Full Limited Edition Aries Cerat System Build and World Exclusive LEGEND Series!

[awsmone]

Tango recorded this same piece and record, on his Cessaros with if I remember 4 different carts, or was it 2 carts on two different TT.

Be interesting to compare

I wonder if she still plays her Vuillaume?
He was said to have made such a perfect copy of IL canone that Paganini couldn’t tell them apart, the recording certainly has the tone of a Guarneri to my ears but some late Strads can also sound darker, the difference is in what it takes to bow them

 

[Believe High Fidelity]

I would like to point out that the Aries Cerat Demo room is an acoustic black hole. The sound that you are hearing that was recorded is just the speaker and the speaker alone. No reflections and room gain. Turns out the amplifiers can be clipped in that room with 65W and over 100DB efficiency. And even more incredible is that no matter how hard you drive them they are unflinching. This is why their designs are becoming recognized as the best in the industry because when he voices his electronics and speakers he has probably the best system to do it IMO. Who knows what other manufacturers use to voice their electronics and vice versa

 

[awsmone]

I would like to point out that the Aries Cerat Demo room is an acoustic black hole. The sound that you are hearing that was recorded is just the speaker and the speaker alone. No reflections and room gain. Turns out the speaker system can be clipped in that room with 65W and over 100DB efficiency. And even more incredible is that no matter how hard you drive them they are unflinching. This is why their designs are becoming recognized as the best in the industry because when he voices his electronics and speakers he has probably the best system to do it IMO. Who knows what other manufacturers use to voice their electronics and vice versa

That’s an interesting point, though conical horns are mainly direct sound if your in the first few meters , where was the recording taken at? I thought the midbass was very big improvement on the smaller set up

I suppose the only issue is that in a large room you will get the reflected sound, which will change the perceived sound if not listening close

As to power needed at 100db, provided no impedance nasty dips and phase angle, in an average room u would be lucky to need a 1 watt, and 110db which is symphony orchestra much less than 65watts

 

[Believe High Fidelity]

About 15 feet I would say is where the recording listening position is in that room. About half of the volume on the preamp was used for both recordings. Crazy.....

 

[awsmone]

Less than 5 metres
At what distance are the drivers time aligned?

You might need a big room, including the fact the woofer horns look like jet engines in looks and size, don’t think wifey wouldn’t notice the switch of speakers with these mothers

 

[Tango]

Correct. The first day we used the Etsuro Gold and on the second day we switched to the Red Sparrow which we used for the remainder of the trip. Both sounded incredible on the Contendo system so it would have been nice for certain tracks to switch between both. However the Bergmann LT was the only arm.

After 3 days of listening the Red Sparrow was decided to be the cartridge of choice for Aries Cerat and is now their demo cart for the foreseeable future.

That is what I thought it was, the Red Sparrow. The presentation is less upfront sort of like you peak into the door hearing what is playing in the hall on some songs. It seems to fit a very high efficiency system like AriesCerat and the General's system very very well. This cart has outstanding ability in details rethrieval and holding things in tact when all instruments are going at it.

Tang

 

[Aries Cerat]

Hello gents

To say that it was a pleasure having Joshua and Billy visiting,would be a big understatement.

Audio things aside,we had some great time,as both gentlemen are a great company to hang around in the (somewhat much colder than i am used to) city of Limassol.

The Achilleas posed for some great shots for Josh,although the "mancave" (test lab) does not offer too much lighting.I was surprised he pull it off

The Contendo is build as an all out assault on SOTA horn speaker, and one of it's main features,the extreme
and user friendly adjustability,we just did not have time to explore/demonstrate.The speaker can alter many of it's parameters to suit it's final listening room,as well as to accommodate the user's sonic preferences.
For three days we only listened to great music,we only tried changing one parameter on the midbass when we changed carts.

Being true time aligned design( that word become just another buzzword unfortunately),it can be fully adjusted to aim to the listener, taking into consideration the distance and ear height.It can focus from 2.5 meters if adjusted for this distance,but the speaker has more depth than the 2.5m alone.Speaker was adjusted for listening distance of 5.5m

The midbass handles 100-550Hz ,starts from just 18mm throat and finishes up to 4feet,following a true tractrix flare.

The room is designed to be an acoustic black hole,as the room is used for design and development purposes.It can take a beating like no other room i have been to.It takes some time to adjust your head (and ears)around it.Even your voice sounds different in that room.
The room itself cannot create the false depth and width that can be created in normal listening environments from diffusion and reflection, so it is up to the speaker to create the depth and width of the stage.
Playing organ in 120db sustained continued levels it's not an issue for the room(or speaker),only we don't do that often as will all go deaf

Now,the Red Sparrow..oh my.
Mated with our "small" Talos Ref phono and with minimal adjustment fiddling with the LT,i can honestly say that it might be the most neutral/ detailed cart i had the pleasure trying.When i say detail i do not mean exaggerated high freq which many confuse with details,but full range detailed sound.
I loved the Etrusro Gold we played around the first day.That cart is extemely resolving and musical.Really something special.
But when TW was installed,well,we bought it so that is that.

Was great having you here Billy and Joshua,really enjoyed the whole experience..hope to see you soon in Munich.

Cheers
Stavros

 

[spiritofmusic]

Does that seperate bass horn really match the main horns for all out assault in the deep bass? One member here who's looked at it said to me he struggles to see how it can go below 30Hz let alone approximate 20Hz. It certainly doesnt look as long as the Cessaro Liszt bass horn which I know from experience doesn't go below early 30's Hz.

 

[Aries Cerat]

Hello Spirit

Well,i don't know your friend,but if he has no access to data such as throat area,compression ratio,flare type,total length, mouth area, driver parameters,and boundary surfaces, i would love to see how he calculated the response

Calculations and "picture calculations" aside, this type of bass delivery is very different than the usual subs in the audio industry,only once listened you can appreciate.

Cheers
Stavros

 

[kodomo]

Being true time aligned design( that word become just another buzzword unfortunately),it can be fully adjusted to aim to the listener, taking into consideration the distance and ear height.It can focus from 2.5 meters if adjusted for this distance,but the speaker has more depth than the 2.5m alone.Speaker was adjusted for listening distance of 5.5m

How did you time align it? The channels are already misaligned on axis and from my own experiments this is detrimental for neutrality altough it can create certain acoustic effects which some may find pleasurable on some recordings.

Have you made impulse measurements and aligned accordingly or is it done via digital delay? Can you explain your methodology and I would be even more happy if you could share measurements.

The room being an acoustic black hall seems a little enthusiastic to me as an architect with formal background in acoustics or maybe the metaphor you are choosing is a lost in translation to me. Can you explain this a little further too. This room looks nowhere large enough or treated enough to be free of room colorations/gain/modes etc.

Do not get me wrong, as an avid horn aficionado, I am very interested in this horn system and its workings. I love your fullback midbass. I have fullback lips on my midbass and I have measured and have heard the difference between the two. I did not have the chance to go as much as you did. This is one of the things I am planning to try later as well.

So please, rather than using buzzwords and hype, can you be more specific about technicalities and if possible provide more formal explanations and/or measurements. This is not a demand but a mere hopeful expectation on my side. All in all I am very happy to see people pushing forward with horns. I hope you succeed even more in your endeavour.

ps. Do you plan to bring this type of system to Munich, if not I may even come and visit you (if you permit) in Cyprus. We are close, I am at Antalya!

 

[Aries Cerat]

Hello

Starting from the room.
The room is actually part of much larger space,about 1372 cubic meters! (The two walls are concrete (the first "L" or corner of the room).The other two are double wall made from panels of different resonant frequencies,acting as a number of broadband midbass/bass traps with different freq and Q each,uncorrelated each from other.
As we know the hardest freq to treat are sub 500Hz ,especially the 80-200Hz.

The upper mid and treble is kids play compared to these freq.The different panels than create the second L of the room are filled with high and low density ceramic and rock fiber.Seems to work perfect.Key is the large open space behind the panels.

I lost you on the alignment issue.You mean vertical plane alignment? You can't just align the diaphragms of the drivers and call it a day as you probably know.
First we need to understand that to order to even begin to talk time alignment,we need to have freedom to play with driver to driver pointing axis,not just offset.The alignment is only valid to one position,the listening position,and you need to start by having the drivers having the freedom being pointed to the desired direction,whatever that may be.

Also, we need to remember that just physically aligning the diaphragms will not cut it.A ribbon is much faster than a CD,and a CD much faster than a cone.
The drivers on the Contendo can move back and forth and change main axis, so you can align them on the listening chair.
Yes you are right,misaligned drivers sound in a particular way.You can demo this if you slide the tweeter just 1cm back or forth on it's slides.Very educational.

The bass horns ,even if they are folded, are also aligned with the midbass,as they sit much more forward.The mouth of the basshorn sits about 4-5 meters in front of the midbass CD, making it as if they were physically on the same vertical plane.

I would love to share our measuring methodology but keep in mind this is a commercial design,we i prefer not disclosing in public.

Best Regards

Stavros

 

[kodomo]

I am completely with you, aligning them physically don't cut it. I also accept that it is only valid in one position. These are physical realities. My own systems drivers can be aligned in both vertical and horizontal axis because of that. Further than that, it is not just dependent on drivers offset but also dependant on the crossovers employed. You can align your system perfectly but if you change the crossover, your alignment goes out the window and has to be redone. So you consider your alignment methodology your trade secret? Ok, I respect that, but ways of alignment are not really secret if you have not found a new way. Still, I repeat I respect your decision. Can you at least share the resulting measurements without explaining your methodology? This is also just a favor that I am asking and in no way you are obliged to show me anything.

The vertical plane alignment is another thing. We seem to have differing opinions about it. Just like misaligned drivers (your tweeter example), misaligned axis has also had effects in my experiments. My own experience showed me it was necessary with mine to have constant results but it seems your experiments showed you different, I can try and understand if you care to explain this one too.

About the room, hardest ones to take care are not so much frequency dependent but more dependent on the inherent physics of the room. For ex. take a room with 6meters height and 13meters by 9 meters length. There will be less than 30modes to take care between 13hz to 70hz and you do not have to guess where they form and how you need to treat them. That room, if you go for lets say 0,6sec decay time would have schroeder frequency of about 58hz. You wont have much problems over it. Having a good sounding concert hall is still an art form as the goal itself is a little hazy, that I accept but having a room with an even response and decay is not much of a guessing game. Your room is relatively big, and seems you are content with it.

Kind regards for taking time to answer. Hope to hear your system one day.

 

[Billygxx]

Hi all,
First of all, I want to thank Stavros for the opportunity to hear world class speakers and meet people who are so genuine and big hearted. I thought I was flying 20 hours to audition speakers but in reality I had a brief and wonderful experience.
Having actually heard the system, I can assure the doubters above that it extends easily to 20hz. While the beauty of the Contendo’s music seduced us into listening more and experimenting less, we did listen to pure tones deep into the bass and they were played with aplomb. I have never heard horns, that actually used horns, get any output at all past about 35hz-and that is being optimistic. The scale of the huge speakers is hard to determine from the photos, but the subs are enormous as are the upper bass horns. Most horn manufacturers lay their bass horns flat on the ground but if Stavros did this, he would be limiting this system to auditoriums only.
I do not know how much I can reveal but using relatively small diameter drivers with cones much lighter than paper create and horn loading them create amazingly low levels of distortion. I was very impressed with the clarity of the deep bass in the Wamms and had previously never heard a system that deep AND clean. Until...the Contendos. In fact, despite their great differences in design, the two systems share more than they differ. Extreme detail with extremely low distortion, full spectrum, seemingly limitless output of music. Time alignment, massive size, and driver speed plays a large role in both of them. It creates a certain kind of sound, highly revealing, smooth and with vanishing levels of distortion. While the Wamms and Magico Ultima 3s both use dsp to achieve their bass magic, the Contendos because of their unique drivers, do not require it. Whether Stavros did it with his ears or an oscilloscope, the music arrived on time and absolutely coherant with all the drivers to my ears when in the sweet spot. Are they as perfect as single driver full range speakers in this regard? No, but they seem as crossoverless as possible in a multi driver loudspeaker.
As Stavros says, all the drivers are adjustable physically and electrically for optimization to the room. The most amazing thing of all was the degree to which these speakers expose the music. I do not think I really understood the term layering until hearing the Contendos. Right now I own Martin Logan’s, Magicos, Voxativs , and Wisdoms and none disclose so much of the music. It will be fun to compare them to my MSB Select headphone amp and Stax phones. I know this website hates hyperbole but it’s hard to believe, given my experience in hearing dozens of high end systems, that Contendos and Wamms aren’t in one strata while everything else lives in some tier downward. Of course I could be completely wrong. Are the Contendos the best speakers in the world? Like many on this blog I do not believe such a thing exists. There is only what is best for the individual. I have not heard everything in the over 600k club let alone heard them with the same gear in the same room. So I am not a qualified person to make such a declaration. I can say for that for me personally the Contendos are the ones I most wish to own. Anyone who wants to hear, rather than postulate what is possible in the reproduction of sound, should go hear them. No matter what your impression, you will be glad you did.

 

[Tango]

Hi all,
First of all, I want to thank Stavros for the opportunity to hear world class speakers and meet people who are so genuine and big hearted. I thought I was flying 20 hours to audition speakers but in reality I had a brief and wonderful experience.
Having actually heard the system, I can assure the doubters above that it extends easily to 20hz. While the beauty of the Contendo’s music seduced us into listening more and experimenting less, we did listen to pure tones deep into the bass and they were played with aplomb. I have never heard horns, that actually used horns, get any output at all past about 35hz-and that is being optimistic. The scale of the huge speakers is hard to determine from the photos, but the subs are enormous as are the upper bass horns. Most horn manufacturers lay their bass horns flat on the ground but if Stavros did this, he would be limiting this system to auditoriums only.
I do not know how much I can reveal but using relatively small diameter drivers with cones much lighter than paper create and horn loading them create amazingly low levels of distortion. I was very impressed with the clarity of the deep bass in the Wamms and had previously never heard a system that deep AND clean. Until...the Contendos. In fact, despite their great differences in design, the two systems share more than they differ. Extreme detail with extremely low distortion, full spectrum, seemingly limitless output of music. Time alignment, massive size, and driver speed plays a large role in both of them. It creates a certain kind of sound, highly revealing, smooth and with vanishing levels of distortion. While the Wamms and Magico Ultima 3s both use dsp to achieve their bass magic, the Contendos because of their unique drivers, do not require it. Whether Stavros did it with his ears or an oscilloscope, the music arrived on time and absolutely coherant with all the drivers to my ears when in the sweet spot. Are they as perfect as single driver full range speakers in this regard? No, but they seem as crossoverless as possible in a multi driver loudspeaker.
As Stavros says, all the drivers are adjustable physically and electrically for optimization to the room. The most amazing thing of all was the degree to which these speakers expose the music. I do not think I really understood the term layering until hearing the Contendos. Right now I own Martin Logan’s, Magicos, Voxativs , and Wisdoms and none disclose so much of the music. It will be fun to compare them to my MSB Select headphone amp and Stax phones. I know this website hates hyperbole but it’s hard to believe, given my experience in hearing dozens of high end systems, that Contendos and Wamms aren’t in one strata while everything else lives in some tier downward. Of course I could be completely wrong. Are the Contendos the best speakers in the world? Like many on this blog I do not believe such a thing exists. There is only what is best for the individual. I have not heard everything in the over 600k club let alone heard them with the same gear in the same room. So I am not a qualified person to make such a declaration. I can say for that for me personally the Contendos are the ones I most wish to own. Anyone who wants to hear, rather than postulate what is possible in the reproduction of sound, should go hear them. No matter what your impression, you will be glad you did.

You can be their US ambassador Billy. I think it is you who help giving birth to these horns.

Tang

 

[Audiophile Bill]

Hi all,
First of all, I want to thank Stavros for the opportunity to hear world class speakers and meet people who are so genuine and big hearted. I thought I was flying 20 hours to audition speakers but in reality I had a brief and wonderful experience.
Having actually heard the system, I can assure the doubters above that it extends easily to 20hz. While the beauty of the Contendo’s music seduced us into listening more and experimenting less, we did listen to pure tones deep into the bass and they were played with aplomb. I have never heard horns, that actually used horns, get any output at all past about 35hz-and that is being optimistic. The scale of the huge speakers is hard to determine from the photos, but the subs are enormous as are the upper bass horns. Most horn manufacturers lay their bass horns flat on the ground but if Stavros did this, he would be limiting this system to auditoriums only.
I do not know how much I can reveal but using relatively small diameter drivers with cones much lighter than paper create and horn loading them create amazingly low levels of distortion. I was very impressed with the clarity of the deep bass in the Wamms and had previously never heard a system that deep AND clean. Until...the Contendos. In fact, despite their great differences in design, the two systems share more than they differ. Extreme detail with extremely low distortion, full spectrum, seemingly limitless output of music. Time alignment, massive size, and driver speed plays a large role in both of them. It creates a certain kind of sound, highly revealing, smooth and with vanishing levels of distortion. While the Wamms and Magico Ultima 3s both use dsp to achieve their bass magic, the Contendos because of their unique drivers, do not require it. Whether Stavros did it with his ears or an oscilloscope, the music arrived on time and absolutely coherant with all the drivers to my ears when in the sweet spot. Are they as perfect as single driver full range speakers in this regard? No, but they seem as crossoverless as possible in a multi driver loudspeaker.
As Stavros says, all the drivers are adjustable physically and electrically for optimization to the room. The most amazing thing of all was the degree to which these speakers expose the music. I do not think I really understood the term layering until hearing the Contendos. Right now I own Martin Logan’s, Magicos, Voxativs , and Wisdoms and none disclose so much of the music. It will be fun to compare them to my MSB Select headphone amp and Stax phones. I know this website hates hyperbole but it’s hard to believe, given my experience in hearing dozens of high end systems, that Contendos and Wamms aren’t in one strata while everything else lives in some tier downward. Of course I could be completely wrong. Are the Contendos the best speakers in the world? Like many on this blog I do not believe such a thing exists. There is only what is best for the individual. I have not heard everything in the over 600k club let alone heard them with the same gear in the same room. So I am not a qualified person to make such a declaration. I can say for that for me personally the Contendos are the ones I most wish to own. Anyone who wants to hear, rather than postulate what is possible in the reproduction of sound, should go hear them. No matter what your impression, you will be glad you did.

So Billy - when are they arriving in your new room?

 

[Billygxx]

Looking back at the photos, I see the subwoofers(basshorns?)are not really visible. I will post a couple of shots so it’s more obvious how they get so deep.
Tang you have a magical way with English. I do hope to be a part of the Contendo’s birth and would love to be the US ambassador. Perfectly said. The basshorns in the photo are sold so moving forward, we may go a bit bigger on the new basshorns. Bill, I hope to have mine in 6-9 months with some very cool modifications. Stay tuned. I just need to resolve such an expense in my head.

 

[Billygxx]

Another view but still hard to appreciate in the photo the enormity of the cabinets.

 

[Audiophile Bill]

Looking back at the photos, I see the subwoofers(basshorns?)are not really visible. I will post a couple of shots so it’s more obvious how they get so deep.
Tang you have a magical way with English. I do hope to be a part of the Contendo’s birth and would love to be the US ambassador. Perfectly said. The basshorns in the photo are sold so moving forward, we may go a bit bigger on the new basshorns. Bill, I hope to have mine in 6-9 months with some very cool modifications. Stay tuned. I just need to resolve such an expense in my head.View attachment 47858

Yes that photo doesn’t give the impression that the bass scoop is any larger than standard commercial scoops. Hard to get scale from the picture.

 

[Audiophile Bill]

Dpe

Another view but still hard to appreciate in the photo the enormity of the cabinets.View attachment 47859

Yeah you need someone standing next to them to get the scale

 

[Believe High Fidelity]

So you want to know what the Contendo sounds like? Are you sure? Well in that case read on....


Many folks are not aware the Symphonia loudspeaker is a compact version of the Contendo. The Contendo being the first loudspeaker produced by Aries Cerat, it uses the signature 360 degree bullet to eliminate diffraction that is common in colored sounding horn systems. Being massive in size, Stavros created the Symphonia as a solution to the Contendo sound in a much smaller package. You will notice that the smaller midrange bullet and tweeter on the Contendo being very similar to the Symphonia minus the massive midbass horn and smaller version of the basshorns used in the Contendo system make up the body of the Symphonia.

As a long time Symphonia owner I can attest some of the incredible tonality, weight, speed and dynamics of this speaker system and zero coloration. Most who have never heard them are amazed at the difference even when compared to the known flagships of the mainstream speaker designers.

Annnnnnnddddddd here we go......





Mind blown.....

First track Stavros plays I am very familiar with as we use this track to show case the incredible difference between conventional speakers and horns. The album is Hifi Flamenco which comes in an audiophile approved XRCD format. (SVCD-1015)



While it wasn't the Son Son Sera track I use, they all have huge vocals and tremendous impact of the Spanish flamenco dance. When I have heard this album in other systems you are presented with the idea of the what it would sound like if the dancer were in front of you. Suffice to say it retains the sound of coming from a box. Better speaker systems will allow you to feel some of the impact as the shoes slam against the floor. Often times if the speaker system can pull that off, it may still struggle to keep up with the speed of the feet as the intensity increases and you can hear the speaker distorting or the amplifier sagging as it tries to keep up. It is a very challenging album to test a system with.

If you have followed the build up to this point to you know that these challenges are compounded when you add a room that is acoustically dead. What might be 1 watt of 65 to drive the speakers has increased to 30. In a live room the Symphonia played at more aggressive levels can make things vibrate. You will feel it for sure and it is an incredible reward when you can hear it this way.

Then the Contendo takes an idea of what is possible and blows it up with a nuclear missile seeming bored by the challenge. The midbass slam combined with the basshorn energy made me burst out laughing I was so excited and I started clapping as I went mad with lust. Whack, Whack, Whack of the feet! Man I have never felt so much energy it was violent and I loved it! Call me a masochist, but I wanted More, More MOREEEEE! Oh my lord I had a hard on for this system!

Then vocals were effervescent as they filled the room with so much air and lift that you felt they were flying, There was no ceiling, no compression and it was everywhere. Because the room was dead the roll off was very aggressive, but you really couldn't tell unless you were focused on it and even then you didn't care.


Good Old Ben Webster



For those familiar with Ben, there is a very muted background performance playing in a large majority of his music. Then at the appropriate time his saxophone will explode onto the scene and you can tell the mic is really dedicated to him. Now follow me when I say that when this occurs the Contendos are so revealing to the recording that you could in fact hear into his instrument. Let that sink in and marinate with that for a moment. The detail was sensational and his lips, breath and horn were all made explicitly available to hear as though there were the main focus of the recording. The dft, dft, dft as his breath trickled off the reed had fricken tonal weight to even that!!

We talked about it at length after listening, but the obviousness in where the mic was placed by the piano was startling. "As you listen to the Contendo more you can get a easy sense of where around the piano and how it was placed with any recording" Stavros explained. As we listened to, The Man I Love, the richness and at the same time, delicacy of the key strokes was surreal. You could hear not on the feet hitting the pedals of the piano, but the floor, the shifting of the chair, everything was in detail and focus.


Papa Can You Hear Me?





This album only joined my collection recently but has been given quite a bit of attention due to the dynamics and crescendo of the vocals. "Papa can you hear me?" has a few lengthy pauses where it is dead quiet at the start of the song that really draws you in to it. As she inflects her voice to the melody which follows along it swells so well and emotional on the Symphonia. Oh, but on the Contendo its scale is massive as the background vocals envelope the room and all around you. You get emotional with Barbra as she quickly speeds up the pace and you feel the energy surging from what seems like 20ft from behind the speaker. As present as her voice his the background harmony and instruments can get muddy and congested, but to hear each and every voice as clear as Barbra, and so wide that each person and instrument is separated with the hyper detail is something I am still dreaming about to this day. Even as I write it I am obsessed with hearing it again

There were many albums that we listened to on both digital and analog. Too many to write about each an every one. These were the most notable outside of the demo samples provided on video to for your own opinion with the small taste they provide.

Fellow members, I have heard many of flagship system from Wilson, Magico, Gryphon, Rockport, Avantgarde, Cessaro, ALE/GOTO, Vandersteen, Genesis, you name it. As Billy put it so well there is just another class of speaker that really cannot be understood until you have heard it for yourself. I have done my best to give you some perspective but like Neo you cannot be told what the Matrix is and when you see the real world for yourself you can never go back. This last bit of text is not meant to offend anyone nor overstep my appreciation for this system. It is genuine and from the heart. I have never been closer to the music I have on the Contendo and I am almost wishing that I never heard it so I can go back to being content with the Symphonias.

But I can't.....