Audiophilepure

https://www.soundstagehifi.com/index.php/equipment-reviews/1502-kef-ls50-meta-loudspeakers

After I’d listened to more music through the LS50 Metas and found nothing that contradicted what I’ve said above, I brought in my original LS50s for some comparisons. “I’ve Got to See You Again,” streamed from Norah Jones’s Come Away with Me (24/192 FLAC, Blue Note/Qobuz), let me suss out the differences pretty well. Through the Metas, Jones’s piano, which begins this track, sounded a little farther back on the stage, and her keystrokes were a tiny bit cleaner — not a big difference, but it became obvious after repeated comparisons. Then there was the violin — Jenny Scheinman plays it throughout this track, but it’s most audible just after 2:20, when it was more prominent through the LS50s. But that prominence came with a hint of stridency the Metas didn’t have; overall, this track sounded better through the Metas.

I heard the biggest differences in the reproduction of Jones’s voice, which is front and center on every track of Come Away with Me. It sounded almost the same through the two speaker pairs, but Jones’s sibilants — they’re how her voice was recorded — were more emphasized through the LS50s. This got me thinking that the original LS50 has a bit more lift in certain parts of the treble. Through the Metas, her voice also sounded cleaner, less fuzzy, and its image was placed more solidly in the center of the stage. This tighter vocal image appeared on a soundstage that floated completely free of the Metas’ cabinets — the original LS50s’ cabinets don’t “disappear” quite as completely. I never heard sounds coming directly from the LS50s’ cabinets, but when I listened intently, I could occasionally sense the cabinets’ precise positions. But things like bass and high-frequency extension, as well as scale and output, were exactly the same through both sets of speakers — though I did think that the kick drum in “I’ve Got to See You Again,” even if it had the same weight and the same low-end extension, sounded slightly cleaner through the Metas.

As with the original, the Stilla’s tweeter is fitted with a dispersion cone to eliminate unwanted effects in the top octave, and also to fix the middle of the dome tweeter section against resonance. The membrane is driven directly by the voice coil as with any other tweeter but with a larger flexible surround than is the norm and with its center point fixed in position. That is something that I am not aware of anyone else doing. For the Stilla specifically, the acoustic lens was optimized by using fast 3D prototyping to make it work with even more demanding (smaller) rooms and to adjust time alignment of the slightly less tall speaker to best fit the various possible listening heights.

The mid-bass unit is made from mineral-filled PP and is fitted with a super-high-speed ferrite motor. The unit is mounted in a closed section with a tapered backside to avoid parallel walls and minimize the returning sound waves from the rear of the cabinet. Special Baileys longhair sheep wool is applied to dampen some of the remaining energy without the loss of natural and high sensitivity reproduction of
midrange frequencies.

https://www.audiophilia.com/reviews/2020/8/19/tri-art-b-series-4-open-speaker

But you don’t have to spend an outrageous amount of money to achieve what we all want: the satisfaction of hearing 3 dimensional sound come through 2 points of light with a level of clarity, transparency that removes all sound fatigue. And if it is true that our brains, in listening to music, are constantly trying to match what we hear to our own understanding of the world, of humanity’s ability to create sound, then we need speakers that translate the source as authentically as possible. These speakers do this.

Small speakers are limited by their physique and I have yet to audition one that is of such superlative design and performance that a separate, outboard crossover box is utilized. But two-way small speakers are not expected to deliver the same volume as full-range floorstanders, and that very limitation is a blessing in disguise. Even then, I have auditioned bookshelf speakers from companies big and small in the past few years and the Rogers is the first pair that warrants a formal review.

Accurate speakers are an essential editing and mastering tool, and some designs I auditioned were revered by professional studios but tonally boring to my audiophile sensibilities. Food without flavor is not nice. The new Rogers LS 3/5a 15-ohm is accurate enough to reveal changes upstream and is full of flavor, and listening to it play music is quite an experience. Speakers of the Rogers caliber and stature selling for $3,350 the pair accords everyone the opportunity to experience the BBC sound at least once in your lifetime.

I pulled the Sapphires another foot out away from the wall and, voilà, something magical happened: tonal balance evened out, a rock-solid and articulate low-end seemingly emerged out of nowhere and a cavernous and finely layered soundstage dissolved the front wall. “Now we’re cooking,” I said, smiling.

A subsequent conversation with Clayton convinced me that there are two reasons that my revised positioning brought the speakers into their own. First, put the Spatial Audio Lab M3s too close to the wall, and the bass energy coming out of the rear of the M3 Sapphire may create out-of-phase bass reflections off the wall that cancel out bass response, resulting in the kind of “leanness” I had experienced. In other words, unlike most box speakers, placing an open baffle speaker too close to the front wall behind them tends to diminish rather than reinforce bass response.

http://www.theabsolutesound.com/articles/yg-acoustics-hailey-22-loudspeaker/

The Hailey 2.2 is a musically expressive, revealing speaker capable of deep-reaching, tuneful bass and agile, wide-ranging dynamics. It creates focused images within an expansive soundstage into which the speakers sonically disappear as sound sources. It reproduces power musiclike grand orchestral passages and hard-driving rock very well, as is also the case with subtle solo acoustic works (and all other kinds of music, for that matter). The Hailey is the lowest-priced model in YG’s line to offer all of the company’s defining engineering features except the cabinet-in-cabinet enclosures found in all the models above it. As such, it is a compelling way for listeners to enjoy most of YG’s technology at a significantly lower price. It is a fine example of trickle-down technology yielding good results. The Hailey 2.2 deserves to be on your audition short list at its price level. Another fine loudspeaker from YG and another recommendation.

http://www.theabsolutesound.com/articles/joseph-audio-pearl-2020-graphene-loudspeaker/

Choosing to go even bigger, I put on the Liszt Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2 from Stokowski Rhapsodies LP/tape [LSC-2471, RCA/Classic Records reissue or 15ips RRAP 0009 Analogue Productions Ultra Tape]. Liszt begins with a big, rich, full-throttled sound (from strings, horns, percussion, and bass) that immerses the listener in a huge soundscape with a sense of stage depth, size, and grandeur appropriate to this music. The direct sound is reinforced by reflected sound from the orchestra’s hall that is easily heard as a supporting contribution rather than a homogenized facsimile. The Pearls maintained the direct-versus-reflected aural distinction embedded in the recording, while also allowing individual instruments to sound fabulous within the mix.

Fleetwood DeVille Speaker Review

The overall in-room response, as measured on the tweeter axis and within a few inches above and below the tweeter midline, was fairly uniform to about 300Hz, where room modes began to appear. A response dip of about 3dB was seen in the upper midrange with the measurement mic positioned a few inches below the horn. I’m not suggesting that a single measurement is predictive of the in-room tonal balance when listening in the far field, where spatial averaging of sound energy becomes important. However, I had set up the DeVille as I would a mid-field studio monitor, and found listening height to be a critical factor to obtaining the most accurate tonal balance. Mounted on the 24-inch-tall factory stands, the horn ended up above my ear height. I experienced a significant increase in upper-midrange energy when I stood up, such that my ears either lined up level with or were slightly above the horn. I went the extra mile here and acquired 16-inch-tall stands (featuring a slight tilt back) so I could lower the horn midline by about 8 inches and match the horn height to my ear level. This gave the most accurate tonal fidelity with my favorite sopranos.”