Among speaker designers who recognize time fidelity's impact on playback realism, the key rationale seems to be that it lowers the interpolation load we present to our ear/brain's wetware. Our attentive apparatus works less hard to rectify playback's time confusion. There's less fatigue from constantly running 'DSP' in our nervous system so listening becomes easier. Whatever is easier goes deeper. Greater depth equals more satisfaction. End of. The trouble with this argument is verification. It's far easier to quantify effort—I'm exhausted from cramming for an exam four hours straight versus pulling a caffeine-doused all-nighter—than relaxation and well-being. "Either I'm relaxed or not. What else is there?" If contraction and wear from effort has obvious degrees, why wouldn't its opposite? Experientally though we have a harder time noticing degrees of relaxation. It's why the easefulness of widebandering can seem terribly vague to quantify. We don't notice subliminal listening stress other than eventually wondering why our sessions don't last longer; why our attention wanders; why certain music doesn't cut it. We might harbour a secret suspicion like a fugitive in the attic but can't directly put our finger on anything in particular. Our fugitive is too stealthy. The average listener never considers their own state of at-easeness whilst commenting on sound. The notion that how we feel informs our listening experience most inextricably seems alien. We don't look in that direction so notice nothing. We never consider the one who has the experience. We look at and critique the experience as though it were a separate entity. Would we do that with a massage: me here, massage over there? Not.
If easefulness is the stock upon which its business card prints, what it says on it beneath Lotus 10 is float, sting & gush for the job title. Those are expressions of higher time fidelity so lower brain stress. 'Sting' we already covered with transient precision aka impulse fidelity. 'Float' means freedom from object-bound origins. As it does for conventional coaxials, Cube's point-source principle disappears the speaker and throws explicitly layered rolled-out depth. 'Gush' refers to free energies. Nothing trickles miserly. No squeezed toothpaste, no sucking milkshake through a straw. With Lotus 10 there's an uncanny sense of a waterfall's endless generosity free from the usual barriers. Some of it can be approached with conventional speakers. Getting the entire business card on this stock? In my experience, not really. After 25 years in the sector, the only conventional speakers left in our digs are two minimum-phase 1st-order types from Boenicke and Acelec. All the rest are widebanders of sundry stripes. This wasn't a religious vote or strategy by the way. Various speakers came and stayed. By simple observation—what did we use the most?—classic more complex multi-ways either moved on or now sit benched for the occasional A/B. Again, easefulness is subtle. It's hard to peg. Once something inside of us does peg it, votes are surprisingly consistent. As best I can figure, that really is down to time fidelity establishing more easeful conditions to consume music by. The rest is bandwidth, sufficient loudness and tonal balance. Those matter, too. For any serious headfi consumer crossing over to in-room playback, time fidelity simply becomes a non-negotiable prerequisite before any of those usual suspects get lined up and put in their proper places.
On those usual suspects, Lotus 10 registers as stunningly complete and properly aligned. It's decidedly not top heavy or zippy. Its large cone mirrors Zu's 10.3" diameter but exceeds Rethm's biggest—7" for Saadhana—and Voxativ's core 7½" recipe. It wildly eclipses the Alpair 5 of Lindemann's Move and its 4" sibling of my upstairs Mon Mini. That bigger cone too supports yet more relaxation and gush. Being a passenger in a small-engine car driven fast, we clock the speed with subliminal sphincter clench. In terms of flow state, it's a high-pressure hose at a fancy car wash. At the same speed, a heavy V8 registers far more casual. In matters of flow state, it's easeful gush. Where the isobarically twinned alu/alloy 4" Alpair widebander of my Mon Mini leads with reflexes and resolution, Lotus 10 leads with casual nonchalance. When fluidity is fundamental, nothing feels chiselled no matter how articulated or rapidly executed. This revisits easefulness from another angle. Small widebanders nail the same time fidelity. There they don't add any brain stress. But they arguably do just a bit when dynamic gusts ripple our musical matter; when LF transients surge breakers; when structural complexity layers up. Unless we exceed safe SPL, they don't come unglued. By contrast with Lotus 10's large driver, they're just not as serene. Neither can they muster the same conviction and weight from the upper bass on down; nor the fleshiness above it. That's doubly true for Lotus 10's auxiliary woofer. It already eclipses Nenuphar, never mind a small widebander which needs a subwoofer to sound complete. To stress the obvious, none of this relied on valves. I rate my preceding kit of Laiv Audio DAC and Enleum amp as being unusually resolved, clear and quick. Likewise for the Exact Express cables connecting the lot. Lotus 10 didn't need any add-on weight like a passive radiator's invisible metal plate tunes it properly. It's why I decided against the warmer thicker class A amp. It wasn't required nor, given my tastes, desired.
A different writer might now start the pillow talk to share intimate details of his musical encounters with favourite artists. "It was just me and the muse and we made out like rabbits." To my way of thinking, this says far more about a listener's taste in music and availability—their knack for entering the zone—than any actual hardware. But I would agree that when it comes to transducing an electrical signal to a mechanical equivalent causing pressure waves which our ears translate to musical sense, some loudspeakers make easier sense. Obviously the listener must still show up. The musical instrument of our sensory perception must be tuned and in good nick to so that the sounds, rhythms and silences materializing between and behind our speakers can play on it. That burden of trained preparedness and sensitivity is always on us, never the inanimate kit. But where I'm concerned, the easeful fluidity of the Lotus 10 built on crisp timing certainly removes barriers on the hardware side. This neither relies on nor invokes a high-distortion SET-fuelled bubble bath limned by candles. The tonal balance is correct, there's lovely innate tone density without residual whitishness and resolution is excellent without telegraphing obsessive detail. The same goes for dynamics. They're part of music's ebb and flow but don't stand apart in horn-style showmanship. Imaging is superlative. PRaT is high. Yet even that lacks the self-possessed toe tapper's compulsive frenzy. Think more swing than locomotive Rock. No matter how I peel back these petals then, I return to where I started – easefulness, just across yet another facet.
