Audiophilepure

https://www.soundstageultra.com/index.php/equipment-menu/1254-bowers-wilkins-801-d4-signature-loudspeaker

The Occasion is dense as all get-out, featuring orchestral breaks interspersed with incredibly catchy hooks that swoop in from left field and set themselves real deep. The title track, “The Occasion,” goes every which way, with instruments snapping out from the edges, and the 801s did tricks with them. I heard a huge—huge, I tell you—soundstage, with Harkness’s guitar holding down the center. That snappy, expressive midrange placed trombones both left and right, so far to the sides that they sounded like they were beyond the outer edges of the speakers. Other little aural flourishes—and there were many—flitted between the speakers, showing remarkable variety in depth and position. Again, the term holographic came to mind.

That’s two highly produced studio albums so far. Switching over to jazz, I dug out an old favorite of mine, a reissue of Chet Baker’s Chet (LP, Riverside / Analogue Productions APJ 016), which is the juiciest-sounding album I own. Whenever I play this album, it sounds like I’ve swapped the Hegel H30A solid-state amp for a single-ended 300B tube amplifier. This lovely music is full of harmonic overtones on Baker’s trumpet and Pepper Adams’s baritone sax. There’s no shortage of high frequencies on this album. It sounds to me like the overtones on Baker’s trumpet span the midrange-to-tweeter crossover frequency. Here I could definitely notice some additional energy in this region. Baker’s spitty, breathy trumpet tone came forward a touch—not in space, as it remained in the plane of the speakers, but sounding just a bit higher in level than I’m used to. Despite the additional presence, that trumpet was clear, expressive, and utterly without grain.

The S2’s three-way Elliptical Symmetry Crossover (ESXO) is a topology of rare distinction. The crossover is implemented with an acoustical-target 24dB-slope using a Linkwitz-Riley filter.

Maximum frequency and phase linearity is accomplished, while keeping intermodulation distortion to vanishing levels. The S2 uses a full complement of state-of-the-art components from Mundorf of Germany, including M-Resist Ultra foil resistors, which deliver greater power handling, increased transparency, and more sonic liquidity than previous components. New is the copper foil paper coil, which improves the noise floor by reducing microphonic effects. The result of the S2’s ESXO crossover is superior coherence from the speaker’s four drive units.

https://www.stereophile.com/content/estelon-x-diamond-mk-ii-loudspeaker

Balanced, engaging, and multifaceted, the Estelons took me through many moods. I felt not just in sync with the music but blessedly affected by it too. It’s true that sonically, in my room, the X Diamond Mk IIs were a notch past the midpoint between earthy and analytical. They have a slightly more pronounced mid-treble region than my Focal Scalas do. That means that they paired well with the Aurender A20 and the Grimm Audio MU1, and not as successfully with the otherwise excellent Eversolo DMP-A8 (which doesn’t sound sharp or strident per se but can’t boast perfect fluidity either). The A20 and the MU1 are both a touch mellower, less forward, more “analog” perhaps. That suits the Estelons.

In a historic account of a love triangle that I read recently, the femme fatale seduced her lover with a suggestive dance. The sentence that stood out was “When she danced, the concealed was revealed.” That’s also a very fitting description of the X Diamond Mk IIs. For speakers at this price level, you’d expect impeccable beauty inside and out, visually and sonically, and that’s what you get with these comely Estonians. They ooze detail and resolution and naturalness, unveiling what remains hidden—or is sloppily sketched—through lesser contenders. It’s hard to think of higher praise

https://www.enjoythemusic.com/superioraudio/equipment/1224/Vivid_Audio_Moya_M1_Loudspeaker_Review.htm

Lastly, the M1 simply sounds right. This is perhaps the hardest aspect of its performance to describe in meaningful impressionistic terms, but a quality that most listeners will hear and appreciate immediately. I think that this sense of “rightness” owes to the system’s remarkable dynamic composure and expressiveness, its cutting-edge transparency, its impressive tonal and timbral accuracy, and the superb inner-driver coherence that belies the M1’s multi-driver architecture. Like the great alchemists of centuries past, Dickie and his stalwart design team have managed to tease out of wood, carbon, aluminum, and steel something that resembles flesh and blood performers in the room. The results are simply stunning.

https://www.hifinews.com/content/technics-sb-f3-loudspeaker

Even though they are the largest model in the range, the ‘F3s are still far from full-sized and being sealed boxes (ie, not ported) they are easier to place. Well stocked bookshelves are ideal, but failing that, placing them on moderately tall stands in the corners of a reasonably cosy (small!) listening room is a good place to start. A partnering amp in the 40 to 75W class makes a good match, but the surprisingly high sensitivity of these speakers means lower-powered models are not out of the question. Remember, though, that tweeters in particular are more easily damaged by an under-powered amp than one that produces too much output.