Audiophilepure

The presentation is Marcus Miller’s ‘Power,’ which is performed live. A toe-tapping bass track leads to lots of percussion, more guitar, and lots of brass. It’s a massive sound and requires a lot of effort for any speaker to handle all these instruments with credibility. Once again, the 140s were more than up to the task. It was in this song that another notable trait emerged. These speakers are so clear and so distortion-free, that adding to the equation their lightning-fast reflexes, one might think it isn’t loud. My wife stopped in the listening room and started to talk. It was at that moment that it became clear these speakers have a lot of capacity for SPL. I could not hear her voice at all.

https://www.hifinews.com/content/gershman-acoustics-grand-studio-ii-loudspeaker

The speakers were much more at home with André Previn and His Pals on their improvisations on West Side Story [Contemporary Records S-7572]. Admittedly there’s not much to go wrong, with Previn’s piano and Red Mitchell’s bass on the left channel, and the drums of Shelly Mann on the right. Similarly, the very different Art Of Noise live recording of ‘Moments In Love’, from the Noise In The City set [Music On CD MOCCD14069], at last delivered a central soundstage image from the simple mix. But, again, the oh-so-polite Tokyo audience seemed rather more reticent than usual as there was not much live ambience.

This same tendency to dryness also affected Anna Lapwood’s arrangement of the Britten ‘Sea Interludes’, played on the organ of Ely Cathedral on her debut solo album, Images [Signum Classics SIGCD688]. There was good tonality to the instrument, and plenty of power for the room-shaking ‘Storm’ interlude, but the space of the cathedral was a tad diminished and there was less ambience than this music usually delivers.

https://www.hifichoice.com/content/jbl-4349

We were initially a little concerned that the 1.5kHz crossover between the high-frequency driver and bass unit (admittedly a little high for a 300m unit) would see the different frequencies passing like ships in the night, but given care with setup – with the cabinet placed perhaps a little further back than normal – things thankfully mesh together well enough. Ostensibly, the 4349 is happy enough running off low-power sources, but not having a SET tube amp available, we instead settle upon a modest but capable Cambridge Audio AXA35 (see p27). With its quoted 2x 35W power output this is hardly a beast of an amp and yet it comes as a pleasant surprise just how easily the JBL hangs off it. Admittedly, when pushed a little harder, the cracks start to appear as a brash edge becomes evident and the notes start to sound as though they’re being squeezed out rather than dancing into play under their own steam – but this is perhaps forgivable given its modest power output.

https://www.soundstageultra.com/index.php/equipment-menu/1221-yg-acoustics-peaks-ascent-loudspeaker

I suppose I should trot out some classical stuff right now to get the taste of testosterone and stale cigarette smoke out of your mouth and tell you how civilized music sounds on the Ascents. My three-LP box of the Végh Quartet’s cycle of Béla Bartók’s string quartets (Telefunken SKH 25083-T/1-3) is a challenge—all sharp edges, elbows and knees sticking out at odd angles. So it takes a while to find the tune. I sat there, mouth agape, as the Ascents spread out a semicircle of musicians, each perfectly locked in position. This was true midrange magic. Again, the images were slightly larger than I’m used to—the wider positioning likely the cause—and just slightly ahead of the plane of the speakers, but so fully formed that I found my eyes darting left and right, looking for the musicians that I could clearly hear.

Back to the bass once more, because it gave me trouble at the beginning. I think it’s important to let you know that it was my room, not the speakers, that was fighting me. Throwing one of my old chestnuts onto the VPI told me worlds about the Ascent’s bottom end. Chet Baker’s Chet (LP, Riverside / Analogue Productions APJ 016) is just awash in tube juice—the entire album sounds like wet sex. Paul Chambers’s double bass sounds physically huge on this LP, and it’s easy for a speaker to miss out on the crisp leading edge that stops it from turning into mush. The Ascents handled this difficult instrument with the perfect balance of accuracy and extension. That single woofer cranked it out crisply on “If You Could See Me Now,” reproducing that initial bite while still retaining the room-enveloping bloom—the comfy pillow on which the track rests. Most importantly, there was no overhang whatsoever.

The Revela 2 extends the lineage of the S-5. It uses a similar formula, but improves. Did that new Butterworth crossover contribute to the wonderfully clean and almost undetectable crossover points? Likely. I also think the new wood-pulp and artificial-fiber drivers enhanced the overall easy-going flow, and help to provide the Revela 2 with a coherence that few speakers in this price range can provide. I’m sure the heavy and solid cabinets with the radiused edges and new internal bracing don’t hurt either. The outstanding cabinet construction could easily lead you to believe these speakers were more expensive.

https://www.stereophile.com/content/bowers-wilkins-801-d4-signature-loudspeaker

I spent a couple of weeks running them in, loud and hard and soft and sweet, playing all kinds of music, internet radio—even using them as the world’s most expensive TV speakers, all in the interest of loosening them up and getting them to their ideal operating condition. Over that time, I didn’t hear much change in the top end or midrange, but the bass got bigger, especially deep bass. On J.S. Bach’s Toccata, Adagio and Fugue, played by Virgil Fox on the direct-to-disc LP The Fox Touch Volume One (Crystal Clear Records CCS-7001), the famous growl and rumble of the biggest pipes in the former Crystal Cathedral was satisfyingly room-shaking after this multiday sound workout, whereas at first it sounded too constrained.

The speakers were located roughly where my larger-footprint 808s had been, but at this point, their sound didn’t seem to fill the room as much. Was it just a matter of me adjusting to a modern, more pronounced tweeter, or did their position need adjusting?