This review page is supported in part by the sponsors whose ad banners are displayed below

Moving the CL-2/CLS-10 threesome in place of my usual sealed 12" 3-ways confirmed certain observations that tend to be true for such setups in general.
  1. No matter their extension—and Anthony's loading does go the extra mile—unless massively paralleled, small midwoofers can't move much air. If you're used to far bigger drivers in stereo, you'll be wanting for their guttural impact and power-zone violence where bass transients box with bare knuckles.
  2. Powered subwoofers with class D amps of ultra-high damping factor often produce a drier wirier texture than the frequency range above them if that's driven from a very different type of amp. Here very critical listeners will still detect a seam even if the amplitude domain has been properly managed to be smooth.
  3. Powered subwoofer bass tends to remain intelligible down into rather lower playback levels than normal passive speakers which become more indistinct during whisper sessions.
  4. The freedom to position monitors for best soundstaging whilst the sub gets strategically located and separately adjusted for output tends to make for superior in-room integration of low bass.
C-2 in black, grilles removed; CLS-10 in Cherry, grill on - stands by Britain's Track Audio
The perennial challenge is to find the optimum low-pass value and amplitude for the subwoofer. Taking the low-pass higher creates more power-zone assist for the monitors (good) but runs the risk of undue thickness (bad). Higher values nearly invariably mean compensation with lower sub volume to hide the transition. But that steals from the low bass where the monitors subtract themselves from the equation. Here Anthony's very practical +3dB or +6dB bass boost option compensates for this very compensation. My final setting thus had the low-pass at roughly 100Hz, the sub volume very low* and boost at max. In the equally perennial dance between lesser front-wall distance for greater boundary reinforcement vs. greater distance for superior stage depth, I opted for the latter. Why deliberately hamstring speakers that so excel at soundstaging?
_________________________

* To hit this setting just so I really could have wished for a far shallower taper on the potentiometer. The very powerful class D amp comes on very fast. Overshooting is too easy. A revision might broaden the adjustment range in what is presently less than the first quadrant.

As the next image hints at, my writing desk puts its chair in front of the left speaker. Without a preamp's deliberately counter-skewed balance control—purist preamps often no longer have one—in that chair this means mostly mono. Not so with the Classico. I didn't have to touch the ModWright LS-100 to enjoy a proper soundstage that simply went about three quarters rather than all the way to the right speaker. The upshot is most practical. Listening becomes far less critical of where you sit. More people can enjoy proper stereo together. It's that tweeter again. It should be called the democracizer. A directly related benefit is the ability to pull the speakers counter-intuitively far apart without collapsing center fill.

But that was merely the half of it (three quarters to avoid the hyperbolical). The CL-2s also staged well beyond their outer edges. In my setup this produced a densely packed truly spectacular wall-to-wall canvas with complete fill of and into the room corners. Stage height showed up at least one third taller than the speakers' upper edges. Pulling out Mercan Dede's 800 not only for ambient-style bass but exceptional layering and ultra precise imaging from a superb producer cum DJ would have had soundstage freaks feel like the proverbial kids in the candy store. One simply cannot discuss this speaker without commenting on its nearly supernatural image focus, first-rate layering, sorting and finally or foremost its enormous scale of the virtual stage - if deliberately set up to exploit the latter.


Soundstaging became most impressive with classical music of course. But in a parallel reminder here the absolutely perfect aka non-fat integration with the subwoofer also became hyper critical or most easily outed if missed. (Incidentally, if you've never heard a C clarinet but love Maurice André-style pocket trumpets, try the brilliant Thomas Friedli with the Johann Melchior Molter concerto. It's a transitional Baroque piece which employs that rare high clarinet in similar fashion.) My big-rig free-space setup confirmed my earlier desktop assessment versus the Strada. The Classico II is the more grown-up performer. Joined to its stable mate subwoofer, it creates the more potent midbass transition on fullness or textural fleshiness though naturally not on ultimate punch (which, again, would require bigger artillery or many more smaller midwoofers).


To turn my ludicrously over-spec'd system into a real-world equivalent a prospective CL-2 customer might actually put together, I next replaced my expensive chain of iMac, NWO-M, LS-100 and F5 amp with my desktop electronics of iPod, iD100 and mINT.
Enlarge!