Bigger room, higher SPL, with sub. From team Seoul to…
… team SoCal, this tale of the tape tells of equivalent chassis width but greater depth for the latter. With the photo op over, the lilac minis left the room and the black faces took their spots. On the same 4th-order Linkwitz-Riley 60Hz high pass as the departed, v5 was already down 6dB at that frequency to flex more muscle at lower distortion. As is my preference, this setup is in free space relative to front-wall distance. The listening chair parks strategically in a bass null to cancel the longitudinal room mode. The sub itself compensates its 2.5ms digital latency with 86cm forward placement for physical time alignment. It sits on sound|kaos Vibra 68 wire-suspension footers for complete isolation from the suspended otherwise very talkative wood floor. Proper subwoofer integration takes thought and fine-tuning.
On personal curiosity about how little speaker is sufficient with proper sub addition, v5 signed the same line as my outgoing Koreans. With SPL appropriate for this 4 x 8m room, nothing else is required or desired. With the Dynaudio force-cancelling dual 9½" sealed subwoofer wanting €1'390 when I bought it plus €4'500 for the monitors, I guarantee that an equivalent €6K passive floorstander wouldn't match the threesome in bass bandwidth, linearity or resolution. A fully active Buchardt A700 LE with its cardioid profile installed would; and eliminate my entire stack of electronics. That's how the smart money of FutureFi would invest itself though in truth, I'd consider that Dansk model overkill in this space. I'd instead pursue their active monitor. As a reviewer who parties the mix'n'match rave to the nth degree, I'm simply not ready to shrink my hardware down to a complete system in a speaker. I stop at active bass with active analog xovers which I can bypass with one remote click. Jill and Joe Civilian meanwhile would be wise to investigate the fully DSP-corrected infinitely adjustable active streaming speaker path. It's simply not what we're up to today. With that covered, let's talk full-range sonics. And no, bypass didn't last half a track just as it wouldn't with the SuperMon Mini. In this space and given repertoire which demands 30Hz bass if not lower, sailing these minis solo sets up quick SOS signals of musical castration. With my seamlessly dovetailed sub meanwhile, I had unconditional full-range performance that could play anything. How did that sound?
Less glossy and edge-limned. More lightweight in the lower midrange. More relaxed for mellower forward projection. Reminiscent of slight 2nd-harmonic vs 3rd-harmonic dominant amplifier THD. This assessment was vis-à-vis my usual lilac minis on the same high-mass stands. As Pass Labs learnt whilst parsing sales figures for their amps which come in 2nd/3rd-harmonic flavours, buyer preference splits right down the middle. Half the people prefer the slightly sweeter, denser less keenly separated 2nd harmonic even-order signature, the other half the fresher, brisker more separated 3rd harmonic or odd-order effect. For sweetness, softer edging, more laid-back projection and mellower textures, v5 was even order. For extra weight and density, it wasn't. There the more 3rd-harmonic Koreans were fuller and richer. Some of the offset I'd park at the feet of their AMT whose air-squeezing 4:1 velocity advantage over standard drivers packs more dynamic liveliness. Whatever the actual sum of electrical and/or mechanical difference makers, this juxtaposition fell into the 50:50 Pass Labs finding. Neither presentation is right or wrong. These are fine flavour shifts whose appeal to different listeners shows very equal numbers. It's not about better or worse but learning whether you're a chocolate character or lemon-sorbet lover, then picking a harmonic distortion profile that suits your leanings. To be sure, I'm not suggesting that this difference I heard was actually due to this particular TDH profile. It simply mirrored it to a good extent to serve as suitable stand-in. During my tube-amp period I was an even-order evangelist. Later I switched allegiance. Today I'm an odd fellow as long as the dosage is minor for just a drop of balsamic vinegar's cutting action. It's (cough) why I bought the MonAcoustics minis and drive them off a class A/B 2.5MHz direct-coupled amplifier. It's not a no-feedback single-ended triode sound. To a subtle if partial extent, v5's voicing is. This parlayed even on my Kinki Studio EX-M7 amplifier.
Asking myself the earlier 'would I' question, in this hardware context which I consider to be more serious and definitely use more seriously than my office's sonic backdrop provider, I'd again answer 'yes' on sonics. Though money matters, v5's 100%+ price difference now tweaks me less because upstairs I've heard far costlier bigger speakers and still prefer the Audience. Yes I still fancy the Koreans more not just on dosh but because of my odd-order proclivities. But the sonic offset wasn't sufficient to disqualify the Americans by any stretch. Relative to my mandate of smallest possible premium speaker + sub in this space, v5 would make another perfect fit. Hairy yeah-buttniks now wonder. Will party SPL derail v5's composure with obviously rising distortion or other distress signals? For that we move into our main system's bigger room where high median levels might measure up to ~75dB at the ear, peaks 90dB. Any louder I don't do; not that bangers would ever consider v5 in the first place when there are JBL or Klipsch to be had, never mind fully active DSP speakers groomed for studio SPL with overdrive protection and distortion cancelling.
