The End Of A 35 Year Journey ---Zellaton -The Reference Ultra Final Frontier

[Rob181]

Plenty of people have scorned watching videos of speakers & judging same based on the reproduced sound.
Not me - the best two I have ever heard - & I've heard plenty - are the Zellaton PE's & Alsyvox Caravaggio.
The reproduction of piano & voice through those two is first class.
I have also heard some sensational horn speakers BUT those have been hand built "one off's".
Lastly there have also been a couple of field coil speakers that standout & I would love the hear the Destination Audio speakers with their field coil options.
For the money - its hard to go past the Zellatons though.

 

[Paul1960]

Kerry

I have been listening to these PE all day today and I’ve been playing all of my demo tracks. I’m sure the set up by Gideon is a huge factor as I’m simply astonished at every track I play because everything sounds truly remarkable. They sound like electrostatic speakers with a bottom end that comes out of no where. The air around strings is dramatic but what really grabs me is the speed and attack in the deep bass. I don’t think I’ve ever heard drums as good as this and piano that sounds like piano. Everything is so top to bottom linear. I’m not detecting any coloration And for those who say a solid state amp is better, i say perhaps, but here’s the caveat……. There is so much headroom now that i find I am actually turning my preamp down by two clicks on the gain control. Nothing is lacking and the sound with these is everything that Gideon promised. I love my electronics and the sound now at lower volumes proves a wild experience. These speakers have been settling in and today seems to be the best sonically since these loaners arrived. More to come……

I think you have made at least a couple of references to the Ultra's sounding like electrostatic speakers as a positive thing. I'm curious in what way they outperform high end electrostatics or how you think electrostatics are lacking?

 

[Steve williams]

Read FJ’ Big Dog posts from a few days ago. He summed it up perfectly. re electrostats

 

[Steve williams]

I think you have made at least a couple of references to the Ultra's sounding like electrostatic speakers as a positive thing. I'm curious in what way they outperform high end electrostatics or how you think electrostatics are lacking?

This is a key important question and I would suggest the following: Ribbons and electrostatics have transparency qualities but always fall short on the power range. Simply no weight behind images. The amazing thing about Zellaton is its ability to have see through qualities but with so much weight and dynamic energy. I commented many time here in this thread that the first two things I noticed about the speaker coming from 35 years of using big Wilsons was the amazing bottom end to these speakers and also the sound stage

I posted yesterday that several members suggested I consider a change in amplification but I found there was absolutely no need as so many times when listening yesterday I had to turn down the gain control two clicks on my preamp. There are 24 gain positions in my preamp . Normally I listen in the 5-6 position when streaming and yesterday I was at the 3 So also when I played tape and vinyl I was reducing the gain as my ears were overloaded