Bass hounds assume that the SC5 can't bark. Take the title track of Andy Narell's Dis 1.4.Raf album. Whatever the drums, bass and piano dish out was fully within the cubes' woof and as clear and crisp as the midrange to be of a piece and not stand out/forward as different. The peculiar watery/warbling clangour of the steel drums didn't feel dumbed down but free to communicate the material creating it. What about lower more powerful bass?

Mychael Danna's KamaSutra soundtrack to the rescue. Dismissive bass hounds will howl in frustration. These Slovakians weren't upstaged. Only the lowest sub pedals were beyond reach. They'd never know unless they had big 25Hz speakers then no room bloat to obscure fine details. What this track paraded was transient temerity. The hail-on-a-tin-roof aspects of percussive perspicacity were headfi-ish in needling intensity. That meant extra-specific image lock so what for desktopping was exceptional soundstaging. Forget my big 34" curved screen. Common sense, prior experience and audiophile wisdom all see it as undermining any real chance at free-space imaging. But the SC5's bumper sticker read "Boycott the blockade!" It drove right through it. I'm framing this colorful because it's really not the norm. Studio mixologists keen on placing elements with pinpoint accuracy in specific parts of the soundstage will appreciate that; and that when complexity loads up, it causes no clumping like wet cat litter. I despise clumping particularly on the desktop. When things get too thick—gruel gumbo—they demand too much mental effort to make sense of. That now shortchanges my attention on writing. As a result, I tend not to listen to very complex fare here…

… so certainly not…

… the Dalaras album Megales Ores I and "Aoratos Polemos". Its martial/heroic very cinematic arrangement suggests a Greek delegation landing on Hans Zimmer's Dune. Not only did the SC5 shock me with their ability to keep these choral vocals sorted without getting shouty on the high voices' peaks. Quite counter to normalcy, they didn't congeal as I raised the SPL. Whatever compression might have crept in didn't telegraph. For all intents and purposes it didn't happen. What did particularly on the prior track? Physical energies coursed through my wood/glass/metal desk whenever specific bass beats hit a structural resonance. One does want proper isolation. I'd see how much decoupling help the incoming Kanto supports need. Their thick steel would conduct not absorb, their foam liner probably be a rather ineffective isolation barrier. For now I could still feel vibrational knots in my hands on the keyboard drawer. Time to turn the volume down again.

To underline that bass-heavy electronica very much are a cubed thing, here's another fun track…

… and a look at the home studio which made it. Watch closely. You'll see some compact cube monitors, just not Andrew's.

To wrap the music samples part, here's Martin Fröst playing Vivaldi soloing against a period orchestra for pure acoustic timbres.

Time for some intermediary math to add this all up. Did you know that I badly suck at math?