What flavor? I, cough, despise piano-gloss black. Must I number the reasons? It's a dust and fingerprint magnet. Dusting leaves inevitable swirl marks so the finish never looks as good again as the day it was made. What to say of the maddening mirror effect that requires Photoshop to edit out reflections? Taking photographs in situ, sheer self preservation requested white or gold. Alas, "nobody has ordered those finishes so we currently focus on black. My idea is to ship you two black pairs, one with the AF-19 driver, the other with the AF-2B installed. You can use your own subwoofers for the high-res version but it actually won't need a high-pass filter. What do you think?"
Shame on the black, zero blame on the rest of the plan is what I thought. I was in. To simplify shipping, I asked about recommended stand height. If one of my resident perches suited, no need to send Voxativ's own. Having by then just wrapped my FirstWatt SIT4 review—a single-stage single-ended no-feedback transistor marvel—I asked and was granted permission to hold onto the loaner for today's assignment. It had been ace on three of our resident widebanders so promised a special dispensation also on the Voxativ.
For the extremists amongst us, Inès wants it known that there exists the Alberich array which—hold onto your wallet and sanity—consists of the new Alberich2 Ripole bass section with new outsourced neodymium woofer topped by three Hagen: two fitted with the AF-1.9 driver, the middle one with the AF-2B. "This is 1.8 metres tall. It's currently running in my studio and you get a room-filling wall of sound from it." I'm not even sure what to say about that other than, it ain't bragging if true. Would we be technically correct to call this a widebander line-source which propagates a cylindrical wavefront?
It obviously nips the point-source concept in the bud. But it generates higher SPL from higher sensitivity; plays with lower distortion since required stroke for a given level diminishes; and stages tall. I'm not the target customer. Neither are our rooms. Just so, we see that not only can this be done but it has the maker's full blessings. My inner cynic grouches. Why sell a customer a single pair of speakers when you can sell him on three or four; for the same system? "How many rooms does Sir have?" My live 'n' let-live alter ego calls it retrofittable modularity. One can build on a single pair of Hagen2 first with the active bass stand then increase output potential by building upward in stages. If the final result competes with large monolithic speakers at the same price, that's seems like a perfectly legitimate if atypical approach though stacking is quite common in pro audio where sound-reinforcement transducers must be scalable to many different venue sizes.
From Ken Micallef's 2024 Stereophile review of Voxativ's new Ampeggio, "the secret behind AST is that even though you have parallel walls, it eliminates standing waves between the walls. This depends simply on distance. You have allowable and forbidden distances… You simply need a tool to calculate what is allowed, what is forbidden and you can prevent standing waves between the horn panels. (The horn is)…a funnel that is folded and opens more and more and more. It's only three panels. The throat is not smooth; it's all sharp edges. If you smooth it and make it round which everybody would normally do, you cannot use AST technology. It only works if the distances between the panels at sides are absolutely exact. It's not exact if it's round. The distance between the panels always follows the AST theory." That's apparently derived from the angular geometry of stealth fighter planes which are harder to detect by radar. Hagen2 uses it too for the exact dimensions of its rear horn. We translate AST as 'audio stealth technology' to avoid sonically deleterious in-horn reflections which our ear/brain radar would detect. And Inès is spot on. 'Common' sense would have thought a smoothly curving not angle-stepped horn progression to be superior.
What favour? If you still question the appeal of widebanders, I'll personalize. Our household hosts six. Cube Nenuphar v2. DMAX Super Cube 5. Mon Mini. Qualio IQ. sound|kaos Vox3a. Zu Soul VI. Even my wife's Boenicke W5 lean that way. This state of affairs wasn't premeditated. It happened on its own. Survival of the fittest. If one owns divergent options—with us Audio Physic 4-ways, Acelec, Albedo and EnigmAcoustic classic 2-ways—but ends up listening most to one type, personal proclivity outs itself after the fact. I didn't even clock this until I took inventory of our speakers and contrasted what mostly sits on the side lines against what gets played the most. Having been at this for ~25 years with lots of different speakers, that was interesting. It's not about theory and deciding on specs. It's about real experience and letting instinct choose. If I had to explain my preference evolved over a few decades, I'd call out timing. Eliminating phase shift and energy absorption from a crossover whilst facing point-source dispersion across the bandwidth's lion share removes what I call energetic reluctance or indecisiveness. Hifi-approved terminology calls the effect immediacy, directness, even PRaT for pace, rhythm and timing. Beat fidelity. It prioritizes the time domain with its step and impulse responses. Often the amplitude response won't match textbook linearity. For the right type of listener, obeying the time domain first is more important. To know what type you are, auditions of varying types are mandatory. How else to learn about our trigger points? We can't do it by reading or thinking about it. We must listen and feel into our bodily response. Let instinct choose like love chooses us. We needn't understand either. We must just be sensitive to the fullness of our own experience then make our personal pleasure more important than the opinions of others. With web fora and YouTube comments, others are mostly complete strangers. What could they possibly know about our tastes and listening style?
Win 64/10 ⇒ Audirvana Studio with Qobuz Sublime or local files ⇒ USB3 ⇒ iFi inline filter ⇒ Singxer SU-2 bridge reclocked by LHY clock ⇒ Laiv Harmony DAC in OS mode ⇒ amp ⇒ speakers.
My first destination was this office desktop where I create our content. Herr Hagen would displace my usual Acelec Model 1. That's a classic rear-ported 2-way in a rubber-bonded aluminium enclosure with ScanSpeak Revelator mid/woofer, Mundorf AMT and staggered 1st-order filters. At €6.5K/pr, it sits very close to the Voxativ with the 'lesser' driver. In this working man's nearfield setup, ultimate bass extension isn't really a thing. If I can't hear myself think, I might as well slack off and listen big in the main system. I thought this more intimate non-bombastic 'bonsai' setting would make for a great first date. Start off nice for a good first impression. The amp here is a 10-watter with a rare Germanium transistor input stage followed by Jfets and bipolars. It's the SAEQ Hyperion Ge still in from its own review. Would the AF-2B driver sound balanced in this easy context or already too short-changed below the belt? I draw a line at an office sub. Even my lunacy has limits.
