Proper N°12. It's a celebrity whiskey founded by Ireland's ex favourite cage fighter Conor McGregor. As already ticked off, taking Viper to 12 demands agile high power of low Ω. Then it wants proper setup. As an effective if atypical widebander, the Dayton wants to be at approximately ear level. Hence 85cm stands for my office where I sit tall to be ergonomically aligned with my work surface. Viper's own Vibron isolators put the dust cap centre at 112cm, my ears halfway between that and the AMT. As the next photo shows, extreme toe in, maximally practical width and generous clearance from the front wall then set the final parameters to lock in proper N°12. In that formation, Viper was the ultimate nearfield warrior: practically full-range, supremely muscular and fit, tonally juicy with proper top-down brilliance whilst being modernist handsome and impossibly compact for the actual bandwidth and SPL capabilities on tap. With my desktop having over the years hosted Gallo Strada II, Boenicke W5, Acelec Model One, EnigmAcoustics M1, DMAX Super Cube & PH61, Viper now trumped the lot whilst being far from priciest. My beautiful Ivette would have loved a pair. I'm only unsure which colour she'd have asked for.

Implicit in Viper's 3D-printed colourization is that we're not looking at thin skins but a solid. It's why none of the depth cuts around the drivers or RCA plug show any substrate or divergent texture. This colour goes all the way through. Now that we've gone more than skin deep to a full 12 in the nearfield, let's move to what could be another very popular destination: a dual-use music/video 2.0 system.

With 250wpc/4Ω compliments of Gold Note's best class AB integrated, in a less than 25m² nearly square room set up diagonal and Zu's big 12" downfiring Submission sub in the front corner behind the TV, I had no need of the sub. That's because the IS-1000 Deluxe has a hidden purely analog 50Hz bass boost feature. It can give a lift to small speakers as long as their drivers rise to the occasion. Here Viper is wildly more capable than most. This came to the fore with heroic martial sound tracks of thunderous kettle drums and synthesized infrasonics. Brilliant speech intelligibility, liberated soundstaging, superior treble than my 10-year old Ncore monos and cinematic SPL all seriously questioned the need or desire for anything bigger. Even my white Q Acoustics stands of lower height to match the squatter IKEA rocker fit perfectly. Whilst I won't talk for home-theatre fanatics as a sandbox I don't play in, I will simply say that for my purposes, Viper completely aced this application as well.

Another glass of Proper N°12? At this rate l'd be wasted in another page or two. Thankfully I'm abstinent. I never developed the taste or habit. Hence this review won't suffer an escalating loss of reason even if my findings read progressively more unreasonable. But make no mistake. This performance too was definite cause célèbre which in Eire sadly implies getting hammered. No need to legalize drugs. Alcohol already does a better if far slower job than snake poison. If the average drinking Irishman stopped his liver delivery for a year and stashed the savings, they'd probably buy a pair of Viper. ~€5K imported divided by 52 weeks arrives at just shy of €100/week or €13.7/day. According to AI Overview, a pint of Guinness in Dublin costs anywhere from €5 – €9.20. Priorities. We all have ours and pub crawls definitely apply to some. Snub the pub and race toward better sound? Your health would certainly thank you. Let's leave it there to move Viper into my smaller stereo 2.1 system before we hit what in my crib goes for the Big Time.