Nuffness revisited. In our bigger room, size dichotomy compounded. My inner Antichrist rejoiced. Now Mini was a 15" 3-way, each woofer of the cardioid sound|kaos sub driven by its own channel of Kinki Studio EX-M1 integrated with remote volume control in ¼dB steps. Though I had 250-watt Kinki EX-B7 monos in standby to juice these mains—here they looked even more like dainty desert than serious mains plate—my chefy concept of maximum results from minimum effort outlawed them. The 25/45wpc 8/4Ω Enleum AMP-23 was splendidly equipped to handle 80Hz+ signal bereft of bass burdens and packed enough voltage gain to hit serious altitude. Chai Baba our lounge leopard agreed. IMAX staging? Check.

One must-hear destination was, again, timing accuracy and the transient fidelity this curries. Take the below "Loom" with its plethora of percussive sounds. They occur across a variety of instruments each with its own texture and snap factor. Electronically generated varietals have extreme start 'n' stop. Mini aced them all. Hearing this as YouTube track over €3K+ planar headphones through a €3K+ DAC/amp made a relative travesty of it by comparison. Majority blame must have belonged to YouTube's compression algorithm. I suspect that the Final D-8000 also owned some of it. A small speaker faster than a premium can? Yes. Without sub, this track would have wilted on the vine. Even 20cm wall reinforcement can't recreate the full dose of LF crack and power. In the nearfield, we just don't need that. In the above space—and when you know what could be there—we very much do.

Onlookers could suspect that Jun's small AMT threw extra transient paprika into the mix. Not. Like Zu's far bigger version with 10kHz 'super' tweeter, Mini's brilliance region is toned down. I confirmed this with some of my usual zinger/stinger tracks. Mini generated just enough action to avoid stale champers syndrome but dropped in no sugar cube for extra fizz. While occasionally I heard some gratuitous harmonic cayenne in the 4-6kHz region that gave its fundamentals in the two octaves above concert C more cutting power, Mark Fenlon's silvery widebander was quite well behaved across the breed's usual trouble spots. Here being solidly anchored to 25Hz for counterweight, that attribute created stronger projection.

On particularly exposed female vocals like Dulce Pontes or Arpi Shanubaryan set to play louder than they'd sing live in this room, this could admittedly get slightly forward. Since I couldn't find the track "Martiki Yerge" from Arpi's Treasures album on YouTube, the Armenian folk song "Zepyuri Nman" presented similar when she hits her upper register with Ofra Haza-reminiscent vibrato and her lower odd-order harmonics intensify at 3'39"; or earlier during the brief flute bridge. If anything needs to be managed, it's that propensity when SPL get higher than they realistically ought to. At reasonable levels meanwhile, it creates extra come hither. And, my big Allnic speaker cables use lots of silver.

If I were bothered by the effect because I listened louder, I'd experiment with copper cables voiced darker; or a less aspirated amplifier.