Audiophilepure

https://www.stereophile.com/content/ta-solitaire-s-530-loudspeaker

I loved my time with the S 530s. They reminded me why I was sold on line source and planar speakers so many years ago. My experience with these speakers went a long way toward demonstrating that the shortcomings I thought of as inherent in a line source design aren’t inherent at all.

Hearing the Solitaire S 530s made me regret that I wasn’t aware of T+A speakers sooner. The S 530 is every bit of what I’d expected, based on what I knew about the company and their digital components: a super-premium product that, while certainly handsome, was more about technology, execution, and performance than beauty for its own sake. I’d love to have heard previous Solitaire models like the fully active OECs, with their glowing tubes, or the fully active, fully digital AD4, to better understand the R&D path that led to the S 530s.

https://www.hifinews.com/content/sonus-faber-lumina-v-amator-loudspeaker

While Sonus faber’s floorstander looks imposing in the pictures, the speaker is neither huge nor massively weighty, standing just under 105cm tall and, at 22.5kg, about light enough for one-person set-up, adding convenience to the room-friendliness. Positioning is no trickier, in no small part due to that downward-firing port. I spent some time moving the Lumina V Amators backwards and forwards in the room, finding very little difference wherever I placed them, and concentrated instead on experimenting with toe-in for the most coherent stereo image. Again, I was unable to effect any huge changes in this department, so stuck to my usual positioning with the cabinets aimed just slightly in front of the listening position.

With their rated 89dB sensitivity, 4ohm nominal impedance and a 50W minimum power requirement, these are not especially demanding speakers, and worked well with the various amplifiers I tried, ranging from Audiolab’s 9000A [HFN Aug ’23] up to my vintage Naim NAC 52/NAP 250 set-up. I should mention that magnetic grilles are provided, but it would be a shame to cover up the understated dark wenge or more exotic gloss red and walnut wood finishes on offer!

However, if you need something more conventional to get your bass fix, and include a great woman’s voice in the bargain, listen to Jennifer Warnes’ cover of Leonard Cohen’s track “Way Down Deep” on her The Hunter album. The Stenheim Two.Five does a remarkable job of mixing her voice and the deep, textural percussions. Imaging from the Two.Five with an incredible “wall of sound” is sublimely fulfilling.

Of course, this led me to pull up Leonard Cohen, the man himself. In My Secret Life is a beautiful melodic song from his Ten New Songs album from 2001. Cohen’s voice contrasts his backup singers and is mesmerizingly elegant, the Two.Five gives this track such depth and richness.