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Øystein Sevåg
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Vinnie was relieved when I assured him that I'd run his amps into grown-up and not S&W brand speakers—sissies & wusses—which are optimized for the kind of low-power amps I'm openly fond of. Hence no 100dB Voxativ Ampeggio. Instead there was the Aries Cerat Gladius from Cyprus. That's a sealed 12-inch 3-way with Raal ribbon, Fostex widebander and Fostex woofer plus massive outboard crossover. While it can be successfully powered by a 10-watter due to its benign impedance, it just as happily or more so plays to 100 watts. My equally sealed Boenicke Audio B10—I don't like ported bass—actually needs power. It's a very compact non-box with twin-paralleled flat-cone mid/tweeters firing forward mated to two opposed sidefiring 10-inch woofers. The B10 naturally suffers low efficiency and appreciates current to properly control its Gallo Ref 3.5-type "look ma no air behind 'em" bass units. That speaker would be my second feeler on Liliana's pulse. |
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| For a recognizable amplifier reference I had ModWright's KWA 100SE. All cabling was Zu Event. Source was APL Hifi's NWO-M with Audiophilleo 2 USB/coax converter via KingRex uArt cable on battery power. For preamps I had a nice phalanx of options, from Bent Audio's Tap X to Esoteric's C-03 to ModWright's LS-100 to Sasa Cokic's one-up single-stage DHT 101D preamp. Coming off the ultra fast ultra transparent FirstWatt SIT-1 mono, it became instantly apparent how the Liliana's denser meatier heavier voicing was less likely to benefit from an infusion of any more connective tissue. Musical chairs through my preamps verified this. I quickly ended up with John Chapman's fully remote-controlled autoformer passive rather than any of my active units. This created an appreciable up-tick in resolution and insight particularly with ambient retrieval and depth of field; more potent bass—the one relative weakness of the 101D triode—and a more feathery effervescent treble. |
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Dragojević & Hauser
Noć nek' tiho svira |
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Aries Cerat Gladius crossover
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 John Jorgenson 5tet
Ultraspontane |
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With such minor hardware match-making accomplished, Red Wine Audio's new Liliana confirmed its maker's ambitions. Never mind demure black-box status. This was high-level performance. The high-octane concertized Manouche Jazz of the John Jorgenson Quintet—think Frank Vignola or Joscho Stefan, not Romane or Stochelo—combined rhythmic brio and fine arpeggio precision if not the extreme on-string visibility and vigor of the departed SIT monos. Stephane Wremble's related guitar work showcased the same greater warmth and tighter weave of the musical fabric. This used the SIT's to-a-honed-point pencil with its tip worn down to paint rounder, softer and fuzzier. |
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 Stephane Wremble
Terre des Hommes |
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Left column top to bottom - NWO-M, 101D, Tap X | right column - 27" iMac, C-03, Eximus DP1, LS100
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The metallic fire flies usually stirred up into heavy coruscation around such virtuoso guitar work were lazier. That type of harmonic speed and fine crunch at which the static induction transistors excel was clearly toned down. It most likely was a function of Vinnie's cathode follower. This ceded rise-time incisiveness, striated sculpting and probably even bandwidth to greater weightiness coupled to very good drive and nice dynamics more macro than micro.
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 Dorantes Sur |
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That same observation factored on massed fistfuls of piano fury compliments of Dorantes' Sur. With ties to Chano Dominguez' Latin Jazz and Flamenco ivories, that gorgeous album harnesses all the piano's percussive powers just as it does its lyrical prowess against string orchestra. The Liliana downplayed the heavy jackhammer action on the strings whereby the leading-edge attacks separate out from the follow-up energizing of the resonant body. The RWA monos played this cuddlier than my references. In that they tracked the ModWright. That also sits more on the yang side where the FirstWatt amps have consistently mined and refined the yin. For Liliana think powerful push/pull valve amp and you've got their measure: plenty of low-down rumble when the left hand gets busy, less teased-out tinkles, percussive edge and glassy overall brilliance in general and over to the right. |
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| The basic RWA recipe—density, fleshiness, warmth, weight—had been transposed intact but pushed up to ModWright class. Whilst the KWA-100SE went a tad farther on ambient recovery and micro detail, those amps were far closer to each other than each was to the SIT. Both emulate transformer-coupled valve amps of the push/pull sort. The FirstWatters mirror rare single-ended OTL. It's why they benefit very nicely from a superior single-stage direct-heated triode preamp to inject a whiff of elastic fluidity and inter-note tissue but lose their innate speed with anything less. If that crystallized unconcealed sound is your ideal, the Liliana's polarity in the other camp wants the watery purity of a passive to maximize separation and micro resolution. If you'd rather pack more meat, ModWright's 6SN7-based LS-100 would serve well. For low-volume listening the SIT type sound clearly has the superior intelligibility. It magnifies down to a lower level. Molecules not cells. Or think higher altitude where the air is thinner. Liliana's milieu is more humid like an overcast summer day by the lake. The focus is on the physicality of feeling rather than the clarity of seeing. |
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 Bruckner Eighth
Furtwängler/Vienna |
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For ultimate 3D sculpting, a sense of close mic proximity, heightened focus and energetic charge, the quick incisive loose-weave approach is the ticket. For wallop, weight, beefiness, sheer punch and a gentler more complimentary treatment of lesser source material, Liliana is. It's also the 12AU7 buffer's rationale in Peachtree Audio's Grand Integrated. But that's defeatable. Liliana's is permanently in the circuit. You have to appreciate its presence. Tube rolling affords some flexibility. My SET-based assortment of power triodes was pitifully lean on small-signal tubes. I only unearthed a pair of Philips-branded 6922 in Amperex cartons. With them I still felt I had to crank the volume higher to hit my personal 'saturation index' than with my preternaturally acute SITs. Granted, those are the culmination of 10 years on this job. The only other recent commercially current amp that performs at their rarefied level is the €5.150 15wpc Bakoon AMP-11R from Korea. The Liliana simply isn't that quicksilvery or down-to-the-bone resolved. There's a comfort factor involved. With more ordinary recording values—to music-first omnivores those should far outnumber audiophile productions—the obvious advantage is reduced propensity to sound skeletal, texturally eviscerated and punished by a treble that's too familiar with white noise. That was the verdict on the Gladius speakers. Enter Sven Boenicke's B10.
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 Maria del Mar Bonet
Terra Secreta |
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Into this load Liliana stretched her legs as though to kick up a gear. The Raal/Fostex duo of the Gladius is the more resolved driver combo. Around it one can build a tremendously lucid system. Meanwhile Boenicke's paralleled woofers work well up into the midrange. They require altogether higher input voltages to come on song. And they fire sideways. This renders the majority of the audible range omnipolar. That's about an altogether more diffuse reflected sound. Here Liliana's obviously stout current output made the vital difference. Boenicke's inherently very spacious but perhaps somewhat diaphanous presentation grew roots into terra firma and for that more focused. The very same amplifier attributes which had weighed down the highly responsive Gladius now lifted up the B10 to express greater embodiment, gumption and firmness. Its bass which usually borderlines my room exhibited none of the loose bloominess which lower-power amps despite sufficient gain to play plenty loud tend to be guilty of. |
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stock JJ 6922 tubes set atop, NOS Philips inside, Bakoon AMP-11R in the middle, silver battery chargers in the back
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Extrapolating I'd propose that Liliana will best be used into speakers which can actually tap more output than a mere handful of watts. It reshuffles a sonic assessment's weighting. Consider the book titles 'The God Particle' vs. 'The Goddamn Particle'. Supposedly physicist Leon Lederman originally contemplated the latter for his now famous tome on the Higgs boson. A small shift—just four letters less in his case—can a very big difference make. So do drive the Liliana into a power-sucking load to get the full goddamn light show, okay?
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Wrap. Vinnie Rossi's Red Wine Audio Liliana (except for power-on transients) is a dead-quiet valve/Mosfet hybrid tuned for heft and drive. Its all about sonic corporeality. It's not about max acceleration, the jumpiest of reflexes or the most exploded resolution. It's about a certain comfort factor. At the Signature 15's price, that was a real advance over much of the competition. It loudly screamed value and our Realsization Award. At $6.000 the value proposition mellows when a $4.295 ModWright KWA-100SE buys you a far classier enclosure, equivalent power and very similar performance. That said the RWA recipe has been successfully scaled up to drive beastlier speakers. It simply doesn't penetrate into the truly advanced realm of low-power Bakoon or FirstWatt (which admittedly limit speaker options and are very rarefied examples of the ultra-fi craft). Saying that isn't a diss. Little goes that far. It's simply that when an observer's markers get reset, thereafter the new standards must apply to everything. It's not about fair. It's about keeping it real. 'Real' here also applies to my personal townhouse conditions. Despite very thick walls of historic buildings abutting each others down a long street, neighbors are part of the picture. That means less than trigger-happy levels. And that means a search for maximum mojo at volumes that are civilized even at 21:00 hours. Hence my arrival at FirstWatt and now also Bakoon.
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Unless my upcoming encounter with Zu's new Druid 5 changes that playing field, the Liliana quite reminds me of the speaker house from Ogden/Utah. Stubbornly committed to a core solution—in their instance the 10.3" twin-cone widebander—the signature sound gets refined but stays in place. A Soul Superfly sticker makes for the perfect eye-to-eye encounter. Once a Definition 4 sticker shows up, many might make eyes at even greater resolution elsewhere. That could hold true also for Liliana.
But as always, satisfaction is a simple matter of agreeing with any given spot on the sonic map. Applied equally and consistently to build quality, to the proven battery concept, to applicability (which includes most speakers any shopper in these leagues would consider) and finally to the core but now refined sound signature, the most relevant catch phrase for Liliana really is super solid! That then becomes your destination...
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