate multiple arms. The Swiss-cheese like appearance of the aluminium plinth is there to act as scattering to prevent any resonance. It also featured the Alphason HR-200S tonearm that has quietly been doing the rounds at UK audio shows. It was late in the show when I heard this turntable – played through Doshi Audio amplification, KEF Reference 3 speakers and REL S/510s with lots of Cardas Clear Beyond cable, and it had a lot of potential for a late prototype.
Stratton Acoustics
Fresh from showing the new Element 12, also shown here, Stratton Acoustics were showing the Chicago crowd just what $165,000 worth of Elypsis 1512 was capable of in the Rutherford Audio room. This was driven by an Antipodes Olandra streamer, Accustic Arts electronics and an Acoustic Signature turntable. And “what it was capable of” was playing Leftfield’s ‘Afro-Left’ at club levels without a hint of strain.
Synergistic Research
It’s a bold move. A company best known for some ‘out there’ devices calls its new $14,995 streamer ‘Voodoo’! First shown at Capital Audio Fest, this Roon-based streamer/server bristles with Synergistic Research’s developments and techniques from a range of the company’s products. It was feeding an Ideon Audio Absolute Epsilon DAC ($49,900) and Time Signature V clock ($22,000) through a JMF Audio PRS 1.5 preamp ($36,000) a pair of JMF’s HQS 7001 monoblocks ($77,000 per pair), into a pair of Estelon X Diamond Mk II floorstanders ($90,500 per pair) in a lovely Cobalt Blue liquid gloss finish. This system was in too small a room with walls made of Kleenex, but still managed to sound extremely good!
Totem Acoustics
The Totem Loon ($1,299) is named after the aquatic bird (known as a ‘Diver’ in British English). It’s a small, two-way bookshelf design (as opposed to a stand-mount, it really is small enough to fit in a bookcase) and proved extremely impressive in a deliberately less-than-ideal setting to show just how plug-and-play these loudspeakers really are. Designed to work off-axis and on with surprising bass given the small size, these loudspeakers got off to a flying start!
VTL, dCS, VPI, Lyra, Stenheim, Nordost
Another of the top-sounding rooms of the show, this large room dominated the ‘what’s good’ lists. It comprised VTL‘s TP-6.5 Series II Signature Phono Preamp ($15,000), TL-7.5 Series III Reference line preamplifier ($35,000) and two pairs of MB-185 Series III Signature Monoblocks ($27,000 per pair). This was connected to a dCS Rossini Apex DAC ($32,800) and Rossini Master Clock ($10,850) on the digital side, a VPI Titan Direct turntable ($60,000) and Lyra Etna cartridge ($8,995). The loudspeakers were the $186,500 per pair Stenheim Reference Ultime Two SX. All of which was connected with Nordost Odin 2 cables (except for the Valhalla 2 Ethernet cable), a plethora of Q products (from the $284.99 QKOIL (QK1) AC enhancer to the $17,999 QBASE Reference) and Sort Kones, Sort Füt and Sort Lifts. Despite being separated from some very loud rooms by basic conference room dividers, this sounded beguiling and room-filling.
Zellaton
Zellaton doesn’t launch new loudspeakers that often, so the introduction of the $44,700 per pair Emotion Evo two-way floorstanders was something to experience. A complete set of Grimm Audio electronics drove them. Despite being a comparatively small two-way, the Emotion Evo pumped out a realistic and powerful bass, some good stereo separation, and very likely overawed the small hotel room in which it was housed. This has a lot of potential, and made me realise that in the very dark room, I should really bring a flash unit next time!
There were many others unable to access, including the Focal room pictured at the head of this feature. When there is a steady stream of bodies between you and the product, something good is going on, and that was a constant feature of AXPONA 2024.
April 2024 – Swiss high-end audio manufacturer CH Precision has acquired the Wattson Audio brand, its line of high-performance, high-value streaming solutions and the team of designers and engineers behind it.
Wattson Audio product line to be maintained and expanded.
Wattson Audio electrical, design and software engineers to join the CH team.
Merging of engineering teams follows long-established collaboration between CH Precision and the Wattson design team.
Wattson Audio to re-brand and introduce new product at Munich High End Show
May 9th-12th
The Wattson Audio team will be on hand and their products can be seen and heard in room Atrium 4.2, F204.
Florian Cossy of CH Precision and Alexandre Lavanchy of Wattson Audio first worked together in 2004, when Alex joined high-end audio design consultancy ABC PCB, founded the previous year by Florian. When Florian left to start CH Precision in 2009, Alex took over the consultancy role, changing the name to Engineered SA in 2015. Over the years, ABC PCB and Engineered SA have provided design consultancy and input to both major global players and high-profile, high-end specialist brands in the audio market.
In 2019, the team at Engineered SA started the Wattson Audio brand to leverage their accumulated expertise and experience in producing forward looking, high-performance yet affordable streaming solutions. The minimalist Emerson line quickly established an enviable reputation and loyal following. It was soon joined by the more versatile, more ambitious but still affordable Madison line.
Commenting on the acquisition, Florian Cossy said, “By incorporating Wattson Audio’s engineering team and products under the CH umbrella, we create an even greater concentration of audio design and engineering talent. It also opens a tremendous range of new market opportunities in which to apply our combined experience and technologies.”
Alex Lavanchy commented that, “It’s great to be working even more closely with Florian and his team once again. Modern products are incredibly hardware and software intensive: combining the resources of CH Precision and Wattson Audio gives both companies unparalleled access to design bandwidth and capability.”
Munich High End will mark the start of a new chapter for Wattson Audio. Meet the company, the products (and a few surprises) at the MOC in Atrium 4.2, Room F204.
Visiting Audiovector’s headquarters on the outskirts of Copenhagen is, in many ways, a refreshing and simultaneously heartwarming experience. There is an open-plan office, two demo rooms referred to as the ‘big’ and the ‘small’ rooms, a kitchen that includes a chilled wine cabinet (more of that later on), and friendly faces all around. There is also no ‘death by PowerPoint’ depicting market strategies and outside capital investment ‘needed’ to enter the next growth stage.
“I’m not planning to change anything,” says CEO and owner Mads Klifoth, who took over the reins from father and company founder Ole Klifoth at the start of the year. “We’re not going to expand, we are not going to be taken over by a larger brand conglomerate, we are not going to launch a line of Bluetooth speakers or whatever, we are not going to outsource production to China. Neither of us is in the business of introducing new speaker lines every fortnight. We are simply happy with our size – our capacity lies in the region of 5,000 speaker pairs annually – with the staff on board and the relations with our suppliers and collaborators, pretty much all of which are in the direct vicinity of our works. It gives us the means and the freedom to do our best. So why want to change any of that?”
Planned obsolescence? Nej tak!
Looking at the quantity and quality of ancillary equipment found in any of the rooms, it’s clear that the self-effacing way in which the Klifoths go about their business is the diametric opposite of the Anglo-American model of expansion, exploitation, and planned obsolescence has gained them many friends in the industry. Every piece of equipment – from brands such as Naim, MOON, Brinkmann and Gryphon – is in place because of mutual respect and understanding between their makes and Audiovector. Customer loyalty is also something that is being cherished and rewarded – if you bought an Audiovector speaker ten or twenty years ago, you can still upgrade it to the latest specification, or you can upgrade your R-series speakers from the ‘basic’ Signature version to the upper-level Arreté – without selling them, this is not just good news from a financial perspective, but it is also more sustainable.
However, after many years of producing living-room-friendly slimline speakers, there has been something new and somewhat different brewing at Audiovector, something that harks back to the very beginning of the company in 1979, when Ole Klifoth launched his first commercial loudspeaker – the Trapeze. Back then, a three-way, linear phase speaker with all driver units time aligned acoustically and in positive polarity was something revolutionary and laid the groundwork for all subsequent Audiovector speakers, with their focus on linear dynamics and linear phase through true first-order crossovers for all drivers.
Iconic
However, the Trapeze’s iconic, wide-baffle, ‘lopsided’ shape didn’t translate to the later speaker lines. “After the Trapeze, we concentrated on slim, unobtrusive columns because that’s what people wanted,” says Ole Klifoth, still in charge of Audiovector speaker development at 75. “About three years ago, however, Mads came to me and said he wanted me to develop another speaker with a wide baffle and large bass driver, as he had observed a trend towards loudspeakers with a broad and relatively shallow form factor – speakers that are easy to place in a domestic environment but are not apologetic about being, well, a loudspeaker, aesthetically. So, we decided that maybe it was time to revive the Trapeze concept.
“Of course, it was clear to us that while using our very first loudspeaker design as a guide, literally everything apart from the general shape and it is a three-way, linear phase design with the acoustic centres of all three main drivers aligned on that front baffle that not only slopes from top to bottom but also from side to side, needed to be developed new from the ground up. Still, it took us way longer from start to finish than we’d expected beforehand. Once you get into that phase where you start to re-evaluate certain aspects beyond what you previously thought possible, they bring a chain of consequences, and things tend to snowball… All three drivers are brand new.”
Your starter for 12
“At the start of the project, we said we would like to use a 12-inch woofer,” Ole continued, “but ideally, it had to crossover with a very fast 5-inch midrange at about 500 Hz. With the usual half-roll rubber surround, we found that near that crossover point, the woofer might be unable to keep up with the midrange unit. This resulted in devising a new corrugated ‘concertina’ surround for the long-fibre paper cone to make sure the speed and level of detail of the large bass driver matches and seamlessly integrates with the 5-inch mid-unit – that one also got a speed-optimised concertina to surround to maximise detail. As with most of our current larger speakers, there’s an additional 8-inch driver inside that works with the 12-inch driver to couple the masses of both together in an isobaric arrangement. This achieves a low-frequency response that manages to combine speed and weight.”
High frequencies are courtesy of a purpose-designed version of Audiovector’s highly acclaimed Air Motion Transformer (AMT), the rear of which breathes through an opening in the cabinet’s back panel. To help the loudspeakers ‘disappear’ sonically, although their physical width, mid- and high-frequency drivers are surrounded by a layer of diffraction-absorbing felt.
Not so complex
Although the crossover filter of the reimagined Trapeze looks reasonably (but not overly) complex at first sight, there is very little of it in the signal path: just one element per driver. Audiovector’s ‘Freedom Grounding’ concept also seeks to eliminate the movement-induced distortion of and between the drive units by separating the currents running between the chassis and routing them to the ground terminal of your wall socket or power distribution block.
There is also a damping feature that provides a choice of three positions for matching the damping factors of different amplifier topologies – one that’s meant for ‘normal’ transistor amplifiers with a reasonably regular damping factor, one for high power/high damping factor transistor’ beasts’ like the vast Gryphon power amp used in the larger of Audiovector’s demo rooms, and one for use with tube amps with a low damping factor. This is a general guide: Trapeze Reimagined users are encouraged to try any of the three settings regardless and decide what works best for them.
Bespoke
Audiovector uses bespoke but industrially manufactured and selected crossover components to ensure the highest possible consistency. Although the double cryogenically treated polypropylene capacitors with a tin-flashed copper coil have stated variants of +/- 2%, a quick measurement of two random examples by Ole did support his claim that the typical actual variance is less than +/- 0.3 per cent…
The system’s impedance is stated as 8 Ohms with a minimum of 6.5 Ohm at 20 kHz; sensitivity is rated at 88 dB/2.83 V RMS; in practice, though, Ole Klifoth surmises, it might be closer to 89 dB. “We aim to keep our speakers as free from dynamic compression as possible, so with every new speaker, I aim to eke out another half dB… It’s a difficult balancing act, though, as the wish for the best possible low-frequency extension for a given enclosure size conflicts with that goal. I can see myself doing a lot of research into developing motor systems for drivers that are much stronger still shortly.”
Cool form
One cool thing about the reimagined Trapeze’s form factor is that they can be aligned in parallel (and relatively close) to a rear wall, and the front baffles will be aimed at the listener; the recommended amount of toe-in has been ‘built-in’ and works for most combinations of distance between speakers and between the speakers’ baseline and the listening position. Not that one would recommend just plonking them in front of a wall and being done with it, but positioning the Trapeze Reimagined for optimum results is a bit easier.
The Trapeze Reimagined cabinet is double decoupled from the floor by an elaborate two-layer aluminium plinth using carbon steel balls between both layers. The assembly is coupled to the floor via spikes on floor protection discs. Four standard finishes—Nordic Oak, Italian Walnut, Black Ash, and White Silk—are available, and you can have your Trapeze Reimagineds finished in any paint colour you like.
Future Retro
So how does the radically different form factor of this almost ‘future-retro’ model that sets it apart from the ‘regular’ Audiovector lines translate to the sound experience? First impressions are that while all the hallmarks of Audiovector DNA – an uncommon blend of clarity, detail and dynamics with warmth, depth and a sense of effortlessness – are present and correct, these are just that bit more willing to let their hair hang down, with bass that’s both ‘bigger’ and more propulsive and perhaps an enhanced sense of immediacy across the frequency range.
During the listening sessions we had – in the big demo room with the aforementioned giant Gryphon powerhouse and its matching pre, in the ‘small’ one with a Moon pre/power combo and using a Naim streaming front end in both – where the tablet controlling Tidal’s music library went from one pair of hands into another, without any interference from the Audiovector staff apart from a short presentation with a handful of music examples in either demo room at the beginning, you could sense the music choices becoming more exuberant – from Nightwish playing Phantom of the Opera via various bits of ’80s pop and techno to AC/DC’s Hells Bells as a finale when we should have been long sat in the coach to our hotel, the volume getting cranked up higher and the smiles getting bigger.
Isn’t that what music is supposed to be all about? At a projected price level of €17,000 per pair, as production is ramping up for a public launch coinciding with the Munich High-End show, this is definitely one to watch!
April 2024 – HiFi Lounge will host an open day to demonstrate German Physiks Omnidirectional loudspeakers on Saturday April 27th at their showroom in Dunton Bedfordshire. Two German Physiks systems will be running. One with their HRS-130 model and the other with their Borderland Mk IV.
For those unfamiliar with Omnidirectional speakers, basically they present the music in 360 degrees around the loudspeaker. Not only are they very musical, but be being an Omnidirectional design, they give a huge soundstage recreating that music hall live sound. They really are quite special and well worth a listen.
We have plenty of parking and refreshments will be provided.
Depeche Mode frontman, Dave Gahan, once said of his bandmate, chief songwriter, Martin Gore, that he only ever pens lyrics about three subjects: death, pain and suffering.
Death hangs over this record – their fifteenth studio album – more so than ever, because it’s the first one the group, now a duo, have made without fellow member, Andy ‘Fletch’ Fletcher, who died in 2022. The title, Memento Mori, is a Latin phrase meaning ‘Remember you must die,’ but, ironically, the album was named and written before Fletcher’s passing.
Depeche Mode reunited with producer, James Ford, who was at the controls for 2017’s Spirit, which was the band’s most political record, but suffered from a lack of great and memorable songs.
The 12-track Memento Mori brings with it a sadness due to the circumstances in which it was made, but the good news is that it’s mostly a return to form – in fact, it’s the best album Depeche Mode have made since 1997’s brilliant and underrated Ultra, which was created in the wake of Gahan’s near-fatal drug overdose.
It isn’t a perfect record – the first half is stronger than the second and some of the songs, like the chugging ‘Always You’ and the dizzying ‘Never Let Me Go’, need repeated listening to sink in. Memento Mori would be a stronger album without them.
Opener, ‘My Cosmos Is Mine’, is a brilliant scene setter – creating a foreboding and unsettling atmosphere with its pulsing electronics and spacey synths. Choral-like backing vocals lend it a gothic sci-fi soundtrack feel, and co-producer and engineer, Marta Salogni, has processed Gahan’s and Gore’s vocals through lots of tape, creating otherworldly and psychedelic backwards effects.
‘Wagging Tongue’ – “Watch another angel die” – is a Gore and Gahan co-write. Based on a hypnotic, Kraftwerkesque keyboard part, it sounds a bit like Nick Cave doing Yazoo.
First single, the sublime pop of ‘Ghosts Again’, one of four songs Gore has written with Richard Butler of The Psychedelic Furs, manages to be both melancholy and uplifting at the same time.
Built on a trademark Gore guitar hook, it evokes the band’s classic 1990 hit ‘Enjoy The Silence’, as well as the Pet Shop Boys circa Behaviour and New Order’s ‘Bizarre Love Triangle.’
‘Don’t Say You Love Me’, another Gore and Butler composition, is wonderful – a dramatic and doomy Scott Walker-style torch song (“You’ll be the killer, I’ll be the corpse”) with James Bond strings and a great vocal performance by Gahan.
The shadowy and throbbing ‘My Favourite Stranger’ occupies more familiar Depeche Mode territory – it’s a jarring electro-industrial track, with squelchy synths and some, occasionally, irritating and upsetting squally sounds, but ‘Soul With Me’ offers some solace – a gorgeous and histrionic, Gore-sung ballad with an angelic arrangement and a touch of smooth ‘80s pop.
The oddly-titled ‘Caroline’s Monkey’, which references drug addiction – “Caroline’s monkey claws at her back, colder than winter, darker than black” – has a weird, mutated disco groove that is strangely reminiscent of Michael Jackson’s ‘Billie Jean’.
The final song, ‘Speak To Me’, is an epic interstellar ballad that also touches on narcotics in its lyrics. It sounds like Gahan is addressing the dark times in his past when he sings: “I heard you call my name, lying on the bathroom floor – no one here to blame.”
This is a great-sounding and intriguing album, with some inventive production techniques (some of which are very old indeed) that manages to immerse the listener in warm sonics, but also adds a disturbing edge to some of the songs.
Memento Mori isn’t up there with the band’s crowning glory, 1990’s Violator, and it may be overshadowed by the death of Fletcher, but it’s great to have a Depeche Mode record which sounds like it’s got some new life in it.
With the 450W POWERb STEREO, Karan Acoustics completes its eight-strong Master Collection range. Or is it ‘ranges?’ The Master Collection comprises two lines – ‘a’ and ‘b’ – each featuring a line preamplifier, phono stage, mono and now stereo power amplifiers. The entire Master Collection represents the distillation of decades of audio amplifier design by Milan Karan, replacing the entire previous products in the process. The ‘a’ range was first, an uncompromising amplifier engine. The ‘b’ line is equally sonically steadfast, built to a more ‘manageable’ domestic level.
Why do you need so powerful an amp today? The history of high-end audio is overcrowded with theories in almost every imaginable area of the subject. Some hold water, some a pure consequence of one’s aspirational creativity, where the mind wanders more than it should. Remember the infamous water treated in a manner that changes the sound in our rooms?
Less is much more
One school of thought emanating from the Far East (and Japan in particular) claims that “less is much more” when power ratings of amplifiers are discussed and considered. And, this approach does have some merit, as it is possible that fewer watts can deliver more subtlety, minute detail, superior resolution, transparency, and overall musical pleasure. Of course, partnering those flea-powered amplifiers with hulking great horn loudspeakers with 100dB+ efficiency ratings helps!
But what do you do when you prefer having ample amplifier power in almost any loudspeaker load without losing all or most of the good properties of the low-power designs? Well, you need to look further afield and put your trust and confidence into a small number of very creative and present designers of ‘proper’, high power stereo and mono power amplifiers and their respective brands.
Milan Karan of Karan Acoustics is most certainly one of those at the forefront of contemporary audio electronics (well, audio amplifier) achievements, whether valve or solid-state. We have been reporting extensively on Karan’s Master Collection designs as a pinnacle of his many decades of work and presence within the global high-end audio world. With the Master Collection POWERb STEREO, we have come almost to the end of the present road and are doing the “less is more” thing as well (at 450w into 8 and 800w into 4 Ohms) his smallest amplifier in the range.
Small? Smallest? OK, the POWERb chassis is 24kg lighter and 82mm shorter than the POWERa models. It is also true that 450/800 watts of power is less than 800/1100 watts offered by the larger POWERa STEREO model. Still, the definition of comparative statements is somewhat blurred within this perspective.
Entry level powerhouse
Be that as it may, Master Collection POWERb STEREO amplifier remains the ‘entry level’ powerhouse of the range and, as such, could be seen as the natural partner (together with the POWERb MONO monoblocks if so desired) to the LINEb line/PHONOb preamplifiers. Thankfully, reducing chassis size, weight, power, and price relative to its bigger brethren, will deprive the prospective owner of absolutely none of the design and execution principles we have witnessed in the bigger (biggest) stereo and mono models. True differential (balanced) circuit topology down to the bone uses the very same highest quality passive (Vishay resistors, Karan Acoustics proprietary capacitors), active (proprietary Sanken bi-polar output devices) components, WBT Nextgen RCA inputs and speaker binding posts and Cardas Audio wiring throughout the input and output signal path). Last, but certainly not least, an extremely effective mains supply DC treatment and line conditioning is built into the POWERb STEREO for good measure. Then, there are the excellent Critical Mass Systems CenterStage feet. These have a well-known bedding-in period where they sound good, bad, good again, dreadful, and then stunning.
After a few days of foot-performance oscillations (I think that was the name of an album by The Fall), for this review, the POWERb STEREO has been evaluated within a system that already punches up. The partnering and comparison amps were the POWERa MONO amplifiers receiving the signal from the flagship LINEa and PHONOa preamplifiers. So, if anything, the POWERb STEREO has been surrounded by ancillaries of its own kind that would easily expose all the eventual shortcomings and illuminate differences relative to the best…Is less truly more? Is it better or worse? Is it at least ‘different’? Or none of that…? Read on…
It’s a Family Affair
There is a strong family resemblance in all the Karan Acoustics Master Reference products. That they get physically bigger or smaller and more or less powerful doesn’t change the end result too much. In a sane world, Karan Acoustics might be rightfully troubled that products like the POWERb STEREO could cannibalise sales of the POWERb and POWERa mono models. High-end audio doesn’t work like that. No matter how good a stereo chassis might be, ‘go big or go home’ is a truism.
In most systems, the POWERb STEREO is all you need. More nets you greater stereo separation (obviously, but we are talking scintilla of improvement, especially given the twin power cords gives a hint as to just how dual-mono the STEREO is in reality). Moving further up the Karan Acoustics Master Reference ladder also brings greater dynamic headroom and grip. But, and I can’t overstate this enough, we’re very much in ‘nuance’ territory here.
Granted, if you have opened that window wide, that nuance becomes more noticeable. If you look at the POWERb with the two-box LINEa preamplifier or PHONOa phono stage from Karan, you are more likely to hear what passes for ‘shortcomings’ in the POWERb STEREO. Place this with the LINEb and PHONOb and the match is nigh on perfect. And that word ‘shortcomings’ is questionable at best. This is taking a half-step back from the POWERb MONO, which is itself taking a half-step back from the POWERa models. This isn’t a ‘compromise’ either. In terms of transparency, tonal balance, resolution, stereo staging, vocal articulation, dynamic range, shade, separation, solidity, and an ability to disappear and let the music do its thing, the POWERb STEREO approaches peak performance. It’s just that when you get to the peak, the flag was already planted by the POWERa models.
While we strive to recommend products with as neutral as possible performance, even the very best have some tonal characteristics. The Karan is no different. The sound is refined and free from that harsh, electronicky, hashy upper-mid and treble ‘glitz’ that often plagues otherwise good performers. This was always a Karan feature, but previous models could slip into an almost relaxed presentation. The Master Collection shifted that into a neutral balance. It will never be a forward-sounding presentation, but unless you use the POWERb STEREO with soporific loudspeakers and some extremely laid-back dinner jazz, it will be one of even-handed honesty.
The Good Victorian
This is a Victorian Child of an amplifier, in a good way; seen but not heard. Like its bigger brothers, the Karan Acoustics Master Collection POWERb STEREO has so little imprint on the music that it portrays it as honestly as possible. And like its bigger brothers, the Karan performance is primarily defined by the limitations of other designs. It doesn’t emphasise any aspect of performance, and those who focus on a particular characteristic as their musical trigger might be overwhelmed. For example, those who think good audio begins and ends with a forward and immediate presentation of rhythm will find an amplifier with excellent detail and dynamic range. Those who only view good audio through a filter of stereo separation will find the detail and rhythmic properties vying for position in their heads.
Ultimately, the sense of overall musical balance wins out in those who aren’t pathologically welded to an amplifier brand. Yes, there will still be those who want a more forward presentation, but many good amps already do that. The Karan Acoustics Master Collection POWERb STEREO scores highly because that other side isn’t so well catered for. If you listen to one of the Anointed Ones and say “it’s good… but a little forward” there are few amplifier systems that can still deliver all the other sonic benefits of top-table power amplifiers and still make that even-handed sound. The POWERb STEREO, like its bigger brothers, is a welcome force for musical good.
Technical specifications
Type: Stereo solid-state power amplifier
Power output: 2× 450W into 8Ω, 2× 800W into 4Ω, 2× 1,350W into 2Ω
Peak power output: 600W at 8Ω
Inputs: 2 balanced (XLR) and 2 unbalanced (RCA)
Input impedance: 30kΩ (balanced/unbalanced)
Input sensitivity: 2.0V/RMS (for max output)
Frequency Response: 20Hz–20kHz ±0dB, DC-300kHz, -3dB
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