Audiophilepure

Digging down a little deeper into the cabinet design reveals another type of sandwich. The Plural Evo cabinet is made of three different types and layers of wood to reduce the material’s sound. These include high quality MDF, armored wood sandwich and vibration insulation. The woods are of different thicknesses and key positions in the cabinet are reinforced with metal plates. Internal reinforcements and bracing are asymmetrical throughout to reduce cabinet vibration to an absolute minimum. ZELLATON uses a special Laser Doppler vibrometer to measure the speaker’s vibrations down to the square centimeter.

Finally, ZELLATON eschews conventional philosophy of spiking speakers and prefers instead to use coupling in concert with energy draining. ZELLATON in the Plural Evos opted to use rounded feet on the bottom of the speaker in concert with discs reduce energy; a side benefit is this works better with carpeting.

This acoustic lends itself to capturing the direct timbre of the cello without too much of the hall’s sound influencing what is being played—thus avoiding a wetter presentation. The Tonda D was able to convey the realistic sound of the cello as heard at the microphone. The bowing motion and direction changes, fingering, and intricate sound of the action of playing were all startlingly apparent, if one chose to focus on those aspects. On the other hand, the listener could just immerse himself in the music, and enjoy the incredibly stark contrasts in Ligeti’s composition (and Rosselet’s playing) between the delicately flowing Dialogo and spritely, aggressive Capriccio, which was written several years later. The Tonda D captured it all, and delivered the goods as Frederic Rosselet poured his passion and skill into the performance.

In closing, the Tonda D has a sleek and refined appearance to match its sound. Like the lovely and refreshing feel of an early morning breeze in the heat of summer, the Tonda D reproduces music with a cooling, fresh, pure, and welcoming vibe. As a result, well-produced music sounds great, mediocre music sounds mediocre, and less than well-engineered music has no place to hide. The three different playback sources (digital, vinyl, and 15ips reel-to-reel tape) used in listening examples above show the Tonda D to be capable of revealing multiple delights and contrasts with different genres of music. While staying generally neutral in presentation, the influence of upstream components, room interaction, and the music itself are what the Tonda D most clearly presents to the listener. This level of transparency is often craved by listeners who value fidelity to sources. If that is you, the Tonda D should be on your audition list. 

https://www.hifinews.com/content/bw-801-d4-loudspeaker

By contrast, the big slam of the opening of Yes’s ‘Yours Is No Disgrace’ [The Yes Album; Atlantic WPCR 15903, DSD64] just cannons out from the speakers. The complex keyboards and driving, grumbling bass line fuse with the drums to drive the track relentlessly, and those harmonies are wide-open, as are the words – for good or bad! Yes, the soundscape is huge here, and the low end from those two aerofoil drivers is both punchy and remarkably controlled. These speakers will also go scarily loud with enough amplification driving them, but they remain resolutely clean and clear – a fitting apex to B&W’s latest 800 Series Diamonds.

https://www.soundstagehifi.com/index.php/reference-components/1638-recommended-reference-component-psb-synchrony-b600-loudspeakers

Diego wrapped up his review by asking the question: “What’s not to like about the PSB Synchrony B600?” His answer was “nothing,” and Diego added that the B600 “is one of the most complete-sounding small speakers” he’s ever heard. As a result, the B600 was presented with a Reviewers’ Choice award at the time of his review for its outstanding sonic performance—and that’s also why the B600 is being recognized as a Recommended Reference Component this month.

https://www.stereophile.com/content/bowers-wilkins-diamond-series-804-d4-loudspeaker-page-2

Having visited Bowers & Wilkins’s research facility and factory in England, I believe their engineers can design a loudspeaker to sound and measure any way they wish. From my experience, not just with the 804 D4 but with the 705 Signature—where I wrote, “I was surprised how much I enjoyed having the Bowers & Wilkins 705 Signature in my system … because the speaker’s measured performance implies a somewhat ‘tailored’ sonic character”—both the 804 D4’s measurements and its sonic signature indicate that achieving a classically flat and neutral tonal balance à la Floyd Toole’s writings was not the design team’s primary goal. Instead, clarity, transparency, low-frequency articulation, and the absence of midrange coloration seemed to have had a higher priority.

Even after I had measured this loudspeaker, the issues I found seemed to step out of the way of the music much of the time. Those port resonances seemed to have very little effect on midrange clarity, and while I was occasionally aware that the resonance just below 4kHz was adding some presence-region emphasis, it did not seem to be excited with most recordings. The extreme toe-in recommended in the manual reduced the audibility of the excessive treble, though the speaker’s high-frequency balance will make system matching more difficult than usual. And combined with the speaker’s high impedance in the mid-treble, it will make tube amplifiers sound overbright.

https://www.stereonet.com/au/reviews/fink-team-kim-standmount-loudspeaker-review

Karl-Heinz then tried using a higher resistance inductor and another resistor in series to change the speaker’s alignment even more. “We can switch between 0.5 ohm, 0.25 ohm, and nothing, so this can be used to tailor your speaker to different amplifier technologies. A modern transistor amp has a high damping factor, so you use the larger resistor setting, while more traditional amplifiers like Naim normally use a smaller resistor in series, so the middle position is correct. And the left option is for tube amps; this works well with push-pull designs and helps with the bass.” 

I found the KIM to be unusually easy to position in my room. Standing about 30cm out from the boundary wall on its 6mm carpet-piercing spikes doing their thing, it integrated very well and didn’t boom in the bass unduly. I alternated between the high damping factor and middle positions as I switched between my Rotel Michi X-5 and Exposure 3510 amplifiers, fed from a Chord Electronics Hugo TT2 DAC.

General impressions of the Tonda D show the speakers to have notably excellent imaging, resolution, detail retrieval, transient behavior, dynamic contrasts, and undiminished energy as one goes higher in the frequency range. The sound is smack dab in the middle area of balanced playback, with an ever-so-slight tilt towards the cool side of neutral in my particular setup. Much of that ever-so-slight tilt can be attributed to my personal preference for a smidge more lower midrange fullness, and because my listening room refuses to overload with bass (a good thing, IMO), where a smaller and more enclosed space would fill that particular cup a bit more completely. None of these preferences detracted from my enjoyment of the Tonda Ds’ excellent performance during their time here.

The midrange driver in the Plural Evo is used as a “widebander” and operates over a frequency range from roughly 90 to 7500 Hz. In short, the midrange driver is asked to do a lot. Low octaves in the Plural Evos are handled by two 11-inch drivers. “The woofer gives weight to the bass and helps to match the speaker to the size of the room,” said Michael. “There’s no compromise and the Plural Evos can play all types of music and capture a wide range of volumes from orchestra to small scale ensemble. All of this distortion free,” he emphasized.

The woofer in the Plural Evos, unlike the Klassik Series speakers, is open to the floor. “This arrangement,” said Michael, “helps the speaker better integrate into smaller rooms and allows them to be placed closer to walls.” Note that the speakers come “left” and “right” and should be placed so the vent at the bottom is placed to the inside, not outside of each speaker. Everything matters and Plural Evo owners are provided with two pair of rectangular foam pieces, one a little wider than the other, to help tune the speaker to the room. “The narrower piece,” Michael explained, “gives a more precise sound vs the wider piece that give a fuller sound.” For instance, the narrower foam in my room resulted in a more two-dimensional, flatter and compressed sound relative to the wider piece of foam. (But as Gideon pointed out, the narrower piece of foam might be the better choice in a larger room.) Inserting the wider piece of foam all the way into the slot on the bottom of the speaker reduced the bass output and lead to a loss of detail; by contrast, pulling the wider piece of foam as far out as possible produced a more detailed yet less “breathable” sound. So, the final position in my listening room was somewhere between the two extremes.

10 years later, Bowers & Wilkins introduced the diamond series, dropping the N prefix and adding a D appendix to the model number. Oh boy, I still couldn’t really afford them, but just like before, the 802 model had me totally in awe. Hobo Hifi again kindly agreed to a home demo (thanks Hans-Peter Rietveld!) and this marked my first experience with the 802D. Oh, yes, this was something else! As good as the N804’s were, the 802D’s outperformed them in many aspects such as soundstage depth and layering, focus and precision, and mostly, treble refinement and air. While many people were imagining a diamond to sound hard and perhaps edgy, the 802D’s tweeter actually delivered smooth, refined, and liquid treble. Actually, the 802D’s treble performance was so remarkable that my good friend JW, a die-hard ribbon-lover, was impressed.

A really interesting new feature is the possibility to adapt the Alexx V on location from front-ported to rear-ported or vice versa. Just what suits the situation and acoustics best. The crossover has also been scrutinized and fitted with Wilson Audio’s proprietary AudioCapX capacitors for the very best signal integrity and virtually negligible tolerance. Extra attention has also been paid to the speaker’s impedance curve and efficiency so that the Alexx V is slightly easier to drive than its predecessor.