Let there be light. I was out of the tunnel, v5 on its perch in the office heightened for purpose by a hand’s width to get the minuscule frontal widebander up to ear level. Pretty much out of the ‘opened by customs’ re-taped box, I heard no telltale 3-8kHz brightness and instead a very natural colour-intense midrange. Alas, revving up some ambient electronica by Mercan Dede betrayed an obvious lack of substance below ~60Hz. If Kruder & Dorfmeister or Yello were my staple office diet, I’d insist on a sub to add the missing octave down to 30Hz. Even in the nearfield without a strong tailwind from close front-wall placement for useful boundary gain, v5 proved that Physics have the last word. But beastly 'n' bombastic aren't what my desktop habits call for. On SPL and bass intrusion, I must be able to hear myself think or outsource my writing to AI. On Magical Rebetiko where qanun maestro Panos Dimitrakopoulos traverses Grecian song repertoire in lieu of the genre’s signature bouzouki on the plectrum-plucked Middle-Eastern lap harp; or Manouche by the Damir Kukuruzovic Gipsy Jazz Quartet which makes over Django Reinhardt and other standards with a classic Jazz Manouche formation of solo guitar, rhythm guitar, accordion, upright plus violin – the recorded low end remained just sufficiently within the v5’s grasp to not feel outright deprived, just fleet of foot. Sting like bee not punch like Popeye.
Taking 5 with Rubato’s eponymous fifth release, the telltale Turkish cello too registered a minor lack of complete fill or saturation. With this tonally darker fare, imaging perspicacity that separates out the instruments and lower male vocal into ultra-specific super-individualized locations not merely along the basic left/right axis but the more difficult front/back dimension was wonderful. It's what we expect from dual-concentric or better yet, zero-order widebanders without bandwidth-patching seams. Never mind a large mildly curved 34-inch computer monitor screen between them. Relative to my ears and their connection to a pseudo-visual sense, that screen wasn’t even there. Absent too was the resonance which so often accompanies bass ports like minor puffs following a car exhaust. We hear the bass transient trailed by a small fluffy cloud. That envelops tone body and often lingers past its recorded sell-buy date. v5's port replacement of passive horizontally opposed radiators betrayed no such puffiness. Whilst clearly micro-woofer bass relative to weight and wallop, this was fast bass relative to proper not late stoppage. That's all about timing; what musicians call playing in the pocket. It's not just about rhythm and bass makers. It's also about the articulation or enunciation of melodic phrasing. That's because the vital midband isn't overlaid by overhang from below. Clean up the bass and everything else follows along.
'Be thy of lowest possible mass' is the mantra of v5's binding posts.
Decisively, v5 managed its alacrity, staging accuracy, sorting precision and taut timing without any brightness, edge or etch. On the textural score it instead felt soft or gentle. This simply didn't spill over or steal from tensioned timing. So gentler textures didn't undermine musical energy of rhythmic beat keeping. v5's twin force-cancelling makeup of active and passive driver pairs apparently builds in good self damping. Even stout SPL for the desktop didn't cause any visible shudders in the puny drivers facing me. First impressions thus exceeded expectations for tonal sophistication; met them head-on for soundstaging; then called bass reach and weight adequate for the nearfield but certainly no high point. Of course avoiding typical port ringing and xover phase shift flows directly into the ledger's plus side. Clarity, immediacy and where's-the-box exploded imaging all benefit from a lighter bass balance. Think more small-scale acoustic unplugged style not electronically enlarged dynamic tomahawk steak. But even in the latter context this quality marks the same benefits for lucidity and sheer mid-band intelligibility. How about the treble from an absentee standalone tweeter?
Just then John McDonald's email arrived. "We increased MSRP to $4'500/pr. This is simply based on production costs against basic industry mark-up. Historically we have undervalued this speaker." Up from €3'495/pr when I accepted this assignment, it's a very significant adjustment and odd timing to boot. Just don't shoot the messenger. Nor blame my thermometer for cooling down in lockstep. For me excitement over a well-performing loaner joins at the hip of perceived value; or lack thereof. Back on treble, our über-sized tweeter behaved textbook: extra strong and clear in its lower two thirds, more subdued at the very top. 10kHz to 20kHz is pure upper harmonic turf. Its minor mellowing informed those more gently textured leading edges. Without the usual phase shift, the v5 appears to properly sync a fundamental with its many overtones. There's no separate tweeter to lead the time parade by arriving subtly early to register too bright or forward. It's why this slightly shaded top octave had no impact on clarity or timing. Turning away from this easy-listening aspect at remarkably high resolution, I expect that for many the biggest appeal of v5 when set up in the nearfield like above will be its capacious supremely sorted staging. It's popular phrasing to call sound totally out of the box. With barely a box to begin with, v5 really rode that point home. "Don't fence me in" as that old Bing Cosby song has it. With its reflective visage, we simply won't invoke the Pale Rider's ghost. This is a fashionably high-gloss and swoopy affair. Just so we can turn down the glam gleam with the magnetically affixed black grill to throw some absorptive matte cloth into the mix. Even the rear-aiming compadre can add its own shade.
