Audiophilepure

https://www.stereophile.com/content/marten-mingus-septet-statement-edition-loudspeaker

ome weeks after I set up the Martens, I paid a visit to Rockport Technologies’ new industrial facility in Westbrook, Maine. Rockport has been moving in slowly, and they recently set up a listening space. It was largish, rectangular, with walls of—I think—PVC cladding, which is somewhat sound-absorbing. Speaker positions were still being fine-tuned, but the speakers were well out into the room, perhaps 10′. After a quick tour of the factory-to-be, we sat down to listen.I noticed the soundstage right way. It extended a few feet beyond the sidewalls and very far back—it was deep—but it ended precisely at the front wall. I already knew that moving speakers out from the wall would expand image depth, but the precise correlation with the position of the front wall was new.Inspired, back in New York, I moved the Martens a couple of feet farther out from the front wall. I moved the listening seat back by about the same amount. After some fine-tuning, the speakers ended up just under 11′ apart and 10.5′ from my ears, precisely level, and toed in toward my ears. I’d never listened with speakers so far out into the room before, with any speakers—mainly because it was now impossible to sit at one of the places at the dining table.The sound, though, was transformed. Yes, the transformation was mainly in soundstage depth, but this had corollary payoffs, which I’ll discuss below in more detail. Well-recorded jazz combos now seemed more or less natural-sized, as if filling a stage at a jazz club from a seat perhaps 10′ from the stage—about the distance from the speaker plane to my listening seat.

The Legacy Signature XD floor-standing speakers deliver quality construction and musicality in a relatively compact footprint (although a heavy one indeed). Having visited the factory, I can attest to their thorough R&D, quality construction, extreme attention to detail, and amazing assortment of veneers and finishes. These are speakers made by people who love music, and it shows in their products. I give a hearty thumbs up to these exquisite speakers and hope you get an opportunity to hear them in a showroom someday. They just may turn up in your living room!

https://www.hifinews.com/content/dali-epikore-7-loudspeaker

The Epikore 7 is a delight to listen to, demonstrating that tried-and-trusted DALI techniques can be brought to a higher level, creating a superb speaker which offers thrills and refinement in equal parts. The richness of its bass suggests that care needs to be taken regarding room interaction, but that aside it is a loudspeaker that enthrals as much with its sonic performance as with its lavish aesthetics

The Legacy Signature XD floor-standing speakers deliver quality construction and musicality in a relatively compact footprint (although a heavy one indeed). Having visited the factory, I can attest to their thorough R&D, quality construction, extreme attention to detail, and amazing assortment of veneers and finishes. These are speakers made by people who love music, and it shows in their products. I give a hearty thumbs up to these exquisite speakers and hope you get an opportunity to hear them in a showroom someday. They just may turn up in your living room!

https://www.stereophile.com/content/magico-s2-loudspeaker

After a good two months with the Magicos, I went back and forth about what I’d heard. My reference Focal Scala Utopia Evos remain superb speakers—generous, full-bodied, with intoxicating ease and power. The Estelon X Diamond Mk IIs I’ve been living with are just as compelling, delivering spectacular resolution and visceral impact. Both speakers do many things brilliantly.But the Magicos have forced a reckoning. Their sealed-enclosure approach revealed what I hadn’t fully appreciated: namely, the precision that comes from eliminating port artifacts; the clarity that emerges when group delay drops to almost nothing; the transient energy that makes music feel especially immediate.If I were forced to choose new reference speakers, and assuming the M6s (that I still quietly pine for!) are out of reach, the S2s would be serious contenders. That’s not because the Magicos do everything better than the Focals or Estelons. It’s because they reveal a different kind of truth. Provided you give the S2s serious amplifier power and place them carefully, they offer uncompromising engineering fully in service of accurate music reproduction, shunning embellishments. I could damn sure live with that.

https://www.soundstageultra.com/index.php/equipment-menu/1303-sphinx-element-3-loudspeaker

he Engström Arne made my job easy. I swapped in the Arne, and instantly I was soaking in a warm bath, rose petals sprinkled over the water, cucumber slices on my eyes. The bass was still tight and expressive, the highs still extended and silky, but the midrange! Holy hell, the Arne added a sensation of texture and inner light that left me feeling all tingly. So as to not get too precious, I’d like to refer you to Tom Waits and his beastly Bad as Me (16/44.1 FLAC, Anti‑Epitaph / Qobuz), specifically the title track, which is distasteful in its grinding sound and its lyrics. Via the Arne driving the Element 3s it wasn’t quite as unpleasant. The backing instruments gained an enticing sense of depth and texture, and the rasp in Waits’s voice, while just as abrasive, gained more emotional depth and roundness, and therefore made me feel sorry for him, rather than angry at his very existence.