I had a 2-hour listening session at Surrealistix' place a few days back. Absolutely top quality system, and a real pleasure.
I have heard expensive systems before, and many of them sound too polite or lush. They give rise to beliefs like "XYZ system is great for jazz" or "ABC system is great for hard rock", and so on. I have heard an extremely expensive system which sapped the soul out of Dire Straits or one which tamed the gravel of Springsteen's "Nebraska" and made it socially acceptable. Really sad. I believe a good system should do all genres very well, and this one was in that league. Hard rock, soft Indian classical vocals, jazz, all sounded really excellent.
The room has been treated very well, allowing room echo to reduce. This means that the volume can be driven quite high before the room begins to break up the sound. Therefore, the room gives the necessary support to allow these super-clean speakers to deliver the detail which they can. Surrealistix plays at fairly high volumes -- nothing "audiophile" or "polite" about it -- and you can see how the room does justice to the amazing clean sound. A lot of separation of voices, instruments are apparent without any effort. There is no harshness in any tonal range at any volume level. There is a lot of energy in the music. It's a rare pleasure when you get to hear a dynamic, energetic delivery like this which retains the cleanness which is expected from top end systems.
One more thing I've rarely had a chance to experience is a top quality system in a room with a really low noise floor. This too did justice to the enormous amount of subtle detail coming out of the speakers. The room had excellent sound-proofing.
The bass had really excellent extension, but I felt had a very slight overhang in the notes extending a bit longer than theoretically expected. I guess this is a transmission-line artifact. However, with these speakers and this lovely room, this slight overhang was hardly an issue. And the overhang too is only a comment compared to the tightness of the rest of the sound. Most of the speakers I have heard elsewhere have much looser bass than what I heard here.
All in all, the speakers have an interesting architecture, with a very capable 12" driver reaching up to (a quite high) 380Hz, after which an exceptional 3" dome mid takes over. This is the first time I saw and heard a 3" dome mid. The tweeter is crossed over at 3.8KHz, fairly high and therefore giving an undemanding load to it. The speaker is a conventional rectangular shape, so the baffle is quite wide (15"?) to accommodate the large 12" woofer. None of the fashionable slim-line tower stuff here -- these speakers have a visual presence which matches their sound. And the dome mid was handling a full decade of range.
Surrealistix plays a 100% digital setup, but I couldn't help feeling that it would be very interesting to hear a top-notch turntable hooked up to such a rig and such a room, to see how a really good turntable excels if the downstream components are this transparent.
I think this system is not to everyone's liking -- specially considering the tastes of a lot of people who like exotic full-range speakers or valve gear with 1% distortion, etc. This system shows you how good, how natural, really transparent, "real" sounding systems can be, whereas a lot of people prefer systems with their characteristic "sound". I, on the other hand, strive for maximum accuracy and minimum "colour", so for me this was a confirmation that the pure, neutral, accurate approach can deliver a deeply emotional experience, not a "synthetic" or "clinical" output.
It's taken Surrealistix several years of journey to reach this point, I'm sure. I'm lucky I walked in at the end-point and got 2 hours and a cup of tea without any of his journey. I want to congratulate Surrealistix on having reached where he has. We think it just needs a big budget. In fact it needs sensitivity, enormous patience, and brains too.
I have heard expensive systems before, and many of them sound too polite or lush. They give rise to beliefs like "XYZ system is great for jazz" or "ABC system is great for hard rock", and so on. I have heard an extremely expensive system which sapped the soul out of Dire Straits or one which tamed the gravel of Springsteen's "Nebraska" and made it socially acceptable. Really sad. I believe a good system should do all genres very well, and this one was in that league. Hard rock, soft Indian classical vocals, jazz, all sounded really excellent.
The room has been treated very well, allowing room echo to reduce. This means that the volume can be driven quite high before the room begins to break up the sound. Therefore, the room gives the necessary support to allow these super-clean speakers to deliver the detail which they can. Surrealistix plays at fairly high volumes -- nothing "audiophile" or "polite" about it -- and you can see how the room does justice to the amazing clean sound. A lot of separation of voices, instruments are apparent without any effort. There is no harshness in any tonal range at any volume level. There is a lot of energy in the music. It's a rare pleasure when you get to hear a dynamic, energetic delivery like this which retains the cleanness which is expected from top end systems.
One more thing I've rarely had a chance to experience is a top quality system in a room with a really low noise floor. This too did justice to the enormous amount of subtle detail coming out of the speakers. The room had excellent sound-proofing.
The bass had really excellent extension, but I felt had a very slight overhang in the notes extending a bit longer than theoretically expected. I guess this is a transmission-line artifact. However, with these speakers and this lovely room, this slight overhang was hardly an issue. And the overhang too is only a comment compared to the tightness of the rest of the sound. Most of the speakers I have heard elsewhere have much looser bass than what I heard here.
All in all, the speakers have an interesting architecture, with a very capable 12" driver reaching up to (a quite high) 380Hz, after which an exceptional 3" dome mid takes over. This is the first time I saw and heard a 3" dome mid. The tweeter is crossed over at 3.8KHz, fairly high and therefore giving an undemanding load to it. The speaker is a conventional rectangular shape, so the baffle is quite wide (15"?) to accommodate the large 12" woofer. None of the fashionable slim-line tower stuff here -- these speakers have a visual presence which matches their sound. And the dome mid was handling a full decade of range.
Surrealistix plays a 100% digital setup, but I couldn't help feeling that it would be very interesting to hear a top-notch turntable hooked up to such a rig and such a room, to see how a really good turntable excels if the downstream components are this transparent.
I think this system is not to everyone's liking -- specially considering the tastes of a lot of people who like exotic full-range speakers or valve gear with 1% distortion, etc. This system shows you how good, how natural, really transparent, "real" sounding systems can be, whereas a lot of people prefer systems with their characteristic "sound". I, on the other hand, strive for maximum accuracy and minimum "colour", so for me this was a confirmation that the pure, neutral, accurate approach can deliver a deeply emotional experience, not a "synthetic" or "clinical" output.
It's taken Surrealistix several years of journey to reach this point, I'm sure. I'm lucky I walked in at the end-point and got 2 hours and a cup of tea without any of his journey. I want to congratulate Surrealistix on having reached where he has. We think it just needs a big budget. In fact it needs sensitivity, enormous patience, and brains too.