Velocitor. It's what Lloyd Walker called his passive power distributor. It too fits ruby-filled Corelli. Here we must revisit the original Albedo Audio slogan to avoid confusion. I called it a courageous slogan because generic audiophile parlance outs 'bright' as imbalance where high frequencies are forward, sharp, possibly strident or glassy. Now bright is bad and a 4-letter curse.
But there's also a balanced version of the very same condition. That's uniformly bright to make a key distinction. It turns up the virtual stage lights front to back and illuminates all frequencies at once. That effect is lit up all over. It's how Albedo's brightness of sound becomes its own rightness of sound. That's how I heard the Corelli addition. It's why a fundamental side effect of its more light-filled clarity was enhanced pace, rhythm and timing. Such higher beat fidelity doesn't rush our tunes faster through clock time of course. Still they feel more vigorous or snappy; what musicians call more in the pocket. Hence Walker's word pick of velocitor, my energizer slash accelerator choices on the previous page.
In the same context, bright is the quality of a precocious child whose innate intelligence and curiosity compared to a dullard's are outgoing so forward but not indicators of a worrisome imbalance. Au contraire. Calling someone's wit sharp is no complaint either but compliment. Ditto Corelli. In the context of time-unconfused¹ speakers—small widebanders with 6.8kHz AMT—this injection of flavor or personality was readily obvious. I'd call it on par with swapping amps from cap-coupled class A to DC-coupled class A/B if those had identical tonal balance. That's a big 'if' to make this an unlikely stand-in. But the point holds. Upstairs Corelli's influence exceeded the few minor clicks I expect from generic tweaks.
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¹ In speakers, time alignment is a contentious topic. Most don't give it another thought. In my experience however, the absence of typical xover-induced phase shift in the 1-5kHz can benefit clarity. As it happens, our MonAcoustics SuperMon Mini upstairs and Qualio IQ downstairs both meet that condition of no filter across that bandwidth. It seems fair to mention it as a possible influencer on how much Corelli's action can imprint itself on perceived musical timing?
No sooner had the virtual pixels dried on said footnote that an acoustic not electrical function threw a monkey wrench into it. When Corelli hoofed downstairs to have me listen again for the first shifty hour's worth of transformation, I was surprised to hear a lot less of it. The same held true for a day later. Then it dawned. Of course! With the Polish IQ's open plexi baffle, its 600-8'000Hz bandwidth with 2nd-order end stops radiates dipole. It gives it fabulous spaciousness, dynamics and tone without causing room issues since the pattern stops well shy of any bass. Across the vocal range, deliberate reflections simply set up a more active ambient field. It's that field of active indirect sound which undermined Corelli's purifier/accelerator action on transients. I still heard some of the higher contrast ratio but none of the upstairs speed advantages. Those were neutralized by the speaker's acoustic radiation pattern. To revisit the upstairs 'aha' moments, I needed another conventional radiator. Sayonara IQ. Kon'nichiwa Aptica. 'twas Albedo Audio's original 2-way transmission-line Accuton with 1st-order filters. Its ceramic membranes would make perfect demonstrators for higher transient fidelity.
Here's that setup, Corelli on the far right.
Without needing to be particularly well recorded, this track syndicated the upstairs-type tale tone for glorious bouzouki tone. With plenty of glittering tremolo as though from a Doctor Zhivago balalaika troupe, Corelli's penchant for more honed attacks showed off as expected. By contrast it also showed how the acoustic function of the prior speaker's radiation pattern could completely dominate to undo such advantages. It's why the LessLoss BlackGround's weighting on the trailing edges had overplayed its hand on the IQ. That speaker is already unusually gifted in that discipline. As so often, how a hifi tweak will manifest "depends". Dipole or omni speakers are simply in the crass minority. They and unduly treble-forward designs only factor as a brief footnote in a discussion on potential Corelli conflicts. The vast majority of loudspeakers should ideally suit Corelli's gifts; unless one simply favors a lazier softer sound.
Here I found it super synchronacious that in very short order I got to hear two mystery boxes which on their tin both claim to lower noise then expressed their non-textbook MO in such different ways. The storyteller aspect of reviewing adores that. Otherness means difference, conflict and drama. That makes for a more interesting story. The same synchronicity interceded by having the rather unusual IQ speaker on loan then still owning the Albedo Aptica. After all, the number and types of things reviewers have on hand is most limited. Whatever arrives must face that, compatibility be damned. But at times the hifi deities smile to generate more unexpected findings. I don't think it's just reviewers who prefer that to endless litanies of more of the same. About which, I still didn't think that the potency upstairs and downstairs was the same. Here's a possible reason. My downstairs active AC/DC Vibex filter always held its own against incoming competitors to show that its efficacy remains current. Now that broadband filter seemed to attenuate more AC line noise than the passive NCF Furutech upstairs. If so, downstairs was already quieter to hand Corelli a magnitude advantage up the stairs. A second more marginal 'why' prospect was the DSD1'024 DAC. I knew its focus to be slightly softer than that of the downstairs Sonnet Pasithea. The Cen.Grand renders images a touch bloomier and larger hence in less high relief and focus. Again, that'd give Corelli's particular skillset more to work with and on.
In any event, I decided to move it back there to hear two other monitor speakers, Acelec's Model One above and the sound|kaos Vox 3awf. I felt that the smaller system's hardware maximized my visitor's impact to show it off in the brightest possible light. From this I still extricate a second potential qualifier for most successful Corelli employment. The more efficient our current AC filter, conditioner, regenerator or balanced power solution is, the smaller the contribution of Corelli should become? If so, it would seem particularly tailormade for passive distributors which solely focus on the quality of their wiring, socketry, output impedance and current delivery but shun any attempts at filtering.
