[Please excuse my poor English]
I was very happy to attend that demo at the Dutch Audio Show last weekend.
In my opinion, it the was (by far)
the Best Sound Of The Show (though some other demo were not without virtues).
Many thanks to Flyer (Ultisone) for such a huge (physical) effort: the AlsyVox Botticelli ribbon panels weight 115Kg each, and the whole Aries Cerat set even much more.
The final result was very, very impressive (unlike many high-end demos).
Like Flyer, I attend live concerts quite regularly (acoustic, unamplified instruments, mainly classical music). Sadly, I also heard countless of so-called ultra-high systems (home systems, not demo-ed) which pathetically failed to make any music at all, I regret to say.
But I found that
this system mimics the live performance like no other (except the Aries Cerat Symphonia horn speaker).
First of all, the
Primary Control turntable (and its arm & cartridge).
I am relatively new to vinyl, and I know nearly nothing about it, honestly. I attended a few very good high-end vinyl demos previously (made with the big TechDAS, Reed, Kuzma, ...). When the engineer of Primary Control played
Die Sau (live), of
Rosset Meyer Geiger, I was litterally gobsmacked. It's simple: I thought what I heard was ways beyond the reach of vinyl (the piano's right hand!! The percussion !!). Yet, it was indeed the Primary Control that was playing, I had to check twice to believe it. Impressive. Very impressive.
Then, the
Aries Cerat electronics.
No surprise here, I knew what these STELLAR electronics were capable of. My (little) system had been transformed the day the
quite outstanding (though "affordable") Aries Cerat Incito preamplifier (basic version, embedded power supply) easily replaced my YBA 1 preamp (which had a separate power supply), which itself could easily replace many "high-end" preamps of today... I realized then that, in an audiophile's life, there is a
before and an
after Aries Cerat "turning point". And saying this, I do not like (mainstream high-end) tube gear: I much prefer concerts to hi-fi.
Finally, the 94dB (!) sensitivity, flat-impedance
AlsyVox ribbon panels. Geeeeee... !!!!!!
Those things are not of this world. As far as I could hear, they free themselves from
all the usual shortcomings of the genre.
I like panels (I own Analysis ribbon panels in my main system in town, and dynamic speakers in my 2nd system in the countryside). But compared to those
incredible AlsyVox, I think that, with all my respect, even an Apogee Diva would sound nothing short of ridiculous...
I was sitting in some kind of sweet spot, as I do in concert halls (
here or
there). Some aspects of the AlsyVox rendition nearly reach the sheer emotion of the live performance:
-high sound pressure level, without the slightest hint of compression or distortion. I sat at min. 4 meters from the speakers plane (so, further from the panels themselves). I checked with a sonometer: the average sound pressure level was 73dB at that distance, and peaked at 88dB approx. The music flew (nearly?) like in a live performance.
-Bass and deep bass in spades. The Botticelli model reaches 22Hz (with 0dB attenuation) !!
-Breathtaking expressiveness (94dB), AND naturalness (panels), delivering an delightful unboxy sound, with body and flesh.
-Impact! Those panels have/do *impact* (no other I heard has/does). The AlsyVox are nearly as
much "impactful" as a conventional dynamic speaker, which is a real
tour de force for a panel. Very physical on percussion and percussion strings, delightful and delicate on bowed string instruments.
By "impact", I do not mean just
bass. I mean the ability of the transducer to convey the physical impact of percussive instruments, for instance a piano's hammer hitting a string. On some piano mechanics, the hammer can reach 90m/sec (so a mid-size piano can peak at 115dB). With such a momentum, the hammer hits the string so violently that one can hear/feel the physical impact at the base of the note's nascence, even in the medium, even in the treble (
impact has nothing to do with
bass actually; many people mix up those two things - dynamic speakers, naturally, have impact; panels do not, be they electrostatics or ribbon; the AlsyVox seem to be a remarkable exception).
Though I could not listen to any of the discs or records I had brought, I can testify that the demo, depending on the disc played, was constantly somewhere between gobsmacking² and gobsmacking³.
(except on Sade: the recording dramatically
sucks; I guess it was a wish of an attendee).
Unforgettable demo, really.
As Flyer offered me afterwards to listen again to the whole system in his (acoustically treated) room later some day, I hope I will be able to investigate deeper in the future. Stay tuned ;-)
Orfeo.
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PS: I requested a change of my pseudo [pending].
