Are you willing to share any other information about the Rossignol?
As far as the capacitors go, I use at least in the sensitive parts all those wonderful silver-gold capacitors that you find out there.
For the review we will use the new Divine Acoustics Newton feet. What are the stock footers?
I use feet which we developed ourselves. They move slightly because they use small ball bearings very similar to how Stillpoints design theirs. It is a wonderful solution and works really well. I think people can play with what they put their speakers on although personally I dislike spikes.
The sensitivity of Rossignol is very high, isn't it?
Yes, 100dB per watt and meter, not per 2.83 volts per meter.
Considering your active bass section, you probably don't need a lot of power to drive Rossignol. So what is your recommendation regarding the minimum—20, 30 or 50 watts?
It's hard to give an exact number. Instead let me share customer feedback. One of them tried the little Trafomatic single-ended amplifier delivering 7.5 watts and said he missed nothing in the sound. Another used it with a 2A3 amp of about 3wpc. So you can try any high-quality amplifier regardless of output—it is the performance that matters. If you're going into large orchestral works, I recommend at least 30-40 clean watts. And if you like to listen to Metallica at more than 100dB, go as high as 100 watts. I've also paired them with powerful class AB amplifiers and the combination worked well. However, once you get addicted to the beauty of these five- and eight-watt amplifiers which means tubes and class A, you may not need or want anything else. Don't get me wrong, the solid-state amps offer beauty of their own. If that's your preference, go for it. Just remember, the better components you use in front of the SoundSpace Systems Rossignol, the bigger the reward.
Circling back to my opening paragraph, neither Aidoni nor Rossignol could be delivered up the many stairs to my place. The only way to review Rossignol was to accept Michal's invitation to his Berlin HQ. I rarely conduct reviews outside my own room not because it is the best in the world but because it is familiar. Michael understood this need for familiarity and offered to gather, from manufacturers and distributors, as many of the components I'm familiar with as possible. Those who read my previous SoundSpace Systems reviews know that I visited this room a few times already so there was some level of familiarity with the space itself. In his system Michael has run the J.Sikora Reference turntable with the KV12 Max tonearm and Aidas Mammoth Gold cartridge for years. I've owned the J.Sikora Standard Max deck for 11 years plus the KV12, KV12 Max and KV9 tonearms. If that were not enough, currently I host the Reference for an upcoming review. At some point I also reviewed the Aidas Mammoth Gold cartridge. To complete the analogue setup, LampizatOr delivered their latest phonostage, the VPL or Vinyl Phono Lite, the very unit that had spent the previous 3 months in my own room. So while this setup wasn't identical to the one I use every day, it was familiar enough.
The digital front end comprised the XACT S1 Evo Music Server, the latest even more advanced version of the S1 I reviewed plus the companion XACT N1 switch which I was admittedly unfamiliar with. The server delivered signal to a LampizatOr Horizon 360 DAC I reviewed some time ago. Also, I have used various LampizatOr DACs for more than 10 years so recognized it as yet another familiar component. Marcin Ostapowicz, the man behind the XACT, JCAT and JPLAY brands, also sent his USB and LAN cables. Since I was not familiar with those, I brought my own David Laboga Custom Audio Akoya USB and David also sent the Akoya LAN. I used both cable sets interchangeably. The amp in my reference system is a GrandiNote Shinai class A integrated or a combo of Circle Labs P300 preamplifier and M200 power amplifier. Courtesy of the German distributor LEN Hifi, we had a Circle Labs A200 integrated at our disposal. As an alternative, we used Michael's SPEC EX-RSA1000 which I reviewed a while ago for yet another familiar device. As for the other cables, we used mostly products from WK Audio. The power cables plugged into the SoundSpace Mozart conditioner. Last but not least were the new anti-vibration Newton Diamond footers by Divine Acoustics
Long story short, Michael did his best to accommodate my reviewer requirements so I could spend three comfortable and interesting days listening to his Rossignol in various setups. One of my three afternoons I spent in the merry company of representatives from J. Sikora, LampizatOr, XACT, Aidas and our host. It is a spoiler but the general opinion on Michael's latest addition was pretty unanimous and I don't think that the others were just being polite. They all seemed as impressed as I was. On Michael's social media you can find short videos with almost all of them giving their opinions. Despite having preferred to spend a few weeks with Rossignol in my own room, I believe that my time in Berlin allowed an honest and comprehensive take on its performance. I had listened to Aidoni, Pirol and Robin in this room before and each time, one of the qualities I loved was how convincing they presented space, images and the acoustical cues captured in recordings. Michael's room is quite large, open to one side and in theory far from ideal with its many large naked windows. Yet whenever I played a recording with well-captured venue ambience, a realistically huge soundstage opened in front of me as it did now with one of my all-time favourite albums, Flamenco Puro Live.
Since even the smaller models had delighted me with these aspects, my expectations for Rossignol were very high. And they were met! It felt like the flamenco dancers stomped the wooden floor in front of me and the wood responded in kind. Myriad dust particles seemed to rise off the planks and dance in the air to the rhythm of the music and dancers. The raw energy was breath-taking, the dynamics mind-blowing, the pace accurate. I witnessed a similar performance live only once years ago but it's been etched in my memory since. What I heard with Rossignol brought this extraordinary experience right back. A dozen or so years ago, I brought this CD to the Warsaw Audio Video Show and played it in every room that would let me. Some setups dealt with it better than others. Some even did a very good job yet compared to these speakers, none of them came even close on realism. How about the singing and guitar playing which may not be as impressive for dynamics as the staccato dancing yet which are equally important for the emotions? Both delivered exquisitely with beautiful natural timbre, very clearly pronounced texture and living breath onstage. Every little detail was available to be held if I needed to. Importantly, this wealth of information presented with stunning clarity, within reach but never pushed. Still, it was the rendition of the stage where it all happened. It extended from the line connecting the speakers to far far behind them past the windows into the garden populated with palpable three-dimensional imaging served up with this incredible very live-like energy that simply left me stunned.
