Audiophilepure

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“Although many loudspeakers have very flat frequency response, the Eminence went a step further by combining tonal neutrality with a colorlessness that served as a blank canvas upon which instrumental timbre could be portrayed with sensational realism and vividness. The speaker didn’t impose its own tincture on tone colors that would have diluted their vibrance. Not only did instrumental and vocal timbres sound more “alive”; they were also differentiated from each other more clearly. The result was that each instrument in an ensemble was its own entity, more vividly present. It was like looking at a multi-hued photograph printed on pure white, rather than slightly grey, paper. This impression was heightened by a stunning sense of openness through the midrange and top octaves. There was a gossamer-like sense of the music existing independently of the speakers, unencumbered, and with the impression that a lid had been removed from the top octave.

The midrange had an electrostat-like directness and immediacy that were sensational. Brass and woodwinds were reproduced with an unfettered dynamic life and visceral presence. Trumpets had a full measure of high-frequency energy without sounding hard, brittle, or metallic. Freddie Hubbard’s instrument on his composition “Byrdlike” from the George Cables album Cables’ Vision was richly portrayed, with just the right balance of immediacy and liquidity. Piano was particularly well-served by the Eminence’s freedom from dynamic constraints, the purity and clarity of its midband, and its exquisite resolution of lower registers. I particularly enjoyed how the Eminence conveyed the way pianist Brad Mehldau’s left hand creates counterpoint with his right, weaving in melodic developments with equal facility in his right and left hands (and sometimes simultaneously) and in the process seemingly improvising an entirely new composition. The colorlessness of the midrange was apparent on vocals, rendering them with outstanding clarity. The Eminence’s reproduction of vocals was a bit understated spatially compared with many other speakers, presenting voices along the loudspeaker plane rather than projecting them forward. It was a more subtle and sophisticated perspective that tended to draw me in.”

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“Despite the price, despite the sheer quality of the finish and the scale of the finished system, don’t confuse these speakers with some luxury exercise in cost-no-object consumption. These speakers are all — and only — about performance. In a market where an increasing number of products appear more concerned with their role as male jewelry than they do with their achievements in musical communication (the audio equivalents of tote bags with logos from the likes of Chanel or Dolce & Gabbana that are so big that they overlap the available surface), the Living Voice Vox-series speakers are a singular — and singularly successful — exception to that trend. If the general public struggles with brand recognition much beyond Bang & Olufsen or its spiritual descendent Devialet, if the likes of Wilson Audio are flying well below the popular radar, then where does that place the Vox Palladians? The simple fact is that nobody will buy them to impress their non-audio friends. You don’t buy them to impress your fashion-conscious audio buddies either. You don’t buy them to convince yourself that you are younger than you feel, and you certainly don’t buy them to impress your interior designer/decorator, who really isn’t going to understand the positional demands they dictate. You buy the Vox Palladians (assuming you can afford to) for one reason and one reason only — to be transported by music. Arguably more than any other speaker system I’ve tested, they stand or fall by that measure alone — and stand they most definitely do.”