Markers. On Aytaç Dogan's glorious "Khallik Fekirni" from his first solo CD Deva—he usually records with the Taksim Trio—there's much gossamer percussion tip work. Headfi's extreme proximity shows it fully resolved to create a reference. Against that, most speakers, in-room and across distance at normal not excessive SPL, suffer losses. No longer hyper explicit as they were with steep toe-in, Ludos did very well on that score. On the bass starting at 1:20, our room invariably rides a strong peak on the third beat's pitch regardless of speaker placement. Ludos magically eliminated any unevenness in the low end. Depending on just how distracting, obtrusive and frankly annoying you find lumpy bass with boom notes based on your room dimensions, this feature alone could be a major life saver.
But walking this bass beat in the cherry-walled City of Elas had more: elasticity. Spin up "Oriental Bass" from Patrick Chartol's Istanbul album. His e-bass spans the gamut from growling to warbling, from singing to stuttering and popping.
Over the Italian dynamic dipole, this textural range exhibited more freedom as though shackles from box loading had been undone. If your primary music fare is electronic, you could want for just a bit of whip-snapping crack. That's the faint shadow side. Now you'd want highly damped sealed active speakers with class D like a Kii Three. But as soon as you shift to acoustic or Chartol-style bass, you'll favor the greater textural generosity of Ludos. That's the very sunny side. Now you'll want nothing but an open baffle.
In fact, anything rhythmically snotty like Dzambo Agusevi's funky Macedonian brasses here with Hüsnü Senlendirici on G clarinet celebrated the absence of box compression on percussive swagger and textural largesse. And with this much cone surface exciting the air, dynamic cresting easily surpassed that of our usual monopoles to peak higher and with more acceleration.
To round out my Balkan session, I cued up Hüsnü from his Laço Tayfa days. To see what he was up to currently, I found this live video from last year you might enjoy for a more Pop-hymnic style.
Having heard the house bands of trumpeteer Ibrahim Maalouf and saxophonist James Carter during our Swiss days, I had first-ear experience with how their bass energy saturates even large venues for a distinctly bottom-up sound reinforcement rather than top-down acoustic chamber music perspective. Having Ludos move about four times as much air as a modern monitor would that's capable of the same raw bandwidth really drove home that difference. If you want to feel that energy not merely cross off mental LF markers, sizable woofers which resonate freely like big gongs—or multiple smaller ones struck at the same time—stir up more air. And that transitions such music from tempest-in-a-teapot stirrings to more of a force-of-nature format. Again, this is not about raw extension. Already 15 years ago, a Platinum Solo ported compact could hit 35Hz with a 5¾" mid-woofer. Today such drivers have evolved further. It's about impact and more believable scale particularly with amplified bass.
