Ridikas is back! Sooner than anticipated
All loudspeakers were listened to in a treated state of the art room, with multi thousand dollar mono block amps, DACs, preamps, music servers, wire and all sorts of other nonsense.
Dynaudio Confidence C2 Signature - Wow
What a pleasant, three dimensional sounding speaker. This might be the very best speaker that I have heard on this little journey of mine. Crisp, open, airy, liquid, glassy type of sound. I would say it even sounded better than the Revel Ultima2 Salon2's. If I was to nitpick, the only fault is slightly loose sounding bass. The Revels were better in that area. But everything else, Dynaudio C2's are a wow. Retail at $15,000pr.
Dynaudio - DM, Excite, Focus, and Contour lines. Ranging from $800pr.-$10,000pr. This is where it all went downhill for Dynaudio. Somewhat grainy, hard, steely type of sound. Just not my cup of tea.
Sonus Faber - Toy Monitor, Toy Tower, Liuto Monitor, Liuto, Cremona Auditor M, Cremona M, and Elipsa models. Ranging from $1000pr. to $23,000pr. Let's get something out of the way first... In my humble opinion, Sonus Faber makes the very best and sexiest looking speakers in the world. With B&W Nautilus being a distant second competitor. Sonus Faber's woodwork is exquisite. Their attention to detail is second to none. Their finishes are perfect
I also commend them for consistently using the very best drivers in the world. From ScanSpeak, Seas, and Vifa. But as much as I want to give more, these are all of the compliments that I can muster.
Chocked off sound across the entire product line, grainy, unfocused, dull, lifeless, etc. With so much going for them, where did it all go wrong?
Possibilities:
Crossover, crossover, crossover!! Poorly designed crossover. These ScanSpeak drivers should sound fabulous, I know from experience. My guess is that the warmness, graininess, dullness is coming from the drivers operating out of their optimal regions. Meaning, higher order of linear and non linear distortions are audibly present.
Suggestions:
Sonus Faber, you have the best looking speakers in the world, with the best measuring and sounding drivers in the world. Please hire someone (who knows what he/she is doing) to design and test a crossover for you
Also, a speaker like the Cremona Auditor M should really be using a 7" mid-woofer and not a 5.5". At that price point ($5500pr.), customers require a higher output with more bass.
Give these ScanSpeak's a proper cabinet! They're all higher qts woofers, over 0.40. This means that you should be looking into a nice 20 liter sealed cabinet for the 7" Revelators
I hope more manufacturers would listen to their crossover parts (I'm looking at you too Revel). Most of this veiled, grainy, dull sound can be somewhat fixed with very clean (and inexpensive) sounding capacitors, like the offerings from Solen and Jantzen. Make sure your inductors are not only air-core, but are also varnished under vacuum and baked in the oven. Erse makes beautiful inexpensive inductors. Listen to your resistors too! Metal oxide power resistors from Roederstein Resista sound open, airy, crisp, and virtually grain free. While similar MOX resistors from Eagle sound grainy and quite the opposite. If you don't know what to listen for, or how to choose MOX, or metal film resistors, take the safe road. Use Mills, Dale, Ohmitte, or any other brand of non-inductive wirewounds. Try to use silver plated wire for a grain free presentation. You can buy military spec'd, Teflon, Silver plated, 12AWG wire on eBay in bulk for $0.15 a foot.
At these price points, high end manufacturers should have no excuses.
Only one manufacturer left. The elusive KEF and their Reference line. Stay tuned...