Finally the festive season has arrived, so I wish you all a Merry Xmas and very Happy New Year.
For me, I've just experienced some very nice stuff recently and truly want to share this with you.
A week ago, Stefano, the Sigma Acoustic distributor in the UK, came to my house bringing a pair of Overture 20th Anniversary speakers with their dedicated stands, and some pair of White Gold xlr Gladiator cables for me to listen and try here. It's very kind of him because I couldn't go to the UK show earlier this year to see how his stuff sound as my wife gave birth to our 3rd child at the same time.
And after a week of intensive listening to them, I can see it's really interesting to see how even one of the smallest speakers in the Sigma Acoustic house can retain their sound characteristics.
Initially, I thought this is not possible for me to recognise this, simply because the Maat that I'm using or the Orchestra 2.9 that I listened to at Munich are way bigger than the Overture, while all of the drivers are also different.
However, a common theme that can be seen in Sigma speakers is their AMT tweeter, big or small, and somehow Aldo and his team do put magic into those and make them sound extremely coherent regardless of size. For me, the best part of this choice is for dynamics and flexibility when reproducing any type of music.
I can feel the guitar pluck, bow moving on a violin or the key of piano hit are very natural plus power and nuances in the notes. In addition, the sound is very clean but without giving the warmth and musicality away, while the smaller body when positioning correctly can give a stellar soundstage with depth and breath even in a mid/big size room.
Actually, I keep them pretty close to the listening position and completely toed-in to avoid the issues e.g lacking bass or a shallow soundstage. When powerful music is played, it's really amazed to see how such a small woofer can deliver such a tight, punchy and powerful bass performance.
If I'm honest, when Stefano was here, he was very scare when I told him that I'd increase the volume level to see how the speakers behave with extremely dynamic music ranging from electronics, rock, techno, modern pop/hiphop and some complicated orchestral pieces. And obviously, nothing happened haha, no drivers blown out of the cabinet and he was so relieved after sweating for 15 minutes and pinned down to the sofa while I was changing tracks.
It's also very interesting to note that, he said that he'd discovered something new with these speakers himself, simply because the Pilium electronics are something else compared to what he's got at home or using at shows. So the dilemma for him is to find something, ideally an integrated amp, which costs a fraction of the Olympus/Atlas combo but deliver as a close performance as possible. This is hard and I leave it to Stefano to look for his answer.
After owning and listening to various pairs of stand mount speakers, I see the Overture 20th Anniversary are a very strong contender at the list price of GBP 8k to ones such as Avid Evo 4 and ProAc K1 which I listened to at 2 different environments plus many other brands out there.
On the cables note, as I've been using my Crystal Cables Dream for around 10 years plus now, so I know exactly how they sound. Hence it'd be easier for me to identify if any differences made when switching to another brand because simply put, the Dream cables are incredibly neutral but silky smooth, punchy and accurate. Interestingly enough, the White Gold Gladiator interconnect cables sound quite similar to my Dream cables, however on a little bit of darker side while extending a bit further in the soundstage to give it just a little bit more depth.
Those cables from Italy reminded me about NBS Black that I used years ago before I went all in with Crystal Dream. Both of them are excellent, sweet and are quite close to the nordost vahalla/odin in terms of their explosive performance.
Stefano is coming back somewhere in January to collect his stuff and I'll have some more time to toy with them before saying goodbye.
More over, I'd also like to thanks Lee from Yorkshire AV to loan me the Rose RS150B streamer to try at home as I'm now on my way to get my digital sorted, especially a streamer.
I sent him a couple of emails asking about his product and a potential home demo, and after meeting him at his shop and spent 2 good hours listening to his amazing demo system, he gave the box plus a pair of xlr cables to me without any hesitation. Yes Sirs, he knows where I live and surely I won't bite when he's coming here later to collect his stuff haha.
It's very important to note that last year when Dali debuted their flagship speakers at Munich, when I arrived, they played something I'm not familiar with while the room was quite crowded, although there were some seats left. However, after staying there for 10 minutes I left unimpressed and couldn't understand their sound.
At Lee's demo room, much smaller but well treated while utterly quiet, the second to the flagship line speakers really moved me in all the tracks that I picked. He used the Rose streamer as source while switching between Luxman pre-pow and Gryphon pre-pow on site for me to compare. Just insane to see how wonderful they sound and especially compare directly between two giants in the hiend industry.
Luxman is warm, super musical and no lack of punch and power. Gryphon, as always, also super musical, powerful and incredibly neutral while extending the high a bit further. Who buys what is down to personal choice. Price wise, I was told the Luxman combo is around GBP 32k while their opponent from Denmark is around GBP 40k, all list price.
Sorry for a bit wordy today Sirs, hopefully I won't bore you about my long writing ^^
