Hagen2

Reviewer: Srajan Ebaen
Financial interests: click here
Main system: Sources: Retina 5K 27" iMac (i5, 256GB SSD, 40GB RAM, Sonoma 14), 4TB external SSD with Thunderbolt 3, Audirvana Studio, Qobuz Sublime, Singxer SU-6 USB bridge, LHY Audio SW-8 & SW-6 switch, Laiv Audio Harmony; Active filter: Lifesaver Audio Gradient Box 2; Power amplifiers: Kinki Studio EX-B7 monos & Gold Note monos on subwoofer; Headamp: Enleum AMP-23R; Phones: Raal 1995 Immanis, HifiMan Susvara; Loudspeakers: Qualio IQ [on loan] Cables: Kinki Studio Earth, Furutech; Power delivery: Vibex Granada/Alhambra on all source components, Vibex One 11R on amps, Furutech DPS-4.1 between wall and conditioners; Equipment rack: Artesanía Audio Exoteryc double-wide 3-tier with optional glass shelves, Exoteryc amp stands; Sundry accessories: Acoustic System resonators, LessLoss Firewall for loudspeakers, Furutech NCF Signal Boosters; Room: 6 x 8m with open door behind listening seat; Room treatment: 2 x PSI Audio AVAA C214 active bass traps
2nd system: Source: FiiO R7 into Soundaware D300Ref SD transport to Cen.Grand DSDAC 1.0 Deluxe; Preamp/filter: Lifesaver Audio Gradient Box 2; Amplifier: Kinki Studio EX-M7; Headamp: Cen.Grand Silver Fox; Loudspeakers: MonAcoustic SuperMon Mini + Dynaudio 18S sub; Power delivery: Furutech GTO 2D NCF, Akiko Audio Corelli; Equipment rack: Hifistay Mythology Transform X-Frame [on extended loan]; Sundry accessories: Audioquest Fog Lifters; Furutech NFC Clear Lines; Room: ~3.5 x 8m
Desktop system: Source: HP Z230 work station Win10/64; USB bridge: Singxer SU-2; DAC: Sonnet Pasithea; Headamp: Kinki Studio THR-1; Speaker amp: Crayon CFA-1.2; Speakers: Acelec Model One Headphones: Final D-8000 & Sonorous X, Audeze LCD-XC, Raal-Requisite SR1a on Schiit Jotunheim R
Upstairs headfi system: FiiO R7, COS Engineering D1, Cen.Grand Silver Fox; Headphones: Raal 1995 Magna, Meze 109 Pro, Fiio FT3
2-channel video system: Source: Oppo BDP-105; All-in-One: Gold Note IS-1000 Deluxe; Loudspeakers: Zu Soul VI; Subwoofer: Zu Submission; Power delivery: Furutech eTP-8, Room: ~6x4m
Review component retail: $5'990/pr with standard driver, $7'990/pr with hi-rez version

Hagen von Tronje. In the German Nibelungenlied that inspired Richard Wagner's Ring Cycle, bad boy Hagen kills blond blue-eyed hero Siegfried during a hunt. He even steals his sword Balmung. Yet at the bitter end, Hagen steadfastly refuses to reveal the treasure's hiding spot even though the king is dead. In very present Germany so today, Voxativ's Hagen2 holds the treasure against his chest. It's no longer buried. Does he still kill heroes on sheer performance? To find out is why I was asked to review it. This monitor with its short back-loaded horn is armed with Inès Adler's next-gen 5" Washi-paper widebander powered by neodymium. That driver comes in two guises. One is an 88dB 50Hz version. The dearer 92dB hi-rez type¹ has narrower bandwidth so wants to dock atop the single 10" woofer active Ripole sub with 500W class D. That 4-piece speaker system starts at $9.9K in white, black and gold piano lacquers. It's called Alberich2. Also known as Oberon, Alberich the dwarf was the elves' king who guarded the treasure. He also was Hagen's dad. Yes, another character out of our Nordic epic. Hence our very modern speakers from Berlin carry heavy genes and Wagnerian karma. In the alternate 13mm welded aluminium versions, heavy means a solid 20kg for just the monitor, 70kg for the active bass bin. The price for Alberich2 Metal starts at $29.9K. Once we package Voxativ electronics, the coin toss breaches the oxygen barrier. But in its 6kg form of lacquered MDF and 50Hz driver sans optional stand, $5.9K/pr hits today's lottery.
________________________________

¹ The above AF-2B driver's 92dB/60Hz and 97dB/3kHz specs indicate its LF roll-off without box loading. It adds $2K to the sticker. The AF-1.9 with its ivory-coloured diaphragm at right rates at 88dB/43Hz and 95dB/5kHz respectively. Lower sensitivity increases bandwidth, higher sensitivity diminishes it in favour of greater low-level detail retrieval.

Raw aluminium cab at right.

In widebander land, Zu continue with their 10.3" bi-cone platform across all models. Cube haven't gone below an 8" diameter yet. Qualio combine a 6-incher with a 9½" woofer and AMT. Rethm's smallest runs a 5" widebander but with two 6½" woofers to sound complete. Lindemann's Move pairs a 5-incher with a small AMT. The sound|kaos Vox3a in my wife's system augments a 4.3" Enviée widebander with twin 5" force-cancelling carbon woofers and a ribbon tweeter. The Monacoustics Mini in my upstairs system combines a 4" Mark Audio Alpair with an isobaric double then adds a tiny AMT. Only the Camerton Binom-1 also from Berlin mirrors the Hagen2 by sticking to a single unfiltered 5-incher. But Oleh Lizohub's small monitor is rear-ported and without a whizzer. Inès's is rear-horn loaded and whizzered. Two distinctly different executions. The wideband loudspeaker sector is small to start with. Spotting modest monitors with a small widebander in very limited cubic volume not a ported Zu DWX maxi monitor is rarer still. But today we're investigating precisely such a rarity. As you might imagine, that very status had me curious and amenable in the same breath. Instead of reviewing yet another compact 2-way lemming, why not a cute one-way step changer?

Holding multiple Daimler-Benz patents for combustion engines—an interim career choice preceded by hot-rodding Vespas and small motorcycles in her youth—Inès Adler isn't our typical tinkerer who dabbles in exotic audio from a garage semi DIY-style. Hers is a motor-driven brain, her name preceded by those Dipl.Ing. letters. They're German shorthand for accredited engineer. She's grown Voxativ to occupy the same U-shaped Schönefelder Kreuz building as the Zentrum für Luft und Raumfahrt aka Air & Space Travel Centre. More recently they moved into this building close to Berlin's airport. It comes as no surprise that design and manufacture of today's treasure of the rarely attempted 5" bi-cone driver needing no auxiliary tweeter, woofer or enormous rear horn is Voxativ's own. It's not an outsourced affair. It's not something we could find elsewhere; except in the $7.9K/pr Hagen Tower. That's the floorstanding version of the Hagen2. Going forward, let's refer to our monitor as just Hagen. There's no more need to haggle over seconds. We already clocked that this driver's 2024 incarnation differs from the 2019 original. For how other than gone black, we need Inès. Houston to Voxativ: "We've got questions."

Until Inès fleshes out driver specifics, let's do bass. As a pioneer of the widebander renaissance, Voxativ weren't too long married to single-driver 'purity'. Though they never added 'super' tweeters as Lindemann, sound|kaos and Zu do, they mine the other direction with active adjustable bass systems. Be those twinned or single woofers, they exploit an expired Axel Ridthaler patent on Ripole loading. It's a form of folded open baffle whose radiation pattern is cardioid. Lateral anti-phase cancellation eliminates our sidewalls and their standing wave as reflective contributors. The output at the front wall is lower than what aims at the listener. Unlike the pressure-generator principle of classic box bass with its omni dispersion, a directional Ripole works as velocity converter. Its woofer loading relies on minimal cubic volume to significantly lower the driver's resonance and build in high self damping so superior stoppage. The 10" Voxativ woofer of Alberich is thus a single-driver Ripole. Its vertical front slot guides the in-phase radiation, the mirroring rear slot the anti phase to form Ridthaler's super-dipole radiation shape.

With AF-1.9 driver.

Slow bass isn't a myth. Whatever arrives late is slow by definition. Here the reflective aspects of conventional so ubiquitous box bass all arrive at our ears behind the direct signal. By eliminating the sidewalls and minimizing front-wall, floor and ceiling gain, Ripole bass is faster by design. It contains far more direct sound and far less reflected sound. It deliberately circumvents a lot of but not all room gain. To address what our 2×15" sound|kaos Ripole sub leaves in the room, I use PSI Audio's active bass traps in my main system's front corners. But the real point of my bass detour was to highlight an ill-promoted fact. Voxativ are one of very few firms to exploit Axel Ridthaler's smart solution by way of add-on modules. Other than Hagen's purpose-fit Alberich bass perch, Inès offers the Pi and Z-Bass standalone subwoofers [left and right, respectively]. Those can obviously accompany speakers other than Voxativ. As a diehard fan of Ripole bass, I love to point out rare sightings. Don't think of Voxativ as just a widebander house. Think of them too as a house of better bass. Here better means superior stoppage so better timing and from it, higher intelligibility and rhythmic fidelity. I think of it as faster bass. It doesn't rise faster but settles quicker. That makes it more precise and texturally continuous with the higher bands which radiate ever more directional. Hence faster bass relies on being more directional, too.

The other way of phrasing it is energy storage. A folded open baffle construction stores inherently less energy than a sealed or ringy ported box. The radiation pattern which that enforces interacts less with the room. Our space now stores less energy in the time domain. Without a classic passive filter, there's also less energy storage on a direct-driven widebander. It makes sense that such a light-coned driver on a powerful motor for inherent self damping and increased small-signal tracking would consider Ripole bass an ideal match. It's surprising that other than Voxativ, only Bastanis and sound|kaos have made that connection.