There's black. And then there's black. 'twas my incomplete Gertrude Stein attempt whilst looking at the set installed. Unlike earlier stock photos of black or white trim plus veneer, the shoulders of these baffles were dressed in carbon skin¹ before flowing into wooden cheeks. With the baffles' black lacquer so shiny as though still wet, the effect was one of extra depth. Lovers of piano gloss applaud such serious scrumptiousness. Those taking to lesser sheen have satin options. Stance, profile and execution all spoke of luxury in no uncertain terms. Any potential wobble was evened out by adjustable Viablue footers. Jazz 2022 was a class act before making any sound yet.
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¹ "What I sent you for faster shipping is my prototype pair where I hid cosmetic wear with carbon film to prevent you from having a poorly finished speaker. Production models certainly don't have this so what customers receive is the wood finish on the sides while front and feet come in piano lacquer white or black."
Once I did make sound, a clear bottom-up voicing tuned for voluptuous density murdered all remnants of ceramic cringe. On this score these Accuton mid/woofers behaved like elite paper. They reminded me of the just departed Supravox-derivative 8½" widebanders in our usual Aurai Lieutenant 3-ways. The difference was higher damping than the bigger TQWT-loaded dipole French drivers. Jazz 2022 prioritized a bit more articulation than elasticity. Seriously powerful and extended in the bass so with a good dose of ported fulsomeness, less 'portly' was coincident control when fronted by 250 high-current watts. This bass was like fatty tuna sushi plus pickled ginger. The latter's astringency complements and controls the former's richness. Yum!
LessLoss Firewall for Loudspeakers on speaker inputs.
Obviously ballsy and very dynamic, Jazz 2022 staged absolutely enormous in all directions so wide, tall and exceptionally deep. With superior digital of ever lower noise—our Sonnet Pasithea measures its noise floor at a whopping minus 160dB—I hear improved specificity especially on soundstage depth. A similar thing seems true for speakers relative to their mechanical noise floor. As cabinets get less reactive, they cause less noise. Again depth benefits in particular. Imitating a point source with Jazz's close driver spacing must be another enabler. From his box-in-a-box build and pre-tensioned construction, we already knew of Maximino's goals for a quiet cabinet. Where others geek out over their crossover or exotic drivers, he calls the enclosure "the fundamental pillar in speaker design". Now it doesn't seem fanciful to suspect that Jazz 2022 sounds so unreservedly big because more of its drivers' work makes actual sound rather than gets absorbed in the box. For such quick release the proper term probably is low energy storage. It's a bit like a Tibetan singing bowl. The smaller its support, the longer it rings since all contact acts as a sound-killing damping absorber. You want as little absorption as possible. Somewhere in there must hide the reason why today's speaker can achieve such an unexpectedly robust, energetic, positively huge sound from such modest 2-way artillery. This box swallows up less than usual would be my guess.
The slashed paper drivers from ScanSpeak's Revelator range are very popular for their tone. So are SB Acoustic's papyrus equivalents from the Satori range. While adherents might admit that metal or carbon-fibre types are more precise—Vivid's all-aluminium diaphragms or Børresen's carbon/foam composites are great examples—they find paper richer. Jazz 2022 intrudes into this polarized discussion with a proposition of the third kind: combine the tonefulness of paper with the superior diction of metal. In our digs preceded by high-resolution digital, tapped autoformers for volume control and wide-bandwidth DC-coupled lateral Exicon Mosfets, absolutely nothing about the bonySound was lean, thin, prickly or hard. Yet on matters of self damping for superior enunciation of music's multi-layered dialogue, ceramic qualities still factored. Again, Maximino's enclosure and filter conditions set up camp somewhere between these polarities if still closer to a luxuriant rich 'paper' sound than hi-rez speed-first 'ceramic' perspective.
iMac | Audirvana 3.5 | Soundaware D300Ref | Sonnet Audio Pasithea DAC
To talk still more blackness for the full G. Stein treatment in triplicate—black is black is black—Jazz's well-controlled yet slightly fat bass really did weigh the color balance toward the black end. That always causes extra saturation and body density. On this particular soundstage, Accuton's (in)famous inverted tweeter played supporting character not lead actor. Top billing was for the mid/woofer just as it should. It's where the lion's share of the music lives. Any tweeter spectaculars are just a distraction. I heard none. Time for promised Accuton vs Accuton action. Before we go sonic, materially the Jazz 2022 really did feel like about twice the speaker Albedo's Aptica is relative to weight and build density. Again, selling direct gives the Spaniard a very unfair advantage. But I'm fond of saying that such advantages exist to be fully pressed, not belittled or brushed over. On said score the bonySound Jazz 2022 turns its screws to the max. It's medieval torture for dealer-sold competitors which only have half the money to invest into their product. bonySound's value conversion—money spent vs. stuff received—felt unusually loaded. Go bear?
