A new chapter

As you may already know, my blog isn't about rave equipment reviews. Nope, it's my little cyberspace to talk audio here. There're plenty of reviews to read, or is it not? Old wine in a new bottle and with a twist of the story, mostly. High-end audio is a man's fantasy. Like sports cars, they attract eyeballs, a few can afford.

The state of tranquillity of mind is when you're at ease with your sound. Only sound and sound alone, the gold standard that stands the test of time. My views might be offbeat and unconventional, maybe even boring to some, it's perfectly OK if you don't concur with me. You don't need to, I can respect that. We all come from different audio backgrounds and if you don't like what you read, leave in peace.

Forever looking for ways and means to improve the sound, this is absolutely the audiophiliac thing, isn't it? Welcome to the sick club, you get a lifelong membership without the usual subscription fee. Non-audiophiles think audiophiles are nuts. To audiophiles, it's a whole lot of fun. How to get closer to the music? This thought runs in my mind, leaves me high and dry. I desire my sound to sounds close to music. It's not the tone. What is it?

A question we must ask ourselves, what sound do you want? Sonic effects or music? Hallelujah! My question is answered early this year in Taiwan, full range speaker. A spur to the road less travelled, fingers crossed. To my ears, full range speakers make music. For power and scale, bigger multi-driver speakers do better, moving more air and composed. Full range speakers carry a connotation of "less is more". Bass is not their strong suit. The speaker approach has always been high-efficiency against low efficiency.

Get the right speaker size for the room and save yourself troubles. Never pick a fight you can't win. Given a small room, full range speakers fit my bill perfectly. Small rooms choke bass, leaving little room for bass to stretch legs. Since most music falls in 55Hz to 5kHz region, in my opinion, it makes perfect sense to strive for a flawless 55Hz to 5kHz. I know it's conservative, a good midrange is the grand prize. I'm talking about immaculate coherency and homogeneity. What does a flat frequency response tell you? Nothing.

By assigning the task to only one driver, it kills three birds with one stone, a point source behaviour, eliminating the need for crossover and absolute phase coherency. No crossover, no phase shift, no time delay, no ambiguity. So, I was in a dilemma, realising a dream or enduring the financial stress. You all know what comes next, I gave in to sound.

For sure, a DIY project is not for the faint-hearted. I must admit the uneasy feeling of never know what you will get. Furthermore, no resale value and possibly a failed project adds insult to the injury. The problem with crossover, they are made out of capacitor, resistor and inductor, they eat details for breakfast and pukes sonic veil. Exotic components are not the perfect solution, I smell a rat. On the other side, full range speakers aren't without problems, they carry a peculiar sound, don't they always do? Far for neutral, the peakiness is glaring if you're coming from multi-driver speakers. That's a symptom when you overstressed your employees, they got grumpy. A field coil full range driver costs a bomb, besides, good sound from full range speakers come down box design, this is the tricky part. Speaker box design is the less understood subject. No bulletproof box design but empirical evidence. A weak bass is not good.

Aesthetically, I hate my speakers a sight for sore eyes, two tones veneer, a feature black wood at the front panel, hickory at the side, an expression of my taste. Given the job order confirmed near Chinese New Year, my speakers arrived at my door front at the end of March. I shall name my new speakers after the lovely veneer lady. Thanks, Belle.

Belle comprises of a pair of super tweeters and main towers. Ribbon super tweeter is my choice for their wide dispersion. Not dynamic super tweeters, the beaming, the pistonic character will attract attention. The point is, super tweeter is to aid space and ambience, nothing more. Due to ageing, there's a good chance that we couldn't hear things above 12kHz when we hit 50. Consequently, by moving the phase issue way up above my audible range, it will not be an issue.

The real battle begins when getting Belle to sing. Never take on a system set up lightly, it's not something you do every day. At the lower end of high efficiency at 93db/W/m sensitivity, I called YBA 1 Alpha for duty, a sweet 85wpc amp that sounds anything but a solid state amp. It took 2 weeks of going back and forth on speaker positioning my room allows. It's a tiring exercise and frequent sonic memory retrievals. I settled on a speaker positioning that best accommodates my parameters.

A sound of the milk and the honey? I'm afraid not. I'd described Belle a shrew citing her annoying peakiness. Sound wise, say hello to a no-frills sound and brutally honest. No Kathoey, a transsexual in Thai, I'm not fine with that. For the sake of timbre uprightness, I swapped in the warmer interconnects and power cords to get the balance right. Even though she posts no standing waves in my room, it's a deal breaker for what she sounds. Rolled up my sleeves, I worked on her peakiness. Mind you, there are no perfect speakers money can buy. For all I know, Belle is the first of her kind ever made here.

Before long, her lively demeanour grabs my attention. Gets up and goes, there's a sense of readiness to sing and supercharging the music. Instruments are the beneficiary, receiving the dire immediacy. I have little patience waiting, the drags kill the music. Lazy sounding puts me to sleep.

In no time, I heard details I never realized existed, a lot of them. Details without articulation are not going to impress any audiophile. Fuzzy notes have no place in high fidelity. I could visualise the virtuoso's actions on the strings. The clarity and radiance of the piano notes lingering in the air and filling the space up. The rapid exchanges of guitar notes, the dark tones of the cello, the icy metallic of the trumpet, it's unlike listening to boxes! The second prize, the sharp staccato of the snare drum is vivid. In my book, the drums and the piano get my vote for the most difficult instruments to reproduce.

Music minus dynamics is zombie. Lifelike dynamic vitalises the music. Even on voices, the vocal dynamic range requires dynamic for the delivery. In this aspect, full range speakers take dynamic like a duck to water, exceeding any multi-driver speakers I heard. The lightness of paper cones and the speaker efficiency work their magic on me, paper cones sounds natural. They seize musical fireworks and rapid exchanges.

Horns have a synonym for relaxed sound. The effortlessness gives gracefulness to the sound, the music still packed with punches despite the sound streaming out from the boxes, not those blows to the stomach. There aren't any. This quality is distinctive, the sound is uncompressed.

Transparency doesn't come at the expense of tone density. Don't fall for the fallacy. A darker sonic backdrop enhances transparency. You don't have to look further than Diana Krall's Live in Paris, her voice and the piano notes are vivid, the recording conveys the venue. Classical symphony recordings are a good example, they depict the locality of the symphony sections during the passages. Belle is a window to transparency, she makes me hold my breath to not mask the subtleties.

Belle is my second stint at crossoverless speaker. A total loss for the first one. I can't stand sonic veil. Take two to tango, a passive preamp and crossoverless speakers, my secret combo. Both do little to tamper the signals. Prepare for tone variations, hue and gradient, they underscore the richness of sound. I was spooked by the midrange presence and vocal pitch modulations. Without reservations, vocal is an easy pie for Belle.

I know, I know, the soundstage is relative to the room size. Comparably, Belle throws a wider soundstage. Lateral soundstage brings separation, not quite the SET three-dimensional magic. Belle hits me right in the feels. With my solid-state amplification, Belle manages a two-point five dimensional presentation. To be honest, Belle produces the best soundstage ever heard in my room. The room, apart from isolating the noise from both internal and external, I'm leveraging on it for room gain. Let's not be fooled, bass is never a strong feat for any full range speaker. I got Belle down to mid 40Hz. By today's standard, it's really nothing to shout about.

Now, the downsides. Mainly the harshness, the peakiness. Secondly, she is incapable of the orchestral splendour, pop and rock. She goes into a panic mode with a string of busy and noisy passages, things get gummy. Housed in a TQWT, the bass is smooth and tuneful, not much in her tank to do the heavy beating. She starts coughing. Forget about midbass punch, nope, I'm not getting any. Bass and full range speakers are not the best of friends. Without super tweeter, the restricted bandwidth will be obvious. Lastly, a restricted playback volume. That is my least worry because Belle plays loud enough in my room.

I'm well aware that audiophiles are preconditioned to new sound after a new introduction into a system. Moreover, the ecstasy clouds our sonic assessment. That's why it's so difficult to write this. On music genres, I say Belle 100:0 on vocal and chamber music, 30:70 chances on pop, 60:40 on jazz, 10:100 on rock music. 20:100 on big symphony works.

I don't wish to paint a rosy picture, the stock Belle isn't going to float many's boats. To arrive at this performance, there are three caveats involving some changes to the speaker fundamental, a carefully aligned super tweeter, phase plug and port tuning. For me, Belle has broken new ground, ushering a new chapter to my audio journey. All the above measures taken see a big step up in sound. She's going in line with my "high impact, low cost" aspiration. True in this regard, less is more, quality over quantity. I'm satisfied. I'm not missing my pre-loved. It will be my end speaker but my friends are not convinced.