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Swedish reader Christer Lagvik: "I am still surprised that I preferred the Bakoon to my KR Audio amp. But I simply couldn't send it back to our importer after living with it for two weeks. It's clear and transparent as a mountain stream. Going back to tubes was like putting some silt into that stream." This quote was no underhanded proselytising against valves. We all like what we like. It merely illustrates a core quality of our speaker. And what happens when we take it out again.

TuneAudio Prime on FirstWatt SIT-1

American reader Fred Crane: "Now you've gone and done it. The Tune Audio Prime sounds like the curvy sister of a more svelte Rethm. Can't wait to hear it based upon your review and what I've heard about scaling up in their ranks. After the type of sound the Fostex gave you, I wonder how hopping into bed with the Albedo will contrast. I doubt there could be two more opposite sounds." Quite so. Here was highly crystallized clarity like a cut glass decanter. Or Christer's cold translucent Alpine burbling brook. Like the high-bandwidth current-mode Bakoon amp I'd described as "lit up all over", this quality seemed built upon steep rise times—vertical transients—and very low self noise. In the case of speakers, noise is not primarily electrical. It's mechanical. We can thus only presume superior mechanical S/N ratio when by triangulation a speaker with a less damped enclosure diminishes certain qualities we associate with the absence of low-level noise. What would those qualities be?


Space. Particularly the specificity of layering and the tacit overlay of recorded ambiance over our room's own are the most telling wins of lesser noise. It's true of powerline devices too. And properly engineered resonance isolation equipment racks. Having just come off the Prime with its more conventional Birch Ply box with downfiring rear horn, the Aptica's handling of space was more specific. More sorted, less generous. Image focus was higher. This removed subliminal blur and in general made virtual instruments a bit smaller. That I believe was tied directly also to timing exactitude. When harmonics rise smack in/on time atop their fundamentals rather than stagger delayed or premature from phase shift and dissimilar driver path lengths, such alignment wipes away motion blur, ghosting and incertitude. Rather than soft, fuzzy and biggish, things stand still as clear and defined. With it not the overall scale shrinks but the relative size of the various occupants within it.

Aptica on Goldmund Job 225

There's also a temporal aspect to it. Albedo's crisp transparency was as though counterpoint to the Prime's warmer fuzzier but also more fluidic redolent elastic feel. To talk in complementary pairs whilst overdrawing for emphasis, think PRaT/flow, staccato/legato, string/wood, attack/decay. To its credit and distinct from my personal read on the general metal-driver breed, the Aptica didn't default into sewing-machine sound. That's metronomic. Marching band rather than valse. Techno not swing. Albedo's tightening of the reins didn't suffocate the sound but did impose more law and order. By contrast to the gushing Greeks this felt more buttoned up. It sounded spatially enormous but materially smaller. The Greeks focused on flush-faced bodies in space, the Italians on negative space as the surrounding more aloof context. The Prime was earthy, the Aptica airy. On a wine scale think premium Super Tuscan versus a sweet bubbly Spumante.

Source stack

Sitting down with what really was my old flame's sister had our first dialogue a bit hesitant. The above sorting, exactitude and dimensionality were already evident. Juiciness, here-now presence and bollocks were pale and not sufficiently fleshed out. Bass tickled rather than hit. I could disguise some of it with higher playback levels. But that's a cheap cheat. Real body doesn't rely on compensatory SPL. And of course like Fred surmised, as really an alternate or different school sound to the departed Prime I couldn't expect the same weighting of qualities. Time to taxi my living room whilst hoping that introductory small talk would get more intimate to bridge the somewhat abstract safe distance of these pre break-in doldrums. For now my date kept chatting away. I kept looking at that dress of hers wondering.


Demythification. Hifi is full of myths. Some are born in reviews. Afterwards they're handed around like a pitcher of beer. Everyone imbibes. Each repetition confirms the good taste. The myth goes viral without being challenged. One I'm guilty of perpetuating? High-efficiency speakers are better whisperers. Given that these speakers required break-in from zero, part of the process occurred at low levels to keep the domestic and neighbourly peace. Now this particular pitcher hit empty. The Aptica was a whisperer par excellence. This went back to vertical transients and concomitant super intelligibility. Check the step response of complex multi-way speakers. They tend to be very confused in the time domain. Here single-driver widebanders—which as a genre tend to be highly efficient to birth the myth in the first place—have quite an advantage. But not exclusively so. Time-domain accuracy isn't inextricably linked to high efficiency after all. It would seem more associated with design simplicity. One- and two-ways more easily get the impulse response right (enough).


A co-conspirator in the myth of high-eff = superior low-volume playback are the more powerful amps required to drive inefficient speakers. At least in the still affordable realm they tend to be slower and more confused than two-stage amps with a single output device per channel (or a push/pull pair). That's the first-watt observation. Goldmund's Job 225 simply happens to be an affordable sufficiently powerful exception to this rule. Hence the 85dB Apticas did a perfectly brilliant job of being ultra legible in the dim light of very low volumes. Mainstream reviews of course never say this. Yet to my mind it's one of the most important qualities a real-world speaker must possess. 8:00 in the morning the neighbors haven't yet left for work. That's no time to crank it. Nor is 16:00 when your kid does homework. Nor 23:00 when your wife is asleep. Get the wrong speaker. It'll sound so boring at the necessary low levels that you simply pass. And how is that different from the exotic car in your garage? It's never taken out when the destination has no garage. That's because you worry over envious key marks when parked on the street. Here Aptica is a 10-year commoner's ride. You don't hesitate to park her even in the funky parts of town. This gives you more places to go and explore. Even an apartment dweller can listen anytime the mood strikes. That's big!