{"id":27448,"date":"2022-02-02T12:29:19","date_gmt":"2022-02-02T10:29:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.hifi-advice.com\/blog\/?p=27448"},"modified":"2024-05-20T11:57:33","modified_gmt":"2024-05-20T09:57:33","slug":"hfa-audio-setup-history-32","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hifi-advice.com\/blog\/hfa-audio-setup-history\/hfa-audio-setup-history-32\/","title":{"rendered":"HFA Audio Setup History 32 \u2013 More speakers \u2013 Late 2018-2020"},"content":{"rendered":"

For some time after Ben’s efforts<\/a> as part of his Acoustic Matters<\/a> services, I was happy with the Wilson system. But soon, annoyances crept up again. This was because as part of the main issue was addressed, other issues were now made more abundantly clear. I rotated the entire setup and listening position and even tried it sideways with the speakers having seen every square centimeter of the floor but I just couldn’t achieve the ideal balance. I already knew my room was difficult due to its multitude of standing waves that cause severe spikes and nulls, but the more I learned about acoustics in general, and my own acoustics in particular, the more it became unavoidable to conclude that the Wilsons, with their double-vented design, were never going to work ideally for me. Having finally admitted this to myself, this opened the door for new speaker experiences.<\/p>\n

Kroma Audio<\/h3>\n

New experiences would soon materialize after Cayetano Castellano, whom I knew at that time as the manager of Artesania Audio, asked me if I wanted to come to Spain to report on an upcoming audio show. As it happens, next to managing Artesania Audio, Cayetano also takes care of international contacts for various other high-end audio brands and is also manager of the Audio Club Premier which organizes the EnoSound shows<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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When planning my trip to the EnoSound show in Bilbao early in 2018, Cayetano revealed to me that he became co-owner and export manager for a new brand of high-end Spanish loudspeakers by the name of Kroma Audio. He said that they were really something special and that they would be one of the highlights of the upcoming show.<\/p>\n

It was during their introduction at the Enosound Bilbao 2018 show<\/a> that I first heard Kroma speakers, the range-topping Elektra model that I found to sound remarkable in several areas.<\/p>\n

After the show and when I was back home, Cayetano called me up to ask me if I was interested in reviewing a pair of loudspeakers. Of course, I was interested! He proposed I review the next model down, the Carmen, that Ben had on demo in the Netherlands.\u00a0 The arrangement was quickly made and before I knew it, they were in my room.<\/p>\n

The Kroma Audio speaker cabinets are fully made from white Krion, which is a Spanish variant of Corian, a sort of \u201cartificial stone\u201d. Krion is made of two-thirds natural minerals (ATH \u2013 aluminum trihydrate) and a low percentage of high-resistance resins. As Cayetano explained, it’s not that they are designing to a certain price point, it is just that this<\/span> material that is responsible for a very large chunk of the speakers’ cost.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Carmen<\/h3>\n

As I found during my review<\/a> in October 2018, the Kroma Audio Carmens truly excel in the fields of organic textures and natural timbre and they sound fabulous with acoustic instruments, percussion, and vocals but they sound equally impressive with hard-hitting R&B from Christina Aguilera and Lady Gaga. Also, and more pertinent to my situation at that time, their bass is not only fast, well-timed, and utterly coherent, it is also much more linear than that of the Wilsons.<\/p>\n

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In a direct comparison when switching back to the Wilsons, it became clear that they do sound more direct and less warm, but they are also quite bumpy in the bass, more forward in the upper midrange, and their treble is actually tilted up a little and edgy at times. The Kroma\u2019s sound harmonically richer than the Wilsons and have more saturated colors in the lower midrange but they are much more linear and they definitely do not have any hardness in the treble.<\/p>\n

My conclusion in the review was that the Wilsons have more of a technical approach and the Kroma Carmens are more of a music lover\u2019s product. They made it easy to relax and enjoy the music while performing much better in the bass, despite my room’s difficulties.<\/p>\n

As the Kromas had gone back to Listening Matters, I found that I was no longer enjoying the music with the Wilsons as much as before. It all just sounded technical and sterile and this triggered the idea of getting a pair of Carmens for myself but getting a new pair was financially out of the question. In speaking with Cayetano, it was arranged that I could purchase a demo pair at a price that I could almost afford. Early 2019, Ben van Leliveld delivered the pair to me and set them up and for a good while, I was extremely happy.<\/p>\n

Early 2019 – Doubts<\/h3>\n

Today, I still stand by my original conclusion in the review but thinking back, I can see how the Carmens’ musicality and magic as well as their ability to perform better in my room swayed me while drawing me away from the core of my listening, which is to have as open a window on the music to allow me to hear absolutely everything that goes on in the system. I will admit that my decades-long hobby has led to some occupational deformation, which increasingly made me desire utterly neutral-sounding products. Even though the Carmens absolutely shine when it concerns immersive music enjoyment while being quite resolving and remarkably refined, more and more, I became less enamored with their richness and warmth. It’s not like they didn’t sound nice, it’s that they made everything<\/em> sound nice.<\/p>\n

Although I had closed the chapter on the dipole adventures, this turned my thoughts back to the Martin Logans. The 11A’s were not perfect, but they were clean and transparent and neither edgy nor hard and neither smooth nor warm. But wait, what was the next best thing? Indeed, the 15A’s!<\/p>\n

I really did not want to return to dipoles and their associated dependencies and disadvantages, but now, I vividly recalled how much I enjoyed those big boys and I fondly remembered how awesome the Logans\u2019 bass was, even with the speakers positioned at the most difficult end of my room. And if I recalled it correctly, the 15A’s had even better bass than the Carmens.<\/p>\n

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And so, when a great opportunity for a used pair arose, I decided to forego sanity and add a pair of ESL 15A\u2019s to my system. Now, I could use either the Logans or the Kromas, precisely as my mood dictates or the application requires. I would use the 15A’s for the moments that I craved utter transparency and neutrality, and the Carmens for when I wanted to experience music on an emotional level and not consider any technicalities. In addition, the Carmens would be great for use with amplifiers that were not ideal for the Logans, such as tube amplifiers.<\/p>\n

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This solution worked quite well and the Logans delivered on their promise of deep yet well-behaved bass and fabulous transparency, but increasingly, the Carmens were sitting on the side. The Logans are large but relatively lightweight and they are very easy to move around. But increasingly, the prospect of dragging their 100kg weight to the listening positions, withheld me from listening to the Carmens. Quite literally, a long evening of moving them around on my own to find the ideal spots gave me a hernia, which I have had to deal with for a long time. Of course, the speakers were not really to blame, but rather my sitting occupation coupled with a sitting hobby, mixed in with lugging heavy objects around.<\/p>\n

Next: More RTFS and first contact with Magico<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

RTFS<\/h3>\n

After the success of the RTFS Big Blocks, I also reviewed the Ceiling Vane and Carreau<\/a>. I was hoping that they could replace the GiK 244 panels shown above. Interestingly, while they proved to be much more efficient than the 244’s, this exercise showed me that I was wrong in applying absorption above the speakers and on the ceiling. Rather, if I was to reduce some of the room modes without reducing the liveliness of the room, some damping was needed in other places, and more experiments would soon follow. The Ceiling Vanes would find precisely the right use in the adjacent area where my computer is.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Although I was happy with the Logans, the room did exhibit an annoying flutter echo that I wanted to get rid of. I never heard it with the door-sized Apogees as they were simply blocking this but now it was a problem. Pillows, 244 panels, and other soft damping materials did the trick but also killed the natural room ambiance. What ensued was a review of the RTFS SiRRAH’s<\/a>. The manufacturer kindly supplied 6 of them for the review and they were tried in more positions than I can recall. But ultimately I found the ideal setting and I retained most of them. The SiRRAHs also provide a measure of damping\/absorbing but in addition to a measure of diffusion and they sound less “dead” than competing absorber products.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

I tried to create a secondary system based around the Kromas but the space that I had available proved way too small for the big speakers to work well enough. On the right hand, there was no issue but the corner on the left hand side has a strong standing wave that I have not been able to suppress other than by using speakers that don’t excite it in the first place. This is why the Xavian Perla Esclusivos<\/a> sound so great in this room.<\/p>\n

The DaaD that you can see in the corner does very little to tame the room mode but together with RTFS Stripes<\/a> on the left wall (outside of this picture), it does A LOT to create sonic space on the left side of the soundstage.<\/p>\n

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First contact with Magico<\/h3>\n

While I was pondering what to do with my speaker situation, audio buddy Niels had purchased Magico Q5 loudspeakers. They are notoriously difficult to drive but it was nothing his Soulution 711 could not handle. The first time that I heard the speakers in Niels’ system, I was sad to not be able to cheer for his new purchase as I was not impressed, rather the opposite. Coming from my Kromas and Logans and also Niels’ Apogee Full Range<\/a> dipoles that were previously set up in this room, I felt that the new speakers sounded constrained, cold, and technical, that is, rather non-musical. But sure enough, the more often I heard these speakers, the more they crept under my skin.<\/p>\n

Also, with his prior speakers being very different, his system needed some tweaks and cable changes. Fortunately, he had help from mutual friend Werner Ero, who had plenty of earlier Magico experience. Among others, Werner advised the change from the MIT Oracle MA interlink and MIT Shotgun EVO speaker cables to the AudioQuest Fire and Nirvana SX and it has to be said, this made a large difference, adding flow and endowing the speakers with a more organic presentation. Later, Niels also upgraded his Spectral DMC-30SS preamp to a DMC-30SV and that, too, made for a very worthwhile improvement as the bass became firmer and the midrange more tangible and tonally more deeply saturated.<\/p>\n

Slowly but surely, I was getting impressed, and simultaneously, I started hearing what my Logans were still not quite getting right. You probably guessed it: bass-foil coherence. But besides that, the Q5’s also had a kind of midrange purity and clarity that even the Logans could not achieve. Worse still, for me that is, the Q5’s possessed this clarity from top to bottom.<\/p>\n

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\"\"<\/p>\n

At some point, Niels’ system developed into a sort of secondary reference system for many of my review items. One of my favorite tests was something I did for Niels and myself, which is to compare my CH Precision A1.5 to Niels’ Soulution 711<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Incidentally, his 711 had already visited my listening room<\/a> back when I was still using Apogees and the Wilsons had just come around the corner. At that time, the 711 performed magically well with the Apogee Duettas, even wowing Jan Willem, who was at that time fast becoming a tube fanatic.<\/p>\n

As if owning two pairs of very serious speakers was not enough, my experience with Niels’ Q5’s sparked the idea in my head of getting a pair of the most affordable Magicos that existed at that time, the S1’s. Call me crazy, and I probably am indeed, but my logic was that if the Kromas were too heavy to lug around, at least the Magicos would be light enough to move in and out of position as needed. And, sure, they would probably not have much bass to speak of, but I was now a sucker for the Magico purity and I just had to have a slice of it in my own system.<\/p>\n

Late 2019 – Getting Magico speakers<\/h3>\n

When I found a used pair of S1 MkII’s for a good price, I jumped on them and long-time friend Jan Willem was kind enough to once again make an audio trip for me. Due to circumstances, the owner had to sell all of his gear which was sad for him but presented me with this great opportunity. As he had already sold his amplifier (he used a Devialet), I could not listen to the speakers but all looked well and so we packed them in and drove them home.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

And so it happened that I had the Magicos and Logans set up side by side. Amazingly, not only did the S1 MkII’s work remarkably well in between the Logans and in my difficult room, but they did not sound clinical at all and they also had unexpectedly powerful bass. Well, relatively, at least. What bass they did reproduce was of very good quality but it just rolled off at some point. For a while, the speakers lived happily side by side and I enjoyed both pairs for their inherent strong areas.<\/p>\n

But the more attention I paid to the setup of the Magicos, the better they sounded. The Logans may have been my previous reference in the field of resolution and uncolored transparency, but the Magicos simply matched them in these areas while surpassing them in terms of linearity, coherence, timbre, precision, and focus. Meanwhile, they also proved capable of imaging just as widely as the Logans, and even more deeply. The S1 MkII’s soundstage sure was not as cavernously deep or as 3D as that of the Wilsons but for me, it was plenty.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Of course, the Logans went deeper in the bass, but did they also have more authority? Every time I switched to the Logans after having listened to the Magicos, I had to readjust to the relatively slower and more disjointed bass. Sure, there was much more heft and the 15A’s were the best Logans I had heard but still, there was no hiding the fact that they were a hybrid design with a massive powered subwoofer. With Niels’ ultra-tight and superbly coherent Q5’s in mind, more and more, my little Magicos became the primary choice.<\/p>\n

One day, when Werner had visited me and was also surprised at how well the S1’s performed with my system and in my room, he joked that perhaps the Magicos would even outperform the Logans altogether if they were given the free space to breathe.<\/p>\n

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Magico Only<\/h3>\n

After both pairs of speakers had been moved out of the way to make room for a pair of review speakers, I decided to reposition only the Magicos, just so I could see how they performed when given free rein over my room, without being flanked by the Logans. Boy, was that ever an ear-opener! Werner may have been joking but he was right, the Magico’s sounded better than the Logans in all aspects, including bass propulsion and solidity and more importantly, the overall bass quality<\/em>, if understandably still not all of the Logans’ bass heft and depth.<\/p>\n

Below 40Hz, the Magicos rolled off quite quickly while the Logans simply kept going and going. But if I was being honest with myself, outside of certain R&B styles and other music with extremely deep bass, the Logans were not really required anymore. So, I sold them and allowed myself to look for a better Magico model. If all that was needed was a little more bass extension, then surely the Magico S3 MkII should be ideal, right? Wrong. I tried a pair and it was a disappointment. Sure, the bass was magnificent, in some ways reminiscent of Niels’ Q5’s. Same for the midrange which was just a tad more open and direct. But otherwise, it was a failure. Most annoyingly, the S3’s treble rolled off significantly earlier than that of the S1’s. This can be heard as well as measured and is even published with the reviews out there. I had already been warned about this but wanted to hear it for myself. In practice, it meant that the only recordings that sounded about right were the ones that I knew were very bright. Second, the S3’s soundstaging was considerably more boxed-in than that of the S1’s. Whereas the little ones were every bit as spacious as the Logans and were truly not sounding like a box-speaker, the S3’s sound very clearly originated from the cabinets. Finally, the S3’s had a mild coloration in the midrange that became more distracting because their upper treble also wasn’t as open as I liked it to be. Knowing that my A1.5 amp drove Niels’ Q5’s absolutely fantastically, I already knew that it couldn’t be an amp to speaker mismatch.<\/p>\n

Fortunately, I had been wise enough not to sell the S1’s before getting the S3’s. With no second thoughts, I put the S3’s up for sale and they were gone in no time.<\/p>\n

This marked the start of something unusual for an audiophile: a period of being content. Weird, even as I write it, my mind is going in many places but sure enough, for some time, I was happy. Alas, at the start of 2020, my world was about to be rocked when the Broadcast Facility company that I had worked for over 20 years went bankrupt, and all of a sudden, I was unemployed.<\/p>\n

Next Chapter<\/a><\/p>\n

Overview of all HFA Audio Setups<\/h3>\n

HFA Audio Setups Overview<\/a><\/p>\n

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