12 Nov 2011: E.T.Y.T Ltd

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A French kiss / A Rebel with a Cause

Tonight’s ACA meeting was at Etyt Ltd where an overwhelming amount of ACA members and forum members of our new aca.gr site turned up despite the harsh weather and the distance needed to travel to get to the showrooms allotted to us for the event.
I must mention that on a Saturday evening it is rather hard to get an ACA member out of his home unless it is to go to another ACA members system.
So in a way success was achieved before the sound was even turned on..

Introduction

The French Kiss - The Elipson 4260

The real question tonight was simple. Was it worth our while or was it a lame effort to impress the people who are almost impossible to stir in any way or fashion?
How can a speaker with 92db sensitivity and that is larger than any Bower and Wilkins 8 series play in a room that was obviously too small for its size? And most of all, how can a class D amplifier, Mark Levingston or not bring the actual tonality or rather correctness of notes on a scale through a digital source and a simple cd/sacd player?
To tell you the truth, no matter how you look at it, lover or not of a soft French kiss with the above mentioned as the accompanied equipment, it does not take much to think of only the worst.

So with all due respect to the importer and our host for the evening, WHAT IN THE WORLD WERE THEY THINNKING? The only thing that comes to mind was suicide. Sincerely, nothing else could be fathomed if you take the articles mentioned and try to imagine if anything high end could stem from this conceptualization of insanity!

So the listening session started and the ever so kind spokesman, told us not to expect much due to the listening room and put a CD on and moved to the back of the room. I imagined he did that so that some type of sound could get to us from the 92db insensitive speakers.

So for the next 30 minutes we went through vocals, instrumentals, classical, soft rock and numerous pieces which were hand picked not for their high end sound, but for their difficulty of musical realization. We knew the music well. We all knew what to expect, but it is not a usual day in the high end world when someone plays the hardest music that a speaker can be tested with for the most idiosyncratic bunch of listeners ever set in that room or for that matter set in front of that speaker!

The outcome on my part was at first basically even. They played so even across the line that it was rather disturbing.

I wanted soft bulb/valve melodious notes to arrive to my scala tympani and not music which was so uncolored and even to disturb my Saturday evening of relaxation. I wanted to feel like King George and be pampered with harmonies of female vocals which would make my heart explode with fire in my chest so hot as to heat the evening air. I wanted only warm wine and a woman to feed me at my, and only my whim! Alas, as you can understand, I did not get the pampering, I did not get the color, the pizzazz, or for that matter the palate sensation mentioned but an INJECTION of reality when I was not expecting it at ALL!!

It took me some time to realize that the presenter of this system had realized something which not too many really understand in their line of work. That the best way to show a speaker is to show how it plays absolutely FLAT, and simple. With lows and highs and with revealing its characteristics by pressing the sound levels to heights where another speaker would have broken down or chirped in the highs. In reality, this was the HONEST and true way to test a speaker. Allowing the listener to place whatever front end he had at his home and easily come up with the sound which would come out from this specific speaker.

Even I did it. I thought about my turntable, well that is, when it gets fixed, playing with my mono block amps glittering in the darkness along with my pre amp slowly making room for a speaker that was ready to give you anything your front end had. It was so clear cut and revealing that I tried to think back to when I heard this tactic in the past and could not think of even one time in my life before when I sat down to write about a system and the best of everything was turned OFF!

But you live and learn, and at 47 years old, I thought I had speaker importers all figured out. Making the demo’s sound great so as to think you will have the same at home and when you buy them and put them in your home, you think it’s another speaker.

Not this time though. We didn’t have a hundred thousand in DAC’s, or a CD player worth mentioning, or even an ultra high end 100 kilo amplifier on the floor with wires so thick you could use them as rope to tie a tug boat boasting the sound of the speakers. We had simple honest to God equipment which was very well priced examples of a simple and I mean simple system.

And it made sense. Everything made sense. The speaker not wanting to pamper me, and the salesman not wanting to fool me,, but to impress me with the reality of what the capabilities of the speakers could do, even if it was in such a small room, giving it the hardest music to test it with. and still coming out with flying colours. It not only made the very long trip on a Saturday evening worth it, but it made it something special.

To be specific, the mids, bass were so well balanced that it was hard to find a fault in the speaker at any point in the listening session. The highs could have been blaring at the sound pressure levels played, but they didn’t and the pure sonic bliss of this evening was not only about what we were hearing but about what IT COULD BE in our home. And at that idea I salivate indeed!

System No 1

Cd: Mark Levinson No. 512
Preamp: Mark Levinson No. 326S
Power Amp: Mark Levinson No. 53 Monoblocks
Speakers: Elipson 4260
Cabling: High Diamond

Speaker test number two

The Rebel with a Cause - Revel Ultima

The speaker mentioned above is big. You could easy bury me inside it and its cost is at 18 grand retail. The second set of speakers played with the same music and the same front end equipment and was 22.000 euro but were one fourth of the size and footprint of the French kiss, and despite the size differences which we knew and did hear we were shocked again that the owner and host of the evening did nothing to make the speaker sound better or even change cables in the least. He did everything to make it as clear as possible that you the listener are being tested and not the machines or system itself.

The beautiful Revel Salon 2 stood there patiently warming up to most members who were cramped up in the room, more so by the fascination of what was happening rather than curiosity of the music. After all, as I said before, this does not happen often. If ever!

The same music was played and the entire universe turned with it. Not only did both our right and left hemispheres need to adjust to the bass differences, which were so evident that a person with hearing problems could pick it up, but the warmth and subtle highs that melted our forebrain needed to be adjusted too.

These speakers are so far apart in sound that if there were people, the one would be Hitler and the second would be Gandhi. It was such a flip in listening that it took us a few minutes to cope with the new information being sent to us in such a short period of time. I can't even imagine what our sensory nerves were doing in our brain while trying to understand and cope with the stimuli at hand.

The Rebel, or Revel as it is righteously dubbed is a wonderful speaker despite the bass problems which were created from the over damped room. The fact that it uses so many speakers in each unit made the sound come ever so smooth and with nothing missing between the mids and highs or even the lows for that matter. This speaker was as American as can be. It was outright telling us what it could do and it was doing it very well indeed.

System No 2

Cd: Mark Levinson No. 512
Preamp: Mark Levinson No. 326S
Power Amp: Mark Levinson No. 53 Monoblocks
Speakers: Revel Ultima
Cabling: High Diamond

Conclusion

So which speaker did I prefer? I wanted the French Kiss in my living room and the Rebel with the Cause in my family room. I loved them both despite the bipolar within them. They were yin and yan and they completed the sound spectrum of what could be heard by a high end stereo with today’s technology at hand.

What a night for ACA and what a great revelation this Greek importer had in store for us. I humbly take my top hat off and give my respect. I can only wish his example be replicated throughout the country and the world in the high end industry.