Reviving an old thread to share my experience with these speakers.
Actually, I have briefly written about my experiences in this post (
http://www.hifivision.com/dealer-feedback-review/28145-absolute-phase-bangalore-4.html#post399259). I did not know, Suman Jana actually is a member of HFV, and in that post I described my experience as listening to speakers made by somebody who is not a member of HFV. My apologies to Suman.
Suman has been very kind in inviting me to his place to listen to his creations for the last few months. His residence is on the South Western fringe of Kolkata while I live in the North Eastern fringe - so quite a distance. But a couple of weeks ago, I actually made it to his place.
These are tall floor-standing 2-way speakers with front ports and scanspeak drivers. Suman's listening room is not a dedicated room like most of ours. The room has a large bed along one wall, an L-shapes work desk along 2 other walls and the speakers are placed at the two extremes of this work desk. Asa result the speaker-axes have 90 degrees angle between them. The listening position is at the farthest end of the bed where I positioned myself for most of the auditioning. At this position, I had about 6 feet to the right speaker and about 8 feet to the left speaker, and as I said before they are effectively toed in 45 degrees so that the angle between them is 90 degrees.
Obviously, given the small room arrangement, and the speaker positioning etc, the listening environment was very far from ideal. With such a huge toeing, the usual effect is one of very forward sound.
Yes, the sound was forward, and the imaging and staging not perfect -all artifacts of the speakers' positioning and the room.
But, these speakers go beyond that, in fact much beyond. And that's why I am writing about them here.
First to talk about is transparency of the speakers. These are as transparent and as open sounding as speakers come. Then the tonal balance. All parts of the frequency range was covered with ease, elegance, speed and coherence.
I want to particularly talk about the bass. These produced the cleanest and most resolved bass I have heard in a long time, even in that less-than-ideal room condition. It was obviously very musical too.
The dynamics - both micro and macro - was incredible.
I was there with most of my auditioning CDs. The CDP was a budget CA 640, and the amp that was mostly used was a 3-day old Odyssey Cyclops (basically a Khartago with a passive volume control. Even though the amp has a long way to go in terms of burn-in of its caps etc, it produced IMO significantly better results in all frequency regimes than his old amp (CA 640 I think). The bass was clearly loose with the CA amp, in comparison to the Odyssey, the mids had better definition and clarity with the Odyssey, and the highs were better extended and smoother with the Odyssey.
Well, in fine, I was very very pleased with these speakers, especially when I heard about the expenditure involved. The only regret is that I could not hear them in a proper room with speakers positioned with much less toe-in and me finding a listening position somewhere near the sweet spot. However, based on my audition, I expect these speakers to have a broader than usual listening spot. BTW, the cabling used was very ordinary.
For complete understanding of these speakers, I wish I can one day hear these speakers with proper positioning in a bigger room and with better cabling. I'd ideally like these speakers to produce a reasonably large stage with nice 3D imaging, with a bit tamed down presentation. I think these speakers have these qualities in them, but would need proper positioning. I am actually very tempted to bring them to my or Pratim's place one day (although it would need two cars I think) and have an audition properly.
These are worth much much more than the money spent on building them. I am genuinely impressed, if that is of any importance to anybody.
Regards.
