Encouraged by Dhafer Youssef, I queued up Victor Wooten's A Show Of Hands then Marcus Miller's Renaissance and pushed the volume. These speakers really like to play loud. Despite good sensitivity, Arte Noir sounds better at higher volumes where they maintain transparency and clarity while avoiding all distortion. Don't be afraid to prime the pump if you want to learn what Fram's Arte Noir can really do. The woofers sounded as expected given cellulose makeup. Bass was rich, dense, tuneful and delivered quite the punch. Bass guitars may not have sounded quite as dry and super-tight as they often do at concerts but it didn't matter. I liked the slam, speed, drive, fast attack and long sustain, decay and sudden moments of silence between notes. I know some speakers of even faster impulse response but can't see anyone complaining. Over several days I listened to many other albums featuring great bass lines and even when masters of electric bass or drummers went to town, the Polish speakers kept up, providing me with hours of foot tapping, head bopping and great classy fun. As a fan of both electric and acoustic bass having received clear confirmation of the paper character of the low end, I next reached for albums of my favourite double bass players: Stanley Clarke, Ray Brown, Ron Carter and Marcin Oleś. I spent a lot of time with them because the Fram conveyed their instruments so natural, powerful and convincing. There was proper wood of depth and power whether plucked or con arco, persuasive tonal and dynamic contrast both macro and micro, sustain and decay as convincing as pizzicato. I appreciated how resolving and well-differentiating these speakers played.
As mentioned, the Arte Noir are really good at disappearing. This encouraged me to play several live albums of excellent recorded ambiance and acoustic cues. Already Marcin Salamon's Lion's Gate Live At Jassmine showed me how good these speakers are at recreating these aspects. They transported me into this Warsaw music club, showed me its size, acoustics then conveyed the atmosphere and connection between musicians and audience such that I felt more participant than observer. As a fan of live performances, that's a huge advantage. The same displayed when I played the famous Jazz At The Pawnshop, Soular Energy or even Friday Night in San Francisco. Do you know the soundtrack from Dune 2? It starts with really deep powerful sounds and how Arte Noir reproduced them seemingly without effort was astonishing. So were the scale and momentum—unexpected from mid-sized monitors. And yet I got a huge high and widely layered sonic panorama. I watched Dune 1 and 2 on IMAX and the Fram performance reminded me. Obviously I wasn't in a large movie theatre so absolute scale wasn't the same but my immersion felt similarly intense, just more balanced and thankfully not as loud.
Last but not least, vocals. I didn't mention them thus far because they were so natural that I didn't pay too much attention. Whether Steven Tyler, Aretha Franklin or Luciano Pavarotti, they felt right, accurate and real, each particularly powerful and rich in timbres, textures and mannerisms. The easiest way to explain how much I liked what I heard is that when I finally finished the assessment, I kept listening for pleasure rather than rushing back to my regular speakers. That's how I circle back to the beginning. These sounded different than my own loudspeakers yet equally classy and wonderful. It may seem that I focused too strongly on the bass performance whilst forgetting about the rest of but the reason is simple: I did not expect such bandwidth maturity from this size. Just so, the key to proper playback is an accurate balance between all parts of the frequency range. And that's what Fram's Arte Noir provided in spades. No matter the musical genre, pace, mood or even scale, these did an excellent job. Unlike for most review loans, I could use them for almost two months which offered me comprehensive insight into their capabilities. These offer an excellent, well-balanced, highly resolving and beautifully natural performance enclosed in a unique form factor that is a feast for both eyes and ears. If you're looking for a great performer of an ingeniously original design, definitely check out the Fram Arte Noir!
