Twerking a tweak. A little geekercise first. I already knew. Four Vibrons beneath Viper were so effective that the stand's hollow metal upright was still whilst my hand grabbed it and music played. In the off chance that thread sizes matched, I checked. Et voilà, Q Acoustics' rubber-tipped spikes for parquet floors and the Vibron shafts used the same thread. That birthed an idea. Why not exploit the upright as vibration dissipator for its speaker whilst moving the clearly effective isolators to the floor? No sooner thought than done. Hand on heart and stand, now the upright clearly vibrated. That released mechanical energies which previously remained stuck in the speaker cab. Using a 'live' rather than 'dead' stand was key. I even flipped the stand's top plate so the up-curled lateral lips faced down and the perfectly flat underside up, giving maximal coupling between speaker and stand. Comparing sonics between high and low Vibrons, I very obviously voted for low. Particularly the upper half of the bandwidth improved which had already thrown shade on the class D monos and even Gold Note's circuit. DC-coupled amps with 2.5MHz bandwidth can take excellent tweeters farther. So the 3D-printed footers stayed on the floor. True, this was an unapologetically geeky exercise to nanny-fi my inner nerd. Yet it cost nothing and confirmed a hunch. This mechanical drain wasn't audible per se. The stands didn't suddenly make sounds of their own. They simply gave vibrations generated inside the cabinets an escape route across which they exhausted themselves by "rattling metal molecules" whilst the isolators beneath the plinths prevented any bleed into the floor. Go ahead, raise your brows in amused disbelief. Once system resolution is sufficiently high, changes do telegraph. Just not everything works as we might think or hope. Hence trial 'n' error carries the day where some days are golden, others rust. I'd chanced upon a winner. To protect my good name, let's skip over how many times I fail.

With 310wpc/4Ω acting as snake not slave drivers and this 2×9½" force-cancelling Dynaudio sub fêting the foundation, I enjoyed a premium example of stereo 2.1 commensurate with its room. It includes 86cm forward placement of the sub to cancel out its 2.5ms digital latency; then placing the chair into a depression not peak zone to avoid the longitudinal room mode. The €8K sealed German monitors this replaced aren't good for Viper's reach. Hence they're speakers mostly meant for sub augmentation, preferably from their own catalogue's 2×12" RiPol mate. It's precisely why I acquired them. Why buy extra bass only to bypass it with a sub? Viper's first distinction was not needing it. But I had the Danish double pump so lived it up. I certainly also heard the serpents solo to declare categorically that with the Kinki EX-M7 stereo amp, a sub in this 4x8m room would be purely optional.

Viper's second distinction struck me as probable cause for why Greg prefers its midrange even to his own Qualio IQ. The latest-gen Accuton ceramic 6-inch mid/woofer of the MusikBoxx was my attempt to clone the downstairs IQ's Satori mid in a far smaller form factor to fit upstairs. Call them brothers from a different mother; not identical but certainly enough of a family resemblance to please ears wanting solid overlay. Off the same everything—source to amp and the full cable loom—the Dayton Epique now played it more materialized and embodied. A good image is a post-workout athlete whose muscles are flooded with blood, whose respiratory system idles in high-RPM low gear. Whilst she hasn't grown an inch in stature compared to before the workout, her aura of vitality expanded to intensify flush presence. A popular saying for the opposite is, all the lights are on but nobody's home. The Dayton's calling card was its XXL home button. That might read cute but the effect was unmissable. You need zero experience to hear it. It's self-authenticating like a retina scan. Simply smash that home button to register a monster 'like'. Here it involved no active preamp at all. 6-metre XLR came off the Cen.Grand DSDAC 1.0 Deluxe set to variable analog gain executed with a Muses R2R ladder on a chip. It involved no thick padded class A amplifier, no warm fuzzy cables. Very much au contraire, it happened with an amp and loom whose signature I call lit up all over for the qualities of a quick, energetic wide-open treble applied evenly across the full bandwidth. It's intuitive how an amp tuned for the opposite should overegg this custard. That's the whole genius of exploiting the Dayton miniature subwoofer as widebander. It doesn't want any collagen, human growth hormone or steroid injections from upstream gear. All it asks for is neutrality, wide bandwidth, speed and control. Everything else already comes with. I'm no longer a fan of tubes but have solid prior experience with the glow bugs. Against that it seems fair to nearly call this presence injection a clever tube emulator – without any DSP, trickery or complications.

It means that to make advanced sound no longer relies on prior experience and having mastered the dark art of system tuning. Possibly more than anything else in my book, that's what makes Viper a true VIP; a very interesting proposition. And because the Q Acoustics 3000 stands worked so well for me on size, cosmetics and price, here's a link. Now we're headed for this review's final straight in my main system.