I fully agree, however, as you know my room quite simply is too small to adequately accommodate the Universums! Unfortunately!Hi Michael
You seem to forget that the Odeon 38/2 once stood in my living room before I got the Universums
My room is challenging in the bass due to it's gigantic room volume and huge glass fronts absorbing lots of bass energy and under these demanding circumstandes the Universums bettered the Odeon 38/2 in the bass in my room.
Now imagine what the Unis would do in your medium sized excellent sounding room
Hi Yakamoz
I own (as you might see on my avatar picture) and really love the hORNS Universum and I owned before the Odeon 32 and Odeon 38 (and know the Odeon 33 quite well, too).
I am not too fond of the AA speakers because I find the Universums tonally and timbrally more natural and organic sounding with excellent tranparency.
Your room will be fantastic with those generous dimensions
If you like electronic music a lot, then you might want to add subs to the Universums eventually.
Elecronic music would speak for the AA with their active subs, but for me that I rarely listen to that kind of music, I prefer the Universums performance on the other genres too much to go AA.
Where are you located?
, we tested and listened to probably a 15 speakers, and until the very last one we tested, non of the speakers could even convince us really, to better our amazing Cube Audio Nenuphar. Besides real dynamic music, the Cube´s pretty much laughed about everything we set up.Coming back to this older thread, i wanted to give some feedback about a speaker testing marathon throughout 2020.
At least something good that came with this insanity that we´re all in the middle of....
Looking for a new speaker that could fill our new loft that we already started to build
i.e. we had the Grandinote Mach9 aluminium cabinet, actually the press model for Germany, so i believe that should be quite a benchmark. The store in Berlin that borrowed the speakers to us, so we could listen to them in our environment, also gave us the big mono´s and the reference pre from Grandinote, so that we could compare the electronics to our Aries Cerat system. I believe it was 6 of us listening to the speakers throughout the week. The speaker was subjectively such a stress to listen to due to it´s unbelievable resolution, we all kept wondering how anybody could enjoy such speaker at home, when to us it seemed like, it´s more for the studio to check back the recording and what´s on it...
On the other hand, there are reports out there, claiming this "the best speaker on the market". When we changed the AC amp´s to the Grandinote electronics, things got even worse and left us wondering ...
Pretty much same experience with the AA Duo Mezzo and the Duo, the Horns Universum, Cessaro Wagner, Odeon 38, the really expensive A23 wide bander system at a friends ( which was probably the most impressive of all we heard, but too expensive, not build anymore, Keith almost out of business)... Pretty much all other speakers we had in our room the past 9 months, left us questioning the price politics in today´s audio business once more. Insanely high prices, for such poor experience... The Graham 5/5 was much fun to listen to, though nothing that kicked us out of our shoes as i.e the Cube´s did when they arrived and still do, but at least we thought "that is a nice sounding speaker that can be enjoyed in even long listening sessions", but ugly as hell ! No way it will find space in a normal living space.
All speakers sounded somewhat still to much like reproduction, only painted in different colors. Due to the Cube Audio´s and the Living Voice OBX-RW3 that we had for two years before replacing them, we know that our electronics can do much better on the right speakers.
Unfortunately the AC Symphonia are and will be way out of reach, especially in the color that we could live with, and it did not seem like we´re going to find another speaker yet, that could convince. So we had pretty much decided at some point that we will stop the testing and wait till the loft is ready to go and we take it from there.
Until then, the Cube Audio´s had to play Rock music as well, which even though it does so much better then any widebander i ever heard, it is still far away from being the strength of this speaker.
A week later i talked to a friend of mine and told him about the testing marathon and how speakers that cost beyond 50k€, left us wondering ...
That friend told me about a little cubical speaker that he just recently heard, that "blew my mind"! The speaker was a Wolf von Langa Son, a speaker i heard about from Thomas Fast who i know for many years due to my DPS turntable and several Lyra cartridges i got from him, but somehow never really considered. Well, i got in touch with Mr. von Langa and we made an appointment at his facilities. Couple days later, i found myself sitting in front of a nice and BIG Air Tight system and a beautiful analogue front end with a tonearm that has a field coil driver and cost´s almost as much as our Aries Cerat Diana Forte that finally will arrive next Sunday ... .
Two hour´s later, i paid the Son, we loaded them in my trunk, i went back home, hooked it up, just very little positioning, and off we go ever since !
I like it even better by quite a margin then what i heard at WvL´s place, but that can be very much related to our much bigger and nicely tweaked room and not necessarily with the electronics only.
Ever since that day, our beloved Nenuphar played only twice, for a short time, and spend´s most of the time in it´s crates, and we will most likely give it our for sale soon as we ended up, listening to the Son´s 99% of the time.
I believe at the end of the day it´s tastes and colors, but the WvL Son´s just hit our´s in a perfect way.
To us, after our eye opening experience with the brand of Aries Cerat, which remains our biggest discovery in 25 years inside this hobby in private, as a hobby drummer, and an owner of an event agency with a focus on sound and sound reproduction.
Still makes me laugh when i look at the market, and how a single guy from an island in the middle of nowhere, offers double the performance for half the price than the "big players in the market". Passion vs Marketing ? Probably. For sure the Wolf von Langa´s blew our minds almost at the same level, and still does on a daily bases, even though we haven´t heard the bigger creation yet....
We are very much looking forward to receive our Diana Forte next week, and once the Loft is ready to go, the Wolf von Langa Chicago is pretty much set to move in.
At this point:
Thanks to Mr. Willi Bauer from Bauer Audio for building the subjectively most amazing turntable out there. Simple, perfectly executed and build, and just smart for a super reasonable price, considering what you get ! To me it´s pretty much a LP12 and a Platine Verdier in one box, but much much more beautiful then the other two
Thanks to Stavros Danos for building our entire electronics. The very best we heard so far, and we heard and owned quite some ... Just to give an slight insight on the decision taking back in the days when we renewed our electronics for our "small" system.
When we bought the Genus 813, we did a comparsion to the Kondo Overture, M7/Gauk. combo and the Engström Arne. With the M7/Gauk combo i believe something was wrong, as it played very poor, but was out of reach budget wise anyway. The Arne we liked much more then the Overture as the Overture to us seemed very much colored, but not in a sweet way really, so that you could say, that´s the tune of that amp. We found it kinda strange ...
The Genus 813, half the price of the other two, smoked both other amp´s, i mean really smoked in a way, where i found myself saying, i would have decided for the Genus still, if the retail would have been 35k€, simply because it was the better amp in pretty much all aspects.
The fact, that the integrated headphone amp inside the Genus, played a 5k€ Stax we got from our dealer around the corner (who is main Stax dealer in Frankfurt area and has pretty much all models in demo), clearly better than it´s matching Stax amp, leads me to the conclusion, that this is, pound by pound, the best int. amp we have heard, and probably the best single purchase in higher priced audio equipment, period.
Driving the Genus 813 as power amp only with the Incito S pre, lift´s the amp at least a class up, but all benefits such as the headphone out, remain.
I truely believe this amp is really that good.
The Incito S that arrived a good month ago doesn´t come any short in comments, mind blowing stuff !
Genu(i)s at work. I take my hat off Stavros ! My highest regards.
Finally, i bumb into Wolf von Langa, this cool, white haired guy, who hand builds pretty much everything on his speakers, besides the cabinets, and comes up with a result that makes you wanna dance with every music you through at it, and that´s his smallest model btw. !
Again, this is all tastes and colors here, but as it seems, we kept the best for last as we have found the right speakers for our electronics.
Very much excited to have a visit with the Chicago some day soon once we are done building.
My highest compliment for this achievement.
Who ever wants to buy a speaker around 15k€, guys, you gotta listen to the Son !!! When you test them though, make sure, you follow the instruction and in doubt get advice from Mr. von Langa. In our room it reacted on the platform it was standing on. We ended up using the sorbotan discs that were provided with the speakers, sitting on a 30mm plywood board. Works prefect. When we take the board out, it goes deeper, but articulation goes back. Plain on the carpet, the bass goes somewhere, but for sure not well to listen ...
This is it from our end for now. Once we are done with the loft and have the Chicago´s tested, i´ll share a note.
in what you didn’t enjoy about “AA Duo Mezzo and the Duo, the Horns Universum, Cessaro Wagner, Odeon 38”?
Hi Bill,Thanks for your report and loving your record collection in your room behind the room treatment panels. Interesting choice - I heard the Son and certainly enjoyed it too.
Please would you be able to probe a bit deeper (preferably each one if you had time
Best.
))Hi Bill,
i believe making an extended statement to each speaker will blow my time, and as said, all this is of course still very much subjective.
The AA´s sounded aggressive and not balanced at all, almost like a high end PA system, the Odeons i founded super boring and slow, the Cessaro´s very polite, no big critics, but no finger snipping leg moving at all. The Odeons smaller version ( i believe it was 26) i heard in a private environment with AC Diana int., and even that i thought is super strange in sound and everything but exciting, completely out of balance sound, but the positioning of the speakers i found to be very poor in that room i have to admit. Typical living room set up, where pretty much the wife decides where the speakers have to sound best ...
I did like the Dynamikks Athos 10, forgot to mention them, but wouldn´t have changed it even to the Nenuphar´s. Looking back, i even wouldn´t have changed any of the speakers tested to my previous OBX RW3, which i believe is still an amazing and exceptional speaker. I still like the old Caldera MKII by Joachim Gerhard, blows most of the speakers today´s away when it comes to realism and imaging, needs the perfect spot in the room and the right amp though. A pair of E.A.R 861 mono bridged with a 912 did not do it on the Caldera´s, a pair of Audionet Mono´s created an fantastic sound... Just to get this straight, the 861´s plus the 912 pre i consider the best electronics we owned until the AC stuff came in, but the Caldera did not work with it at all, with our Harbeth´s it was match made in heaven i´d say.
Cheers
Thanks for your insights Marslo. Even though the AA´s we heard we´re from our reference dealer and probably played in well, i still believe it is a matter of taste. That´s why i took the GrandiNote´s as an example. Their level of resolution is way beyond anything i heard so far, but that, in my case, is exactly what makes it zero enjoyable for me, the balance to what i believe it sound sound like, is completelly off, especially on the emotional side of things, and that remains the most important part for me personally. But again, people out there favor these speakers above all others and i can clearly see why. And then there are people out there only listening to little jazz combo´s or a hand full of acoustic instruments and vocals. I´d bet, up to a certain amount of room size, there is nothing on the market that could deliver what the Nenuphar does in terms of realism and balance. For others who prefer Tool over Beethoven, they would not even look at the Cube Audio´s !
Amazingly beautiful looking, design proportions perfectly executed, sound wise on the other end of what i like. Bottom missing, emotionally not really involving, but very beautiful to look at, among the beauties so far.
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