Yet there's ongoing excellent reason why it's not died out. When implemented well and partnered properly, a listener sensitive to the timing of widebanders still feels ill at ease with classically filtered speakers. True, few have learnt to or do naturally key into this particular aspect. For all others the sector remains a curious underground phenom warranting no further notice like discrete R2R converters sans oversampling or pre-ringing; or time-aligned 1st-order speakers à la Vandersteen. Our crib happens to be part of the strange counter minority. We busily widebander in four systems with Qualio, Mon, sound|kaos & Zu plus I do plenty of Raal and Susvara headfi. Today's review is for my few fellow strangers who roam the audiophile wilderness in search of in-room headfi. How to let that genie out of the skull bottle? Widebanders. That trips another short fuse. It's no secret. Today's majority music consumption is cloud streaming over smartphones and earbuds or bigger headfi. Those listeners grew up and continue to grow up with the most immediate direct sound of filterless single-driver transducers. They're deeply imprinted by it so naturally predisposed to the time-domain focus of a Cube type. Sure, transitioning from earbuds to a hulking Lotus 10 won't be the most direct progression. An in-between pitstop or two of smaller more affordable kit like Lindemann's Move is more likely. Just so, the ground seems fertile for the breed's continued relevance when today's formative gateway drug is headfi not multi-way SpeakerFi. Onto two flavours of nelumbo nucifera, India's sacred lotus: Nenuphar v2 x Lotus 10. Same DNA, €2.3K difference, very similar size. Very similar sound, too?

Obviously; though with two distinctions. The 'duh' portion were the weightier more dynamic lower ~3½ octaves. Those gave everything from piano to drums and upright or e-bass more gravity. Particularly bigger percussion and popped bass also dished out more violent shove. What did we think greater cone surface and Xmax would do? Bull's eye. The unexpected 'damn' portion was an even more linear 800-1'600Hz octave especially notable on female vocals and violins. Depending on what music ran, this could make Nenuphar feel dynamically more emphatic and expressive across this range; slightly forward and fresh; or brighter and sharper on plucked strings. By contrast Lotus 10 played it still smoother or mellower so more relaxed. On solo action across its woofer's overlap zone, I thought that perhaps Nenuphar had the edge on point-source focus? Greater narrow-band peakiness of my lateral room mode admittedly undermined Lotus 10's otherwise purely desirable wins in general downforce a bit. Where extra weight acted as materializer or bodybuilder, surfing an upper-bass mode was less persuasive. That was simply a run-in with my room acoustics which my usual stereo 2.1 signal routing avoids. I could certainly have reinstated that more complex scheme but who'd pursue Lotus 10 for its extra artillery only to neuter it with an active crossover and sub? Doing that with Nenuphar Mini would be far more sensible when its price difference to Lotus 10 leaves €6'610 on the table for the necessary active crossover and sub. With that comparative interlude over, Nenuphar v2 visited Elvis. I already had another experiment in mind: gap height. Until their recent fixed gaps, floorstanding Zu speakers used to come with some tuning leeway in how high or low one dialled in their spikes thus gap size for the downfiring Griewe loading. What would happen if I removed the tall IsoAcoustic pucks of Lotus 10 and replaced them with relative lowriders?

Relative was probably (cough) relative. With my version one fourth so pinkie thickness, I had definitive results. Bass amplitude did damp as suspected but also dried out textures to sound hollow. Worse, the widebander choked as though it couldn't breathe. Flow tapped out in a stranglehold. Perhaps less radical gap shrinkage would have arrived at my golden mean? I had nothing suitable to hand. Not that it's relevant other than suggest potential leeway. I simply chased my optimal in-room balance. Each setup differs. Time to stop tweaking. Overlook narrow room talk which the active bass traps alone couldn't cancel without dipole 'figure 8' bass dispersion. Get with the real programme: the Lotus 10 listening experience. Float like butterfly, sting like bee? Gush like waterfall? Quite. To flavour familiars, that gestalt is self evident very quickly. For those unfamiliar, it's hard to explain. It's not about their ultimate arbiter of frequency response or its kin the tonal balance. With one-cone sound, their dissecting treble/mid/bass focus doesn't apply. Even sneaky sub 300Hz half-way augmentation won't overwrite that. The flavour is still about genuine oneness rather than a stitched-up patchwork which our brain is forced to reassemble into wholeness.

Genre detractors insist that our brains do a fabulous job of that. To them widebander advantages are purely theoretical; and beyond that, bought at compromises to far more important bandwidth and linearity. Who's right? As long as either approach finds buyers, both are. It's only with democracy's majority rule that widebanders become wrong or the loser's party because far fewer people buy them. However, saying that is just a few degrees removed from minority persecution in other areas. With too much of that going on as is, let's keep it out of the hifi space.

Say that you don't appreciate headfi. You don't hear what differentiates Vandersteens. You don't get NOS DACs or direct-coupled amplifiers without signal-path caps. To you it's all more of the same. What will you hear with a pair of Lotus 10 in your favourite colour or veneer? If you've compared 4" to 5¼" to 6½ to 8" midranges, you're hip to their basic progression from speed and detail into greater fleshiness and dynamic oomph. Take a premium example from your roster of 8-inch examples. Add more of their strengths. then mix in far superior resolution toward the typical ~2kHz treble handover. Compared to a 1" silk dome, Lotus 10 will have greater dynamics and more burnished copper than sparkling platinum tones. You'll hear more of a cymbal's brassiness, less of its champagne fizz as it fades out. Down low you'll hear even a 5-string bass' lowest tone at full power. So far so familiar.

Now cue up something transient intense so packed with well-recorded fast plectrum-picked guitar runs, popped e-bass and a polyrhythmic workout in the percussion section. You'll have involuntary bodily reactions, even minor synaptic misfires. Steeply rising transients will cut through legato-lingering sounds with the startle factor of a snapping branch, crackling fire or slamming door like mini adrenaline spurts when our body alerts us to real presence. "Something's there. Careful!" It's our inheritance from the days of being stalked by sabre-tooth tigers. Survival of the most alert. You just experienced superior speed without time blur. Even though you may not have thought of it that way, you actually heard far reduced time-domain error. Now cue up well-recorded vocals. You'll encounter presence with the same tacitness as you just experienced charged transients. Even though rising edges will lack the charged blister of plucked strings or flexing drum skins, hereness will be the same i.e. heightened. As you settle into this deblurred 'stepped-out' presentation no longer clothed in subliminal cotton taffy—I think of it as energetically wading through water rather than running free—you relax into more piqued directness. Live with that for some weeks. If I put myself into your shoes properly, you'll now bag the core Lotus 10 quality without yet recognizing or naming it: Easefulness.