Audiophilepure

Sticking with Speakers Corner records (why not, they are the best after all), I can tell you that listening to Janos Starker’s suites for unaccompanied Cello [Mercury] was also a near-religious experience paired with the Totem Metals. The point is easily made on any of the tracks so start at the beginning with Suite No 1 in G Praeludium. The Metals push the cello right out into the living room in a way that was disorienting for the first few moments it was so untethered to the speaker cabinets. In a way that you would read the sound if someone were to break a wine glass on a wall close behind you, the Metals endowed Janos’ playing of the cello with that electric “in the room” crispness that can not be faked. When Janos draws the bow across the strings and you hear his physical mannerisms and body shifts coming through in space behind the cello; word to the wise, make sure you know who is presently in your house. You wouldn’t want to have to jump up to look in the other room for robbers (as I did more than I would like to admit) while getting used to the knife-edge detail and realism the Metals illustrate so well.

Like the original 600M, the new MKII needs some room to breathe, especially with such a large port in the rear. To that end, I placed the speakers on my 24” metal stands about three feet away from the front and side walls.

As always, I started with the speakers pointed straight ahead, and unlike the first 600M which needed a bit of adjustment in terms of toe-in, the 600M II immediately snapped into focus and projected an awesome soundstage.

https://www.hifinews.com/content/ps-audio-aspen-fr30-loudspeaker

But they’re just as effective with the exuberant playing on Tuomas Antero Turunen’s ‘Joy Dance’ from his Lifesparks album [Skip Records SKP 9154-2], fully making the listening experience live up to the title. Similarly, albeit different, the Helensburgh Tango from the Tord Gustavsen Trio’s Opening album [ECM 2742] is wonderfully dark and sombre, with its snare rolls and recessed instruments very unsettling.

Then again, the speakers soar with Sandrine Piau’s voice on her Rivales album [Alpha ALPHA824, 96kHz/24-bit], her aria from Gluck’s ‘La Clemenza de Tito’ especially vibrant thanks to the speaker’s free-breathing sound and purity of tone. They present Holly Coles voice on ‘I Could Write A Book’ [Holly, 2xHDRR1101; DSD128] with superb intimacy as she duets with Wycliffe Gordon before slipping into the languorous ‘Lazy Afternoon’, her voice set against the gentle Hammond B3 of Larry Goldings. It’s all delicious stuff – and addictive.

One of Devialet’s clever innovations from the Expert Pro line that easily crosses over to the Phantom is SAM, or ‘Speaker Active Matching’. In the traditional audio world, this meant Devialet had to assess the performance of a range of different loudspeakers from hundreds of manufacturers to create an optimum amplifier profile (in the digital domain). This number crunching is baked into the Phantom models, allowing a very high degree of interaction and control between amplifier and loudspeaker. This has three direct benefits: the amplifier is running at its most optimal for any steady-state or musical signal; the amp has better drive-unit control even in deep bass, and the Phantom is pretty much ‘unburstable’ unless you consciously try to destroy it. It’s not fully ‘party proof’ as those pulsating side drivers are something of a drunk-magnet and the rated 108dB peak SPL is a bit of a limit, but in real-world terms unless you are using the Phantom as a weekend-long PA system pumping out square waves at full throttle, the Phantom remains unfazed when you are in the mood to party hard.