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As is my bum? Admit it. With Ella's stock bass tuning plus my custom mid/treble calibration, it's what you must have thought. Isn't this sound a lot more morphable than standard passive boxes are with all manner of different amps? Yes and no. The adjustments only affect the amplitude domain gently and in linear tilt rather than any peaky fashion. They do not change the innate gestalt of high linear damping and phase/time constancy. One can go on a minor diet or fitness regime to shift a few pounds and curves but the body per se remains of the same gender, race and type. Those factors dominate as consistency. To cut to the chase, think pronounced lack of personality. If you voice a system for your personal vision to create a distinct personality, this will be your make-it/break-it proposition. Ella 3 is on about neutrality.
For the geeks amongst us, beauty here is more than skin deep. PSI do first-rate work.
Of course unless one worked a recording studio to daily compare live sound to master files, one wouldn't know neutrality from Adam. Or Eve. The best the rest of us can do is judge by contrast. Here Ella 3 was more neutral than pretty much any passive speaker I've had through. This went well beyond frequency response. It dug deeper into consistent phase behavior to manifest as an absence or far lower level of the colorations we all consider normal. These colorations arise from endless nonlinear impedance swings in our speakers. Such variations and ragged phase angles affect our amplifiers. And that creates personality.

A proper linear power supply of very low noise.
Here Ella's design brief acts as a constant damper. Think chaperone. She minimizes unwanted behavior with unflinching supervision. Such a wholesale or at least partial removal of familiar colorations (albeit possibly welcome as additives or flavorants) translated in peculiar fashion. Where my usual soundkaos Wave 40 widebanders with ribbon tweeters express more air, gush factor, in-room projection, succulence and motional energy, Ella 3 was the more precise and articulate. Yet this felt more restrained/contained or staid. It was clearly drier and texturally matte rather than glossy. In fact I thought of it as emotionally slightly dull or aloof. Though I dislike nationalistic clichés—in this case even more so since my soundkaos eggs are CH too—the sound felt very 'Swiss': correct, courteous and calm.

Objectively I couldn't find any fault. I would have liked even more harmonic brilliance for more nuanced tone modulation but the core thing wasn't that. Despite the implausibility to the eye, actual bass extension really required no add-on sub. My Zu Submission would have added infrasonic weightiness but that wasn't essential either. To continue my impromptu rhapsody in c minor, the sound was complete, clean, credible, capable, consistent, collected, clear, constant. It was all the things a father should want in his daughter's suitor. To conclude on C major, here's the combinant word: Civilized. German-speaking Swiss. Technically flawless.

To explain why my reaction to it was deep respect for Klangwerk's acoustic integration chops but not outright lust, let's go on a very brief detour. Live recordings excepted, I don't believe there's really such a thing as any live event we should wish to recreate. Recordings are very artificial constructs. They're spliced, layered, manipulated and 'photoshopped'. It's not about recreating their constructedness. Who'd wish to view this artifice of splicing, layering and ProTools trickery exposed? Personally I should favor a mental or emotional state induced by playback like a very fine meal. That's not mere caloric fuel to keep the body going. It's not about the chef's process or his secret ingredients. It's about more than taste receptors too. It's deeper and more multi-sensory. One forgets the facilitators of mechanics and technique. Those remain in the kitchen or studio and behind the scenes lest the magic spoil. We all know it. Once exposed all magic tricks are finished forever. Why catch out the illusionist to see how it's done? The magic is being transported like an innocent child.
A dishy wave guide à la Amphion, Genelec or PSI. The grill cloth for the mid/woofers can be customized as Markus makes these by hand. Think different colors, even special cloth.
Ella 3 played to this rather more matter of fact. In the kitchen. Recipe in hand. That's of course exactly what any pro-monitoring tool ought to so you may oversee the mixing and mastering process down to the bone. Hence it's all about goals and expectations. What do you want of your hifi? It's a very personal thing and the crux of this matter. Career audiophiles revel in their freedom to co-create. With growing experience they shape the playback experience more and more specifically to trigger very personal hot buttons whatever those may be. It's completely unscientific, subjective and hedonistic. Any such path to a personalized eventually fully satisfying system is very unpredictable. Dumb luck excepted it's a matter of much financial trial and error. Ella 3 eliminates all that guess work. You just need to agree with the result. Here I merely add that by the time you arrive at a more magic system which you truly fancy, you'll also have spent far more money. In fact you could get so burnt out by the endless buy'n'sell routine whilst never hitting the big payday, your interest in hifi might curl up and die. Time for the obituaries.

To return to nuts 'n' bolts as based on my room and the designer's calibration and setup to it regardless of subsequent front end swaps, I'll call this sound slightly dark, muted and dry. Markus added how many setups err towards the slightly bright, hence his counter bass adjustments. Dynamics were responsive and scaled broadband. The soundstage was well sorted and very focused. The overall gestalt was controlled like on a very tight leash. This felt minorly metronomic. I'm certain that Ella 3 measures admirably linear. She sure sounded like it. She's surprisingly compact for her bandwidth and output. She's also undeniably attractive. In theory she'd seem uncomplicated and unfussy. My experience which mirrored prior semi and true omnis started out way too dark in the midband to be more not less placement sensitive. Like all downfiring rather than front-firing bass systems I've heard which here is a function of one small front and two equally small sidefiring drivers all ported into the floor, bass lacked the full frontal guttural attack. But it was timed exceptionally well. It played very clean and pitch intelligible without overhang. Tight. It just wasn't of the super-kick karate sort - not that this driver complement would have suggested so in the first place.

Whilst the off-axis perspective was less immutable than my German Physiks HRS-120 whose >200Hz 360° omnipolar widebander keeps the center image centered even whilst sitting slightly outside one speaker, Ella 3 was clearly no head-in-a-vise mistress. Three folks on a couch (one centered, one flanking each side) will all enjoy proper stereophony without tonal balance shifts. Hardcore 'philes still practicing lone-wolf listening won't care. Younger folks who grew up after the man-cave stereo era do much music on the move or whilst multi-tasking. They really should cotton to this. I also envision parents expose their kids to music whilst doing ordinary household things like eating, playing and studying; or entertain friends and neighbors with music in the background. In such scenarios more listeners will soak up better sound than they would with beamier speakers. If that perhaps doesn't describe the average audiophile, that's the whole point.

An Apple iPad mini really does make for the perfect Ella 3 remote control. I finally overcame my anti WiFi leanings to get with the program. As I knew I would, I was struggling hard with the intense radiation of having my router's WiFi enabled. I had to revisit my friend Marco at his Le Papillon Bleu boutique in Vevey to acquire some more high-strength tachyonic antidotes. My wife actually gets migraines from WiFi so it's not something to be discounted or written off as imaginary.
Klangwerk condensed. Ella 3 was never really conceptualized to crack... er, appeal to the hifi nutters. She's far too pretty, tidy, compact, integrated and locked in. She instead aims at multi-hobby'd folks who love music amongst many other things in life. As they do for all those other things, they demand high quality without complications. They want the results without tweaking, search and process. No altar to hifi. No focus on hardware. No terminal shopping angst. No joy over the chase whilst forgetting to arrive. And most of all, no separation of hifi from their social life. It's down to the three basics then: bona fide quality, timeless decorator appeal and utter simplicity. To such folks that's deliverance pure and simple. Why not to us nutters is the question. That delivers us at the conclusion and final word: SimpliFi. And wouldn't you know it, that's also the name of Klangwerk's US importer. Coincidence? Certainly not. It's by design. Chapeau!
 
Klangwerk comments on a few additional technical points.
• Ported design: Active speakers tend to be closed-box designs, especially those with motion feedback sensors on their membranes. With AOI a ported design becomes possible and preferable to benefit from the advantages of ported designs, i.e. higher driver damping, reduced cone excursions, smaller moving mass, higher output and a lower -3dB point. As we adapt damping with AOI the alignment can be chosen across a wider range than a passive ported design would allow. Negative damping effects at higher frequencies can be reduced. With more flexible alignments the air volume can be smaller (up to half) to reduce the negative effects of big cabinets. The moving mass of the woofers can be lowered compared to passive ported designs to allow use of our lightweight HDA membranes which are beneficial in the midrange. The port section can be kept relatively large to reduce air velocity. Below the port frequency a high-pass filter reduces cone excursions where this becomes critical due to loss of system damping. Passive ported systems without high-pass filters suffer from useless heavy cone excursions in their infrasonics. Inside the cabinet we introduced a damping element which has two effects:
  • it reduces the typically strong longitudinal cabinet mode
  • it reduces the output of the port as typically the woofers move very little at the port tuning frequency. With a damping element and amplifier adjustment one can increase the woofer's output over that of the port without risk of unduly heavy excursions of the membranes.
That ported designs are 4th-order alignments compared to a 2nd-order closed box design has to be accepted as well as the chuffing noises and a stronger output of midrange artefacts. With our downfiring port, a wide port section and a slot port design these negative effects are reduced.

• Radiation: Our constant directivity behaviour over a wider frequency range with the 3-woofer arrangement has some beneficial effects up to 45° off axis. Phase accuracy and constant directivity with the listening axes crossing in front of the listener are the only options to widen the sweet spot. From 60° - 120° off axis and towards the higher frequencies one does see a less even slope with the sidefiring woofers due to comb filter effects when compared to one front-radiating woofer. Hence the overall energy to the sides is not significantly higher but will be in some frequency bands whilst being lower in others. Yet one can still place the speakers in front of a wall or close to the sidewalls but then must simply toe them in more severely. Important is the use of the roll-off filter to reduce overall energy from the wall reflections.

• Interaction with room acoustics: I compared the measurements of your room with our showroom. The differences are:
  • a slightly stronger room mode around 35-40Hz but well damped
  • a stronger absorption from 50-300Hz in your room as an effect of the wooden floor/ceiling construction
  • a slightly stronger reflection between 400-1500Hz
  • above that our results differ little
The audible effects are a bit of a leaner bass/lower midrange except for the very low bass and a bit of excess in the midrange. But I found this none too negative and the sound was still pleasant and 'easy' on the ear. The big advantage in your room is that it has no strong or little damped modes. But speakers with less low bass or a smooth roll-off like a closed-box design with slightly accentuated upper bass might perform better. On the other hand this type of alignment would be more problematic in modern massive constructions. So it is very difficult with one single speaker alignment to get optimum results in many different situations even with our option of the adjustable roll-off. But there's still potential for optimization which could involve subtle EQ in the digital domain.

• Acoustic design goals: I like to be immersed in the music, to be immediately inside the sound and virtual acoustic. I am a surround-sound fan in fact. The sound should be as precise, clear and neutral as on the recording but the effect of the room should help to increase the effect of depth and width. This is a bit different from the studio approach where the recorded acoustic is the only one you want to hear. Take the clarity of a monitor and make it more of an emotional machine. Furthermore when you walk around, the soundstage should not fade. I don’t like to hear sound coming just from one speaker. Also sound textures and clarity shouldn’t change. Concerning different recordings, the speakers should be all arounders rather than specialists and a bit forgiving. According to the reaction of many people this works quite well.
Kind regards,
Markus Thomann
Klangwerk website