Here's a maple bird's eye view to document the upfiring Raal ribbons…

… and finally a closer look at the XO² in situ. This artisanal speaker creation combines a complex mix of materials and lines from straight-edged to curvy, from breathy bronze wire mesh to veneered solid substrate including exposed fat cork in the widebander's exit hole. Overall height and rake had its centre aim ideally at my ears and—getting old myself—I loved the honey-coloured maple combined with the copper-tone aluminium sides and outriggers. The XO² was shockingly compact for its functionality since its twin 240W power supplies tuck neatly out of sight then are ultra-quiet switchers without burly power transformers and capacitance arrays. Once tunes commenced, my first thought was awe: Mercy be, no more drone attacks. By contrast, all ported/sealed speakers that visit regardless of price trigger various room-based bloom whose mud and ringing disturb the pristine clarity I get when my usual high-pass neuters the lot below ~100Hz. Right from the off the Vox5 was a categorically different experience; a jubilant jail break from droning omni-bass misery. It's impossible to overstate this fundamental shift. It'll be at the very heart of all my sonic commentary to follow. Imagine hitting a light switch that instantly turns off all textural darkness and blur which, without copious room treatments effective all the way down to room resonance, you thought was the unavoidable normal. If that's where you come from—99 out of 100 listeners who first cross paths with the Vox5 will arrive from there—it'll be a very novel experience. It should take some time to fully comprehend. So the Vox5 doesn't just think different. In a normal minimally treated room, it behaves radically different. That's not merely a fun even fancy fact. It's foundational; the very door through which we enter this particular performance. It explains how what would otherwise be mutually exclusive qualities can for once happily coexist. Here are four tracks Martin recommends: Øystein Sevåg, Lacrimosa, "Rest"; Jess Gillam, Shine, "Tabhair dom do lámh" (Arr. Becker); Skruk, Tord Gustavsen & Rune Arnesen, Taking Back the Garden of Eden, "I Will Hold You Coming In"; Abel Selaocoe, Where is Home/Hae ke Kae, "Ibuyile I'Africa / Africa is Back".

Even though at <100Hz much music records mono, having 2×12" woofers per side contribute from the locations of the widebander/ribbon heads with a ~150Hz/2nd-order entry gave the LF even more presence than my usual central 2×15" sub. Whilst this created very chunky density, the sound refused to go dark, period. Off-axis widebander response was brilliant, treble reach and magnitude first rate, resolution intense. The hug of frenemies. I typically hear the polarities of speed, incisiveness, transparency and insight vs. darkness, fullness, body and weight as oppositely charged magnets. They refuse to come together. Maximizing one polarity inevitably steals from the other. Now consider that typically, the warmth end of this stick comes wrapped in room bloom further fuelled by port bloat and its timing errors. Once we get to truly hung speakers of Vox5 calibre, the build-up of LF pressure in our room's front corners plus room-mode peaks and their bell-like ringing infect whatever midrange clarity that speaker would otherwise be capable of. Our textures are pear-shaped. Above the sonic beltline, they stop on time. Below it they linger. The result is half focus, half fuzz; half muscle, half fat.

The Vox5 disavows that divide. From bottom-up tunings it inherits their mass, anchoring, saturation, scale and chunkiness. From the transparency champs it inherits intelligibility, resolution and spatiality. It's decidedly not a top-down sound of explicit airiness and sizzle. Just so—I'll repeat to underscore then italicize the point—it refuses to go dark. Going dark is why in the usual counter-polarity dance, I inevitably come down on less mass, weight, body and saturation. At heart I'm a nearfield man with all that entails. After all, during my formative years I played in orchestras and chamber-music ensembles. My sonic imprint is nearer than near; most direct.

Hence my choice of Qualio IQ as main speaker. Its >400Hz dipole nature and trigger-happy Mundorf AMT generate the nearfield dynamic reflexes, quickness and sparkle I thrive on. It's an aspirated leaner aesthetic with an emphasis on space rather than that which occupies it. The Vox5's more material full tuning would usually strike me as too portly, hooded and obscure due to room effects making it so. In their categorical absence however, such a tuning's shadow sides vanished. I still heard the relative effects of the Enviée's enclosure loading vs the 6-inch papyrus-cone open-backed equivalent in my resident speakers. Yet I wasn't bothered. That tonal/textural quality of warmth without fogginess extended seamlessly into the bass. That erased a divide. No beltline but continuity. Was I due for a sonic reboot; new religion? Thankfully the Vox5 tuning wasn't too warm and full so insufficiently illuminated and separated out. I say thankfully because I despise walls of sound where the musical fabric feels like a wool weave left in the dryer far too long. Here a far different in-room behaviour overwrote my usual misgivings. I was free to consider another sonic aesthetic purely on its own merit. All its usual demerits had been cleverly cut thus cancelled.

Previously referenced as that other woman, Voxativ's Alberich² is conceptually similar and enjoys the same dipole bass benefits. But its sonic profile even very high efficiency diverge. It prioritizes extreme resolution and speed from a smaller rear-horn-loaded bicone widebander which a single RiPol active woofer completes without a seam. It's more top-down illumination and the twitchy racetrack. In that visual the Vox5 is a big-engine family sedan tuned for a very spirited but smooth ride. It doesn't just exploit a larger widebander. It brings to bear twice the LF cone surface. That makes for a heavier more saturated gestalt. It's simply no less intelligible. It rather points at Martin's special Enviée, its rear-flow cartridge and massive cork housing stripping the vocal band of all haze. Now weightiness and lucidity can go hand in hand and side by side. Neither pulls or lags to achieve rare equality whilst the upfiring ribbon adds just the right amount of sparkle. Stereophile's Herb Reichert famously crowned the Voxativ Hagen² monitor an Herb speaker. In stacked Alberich² form it had also been mine, hence its Lunar Eclipse award. Now the Vox5 reminded me that we can have more than one soulmate. That we often only meet one per lifetime is a different matter.