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With the first one, the incredible ability of creating a splendid holographic space independent from the speakers was demonstrated. Rollins’ saxophone sounded a bit to the left of the left speaker while the percussion was on the inside of the right speaker. Usually those nuances are not audible and the sax seems to emanate directly from the speaker but here there was no doubt that the spot microphones aimed at those instruments also registered the other instruments to ‘emboss’ their signatures on the recording space even when the sound engineer panned them hard into their respective channels. With Davis, the richness which monophonic recordings are capable of was nicely shown. This meant space in only one direction – depth. The Dobermanns and electrostats show this ideally, placing the main instrument in the front and sized bigger, the others farther back and smaller. The Hansens did something else. Although depth was splendid, it was more important to show who was most important in the band at any given time – who followed the leader, who played a solo. The instruments farther back were smaller than those in the front but when one took over (and in Jazz they constantly switch), everything around it became silent and the musicians’ vigilance, how they responded to one another, more obvious. This was an emotional reproduction which in most cases remains out of reach for other loudspeakers. I even believe that most designers, not to mention audiophiles, have never heard anything like it.


So it’s these two characteristics of space and speed with coherence which place the Hansen Prince V2 on a pedestal. But they would not be there if the timbre wasn’t perfect or the woofer not fantastically integrated with the rest of the spectrum. The bass is not as defined or as powerful of attack as the metal SEAS cones in the Harpia Acoustics but reaches lower and has a nicer more saturated timbre. Similar to my speakers, I needed to close the Hansen’s bass-reflex port with a sponge—my room is not that big—but this improved the impulse response and better balanced the sound. There still was more amplitude than appropriate for a flat response (I am talking about a room response, not the loudspeakers themselves) but hell, I’ve heard ‘flat’ loudspeakers and couldn’t stop listening soon enough. I believe that music requires a slightly elevated bass response for everything to make sense and the Prince can supply all the bass anyone would need – as much as is recorded.


One of my friends who came over for a listen claimed at first that the Dobermann reached lower - until we played Kraftwerk and a few others like it. He was almost blown off the sofa then. Such infrasonics hadn’t been audible before but it was equally important how splendidly well the woofer was integrated with the midrange driver. A kick drum hit on the Rollins disc was superbly coherent and the whomp did not lag behind the skin contact, i.e. wasn’t slow. Subjectively the lower frequencies here were a little warm and ‘thick’ but this was the combination of the speakers’ character and my bass preference – incisive with the speed of light as I know it from my Dobermann. Ditto for the voices on Sinatra’s Nice’N’Easy or Chris Connor’s beautiful twofer Chris Connor Sings The George Gershwin Almanac of Songs. On the first, the orchestra was exceptional where it usually is too separated from the voice. Here it finally had a solid base and nice warm timbres.


So I finally did encounter something in my home which clearly bettered the Harpia Acoustics Dobermann that I like very much and admire for its stunning coherence, speed and precision. Subjectively, the Canadian Hansen Audio speakers are warmer and a tad slower. The first item is accurate as the tonal balance is set lower and the treble is not as expansive. But the second thing is an illusion. The Prince is incredibly quick but does not attack the listener or demand that attention be focused on details. The Canadian creations also expertly differentiate between recordings but in a different way than I am used to. They do not place this aspect before the music but leave it for desert. I repeat: I finally heard something to best the Dobermann and demonstrate a path the Harpia designer should pursue. To me, the Hansen Audio Prince v2 are speakers which exist for the music and not the sounds; but which show the sounds far better that most other hi-end contenders. Incredible!


However, the coupe de grace arose from live recordings, especially Patricia Barber’s Companion and the Tsuyoshi Yamamoto Trio’s Blues For Tee. I have never attended a concert by the latter but know by heart the sound of his piano and technique, having listened over and over again and with the greatest joy to the 45RMP vinyl remasters from the late Cisco company. Blues For Tee was a live club cut issued by Three Blind Mice on XRCD2. I like this disc very much although its sound is a bit dark at first and not as direct as the studio recordings he made. But over the Hansen I heard a real venue, a club opening up behind the loudspeakers. The sound was very smooth, slightly warm and not set on analysis but rather, very natural and almost live. This was the first time I heard that at home. On the other hand I did attend a small Barber concert at the Katowice club Hipnoza where I sat about two meters from the stage. Although her vocals were under-amplified, the accompanying band—really outstanding—was almost unplugged. With the Companion disc, I now saw her band very much as I did live. I am talking about some kind of freedom in serving up the sounds with their uncanny timbres. The Prince achieves a rare balance between the analytical and the fluid. That is a great coherence of amalgamation. These loudspeakers show clearly how live sound is not as detailed as we often hear it at home, how the soundstage is not as precisely carved out from thin air. At home we have to go for certain compromises and tricks to be able to talk about ‘reproducing’ an event. But only speakers of Hansen stature place it somewhere in the middle by giving a phenomenal showing of modern loudspeaker technology.