Papa bear 'n' baby cub? Nobody was had for lunch. But on sheer tonal mass and bottom-up gravitas, Jazz 2022 certainly crushed Aptica in a warm grizzly hug. The tilted Italian exclamation mark with its 1st-order filters played noticeably more oxygenated. It projected a top-down tonal perspective. Its smaller mid/woofer was more informative in the upper midrange, the overall presentation clearly more lit up and quickened. The tapered transmission line with built-in Helmholz resonator to cancel its primary organ-pipe resonance created slimmer lighter bass. It went nearly as low but exerted more damping for less bloom. Instead the upper bass/lower midrange emphasized more charged reflexes on rhythmic accents. That played counterpoint to the Spaniard's pummeling pugilism. In very broad strokes, energized leaner airiness met enhanced thicker materialism.

This comparison really was a masterclass in Implementation Rules. In the hands of two different designers with divergent sonic aesthetics, very similar ingredients led to markedly different results. It was perfectly germane to frame them in terms of light/dark, quick/heavy, bright/warm, there/here, normal/huge, solid/massive. Likewise for calling Aptica still oriented towards a certain ceramic character albeit one successfully exorcized of its clipped overdamped attributes. It further testified to the wide gap whereby Maximino's tuning diverges from Accuton precursors. Now even sonus Faber fans can see eye to eye and hear ear to ear with our hard German transducers. Really! Also, audio retailers in Asia tell me how in their upscale sector, clients will actually arrive with magnifying glasses to inspect the finishing of loudspeakers or components. It's why brands like Boulder, Jeff Rowland and Tidal/Vimberg are popular. They ace that critical loupe test. On said score the bonySound boutique build even without a loupe betrayed that its baffle bonds two layers together. What should be invisible telegraphs a seam through the black lacquer edge. If that bothers you, be prepared to spend more. For sonic character, if the Jazz 2022 were a headphone in our collection, it'd be the Audeze LCD-XC. If it were an amp I reviewed, it'd be a magneto-solid model from Grandinote. In somewhat lighter form, it might also be a CanEver Olimpico. As such it rather diverged from our actual Bakoon, Crayon, Enleum, Goldmund and Kinki specimens.

That divergence set the speaker's psych profile. Rather than around leading edges which would emphasize subjective speed and hail-on-roof articulation, Maximino tuned his drivers for the tonal bloom portion. This prioritized body and density instead. What then undermined the often related perception of minor energetic reluctance—bigger/heavier feels slower—were maximized dynamics and sheer scale. Those apparently came from coupling these drivers to an enclosure tweaked for rapid energy release. Another vital ingredient to the bonySound recipe must have been successful suppression of breakup modes. Those otherwise inject a certain metallic coloration which the Jazz 2022 positively did not despite being fronted by ultra-wideband electronics without coupling capacitors.

Subwoofer bypassed.

Aside from its unexpected means, the atypical aspect of this particular packaging of qualities was exploded very specific staging. It's more often than not the peak discipline of very lucid hyper-aerated speakers like Børresen or Vivid. It's as though the greater warmth, higher mass and softer edging of body-building speakers clumps up space between images. Narrower space makes mental navigation through the on-stage action more difficult. Walkabout ease steps down. We get closer to a less distinct wall-of-sound feel. Here too the Spaniard begged to differ. It combined Harbeth/Spendor tonefulness with Raidho staging. While such type casting smacks of cheap elevator pitches laden with famous references—Total Recall meets Bladerunner meets The Matrix—it does make my point with minimum fuss: the Jazz 2022 marries qualities which are routinely more either/or.

Then it drives up value by selling direct; bundles attractive design with superior build quality; and throws in lovely finish options. Pride of ownership speaks for itself. Powerful amplification (at left class A/B 250-watt output stage of ours) fully taps high dynamic potential and optimizes control over very ambitious bass loading. Our €3'500/pr Kinki monos struck me as ideal and equally value loaded. For still higher resolution, there's the 3-way Big Jazz with a now dedicated small 2" midrange.

So your speaker Spanish added a new word to its vocabulary: bonySound. And a very good if still rare word it is. Let's hope we see it used more often whenever audiophiles discuss loudspeaker options from Europe. This is a very impressive and unusual discovery!