Lechery aka Puss in Boots con leche. With Black I set my active filter to 60Hz then adjusted the low-pass level to compensate the monitor's lower sensitivity than White. With my filter's remote-triggered 'bypass'—no mind-altering mushrooms or wishful thinking—I had instant proof that the AF-1.9 on a 4Ω (!) amp truly needs no subwoofer. Whilst mine kicked in the 1st octave which blipped off without it, very little music has content below 40Hz. Even that which does won't signal a miss unless we can do a direct A/B. Just because I could, I used my sub for that extra occasional bit. Otherwise Inès is correct. For all other intents and purposes, Hagen with the lower-eff driver is complete as is whilst the more diva-esque AF-2.8 is categorically not. Why invoke the Fedora-wearing cartoon cat so memorably voiced by Antonio Banderas? Because like Hagen, he's a small feline with a very big heart and gumption far beyond his stature. And on the rare occasion that we see him drink milk, he seems exceptionally pleased with himself; as I was now replete with lust bumps.

These Monitor Audio stands fit perfectly, with a top plate of exactly the right depth.

In terms of overall illumination and intensity this was a level beyond my customary Mon Minis, hence the lechery. Now the meandering e-bass from Vangelis Katsoulis' Pictures from Inside album had proper snarl and range regardless of where on the fretboard the fingers landed. The lower treble where the majority of zing and flare action falls—beyond we're entering the realm of pure harmonics—had outstanding power and rise. Well-recorded vocals had that deep-throat quality of nothing-bared intimacy. Percussive sounds were brilliantly astute without the whitish prickliness which the SAEQ had caused. The single-stage no-feedback Nelson Pass amp was clearly the perfect partner. Personal greed whispered of swapping this driver into my favoured white cabs then ghosting Inès for a few months due to "mysterious ailment". Professionalism knew better of course. Confessing to sinful thoughts still paints the picture though. For this size room, Hagen with the standard driver is an end-game transducer with the appropriate amp fronting it. Don't overlook proper impedance matching for a damping factor close to 1.

Given how this room also hosts a headfi station with Cen.Grand Silver Fox driving HifiMan Susvara planars with Forza/LessLoss cable or Raal 1995 Magna ribbons, the reason for my lecherous response was near. This now was speaker sound very much of the gestalt, resolution and caliber as these flagship on-ear transducers. No longer was it electrostatic. It now had the balance of full-range ribbons or linear planarmagnetics. That meant more pigment inside image outlines; more stuffing if we imagine them as 3D spheres contained within thin skins that remain translucent to color changes beneath which arise from tone modulations. Nothing about this combo was lean, zippy or nervous. Yet it had excellent resolution and cast astonishing depth, the latter a routine by-product of point-source speakers. I was surprised to see very little wobble when SPL rose. Unlike Zu's hard-hung 10.3" widebander, this Voxativ is ultra-light and most easily moved with one finger. Yet loaded into this particular short rear horn, it doesn't move much. According to Zu's Sean Casey, that always signifies more efficient coupling of a driver to our room's air. "Love your comments on the black ones and also the meticulous analysis of the two drivers. We see it so often that people believe paying more brings better sound but at the end of the day they aren't satisfied. The higher-res driver is perfect as a tweeter in the Alberich array but not here. And that was my intention to show." With benching 'Mr. Tweeter' approved, I even had permission to swap drivers and turn Black to White in a reversal of fortunes. I might just have to invoke ghost protocol.

One reason to invoke post-jailbreak headphones particularly ribbons with no energy storage is separation and from it, space. With a parting glance at Puss in Boots, to varying degrees many systems cause cat-litter clumping. Images which place adjacent or behind each other stick together. This ends up with a lot of wet cat litter especially when a recording wasn't mastered for a wide spread but concentrates the lot in the centre. Our ears lack for breathing room and proper individuation of sounds occurring simultaneously. Instead images cluster and you know what the military calls a cluster. Its hifi extreme is the wall of sound aided and abetted by absentee recorded dynamic range for an always-loud congeal. What the ribbon headfi aesthetic applied to speakers implies is the exact opposite. It removes the sticky velcro between images. Instead of glued together, they stand apart to reveal space. This happens in both the left/right and front/back domains. Superior separation creates more space. Superior tracking of micro decays within that space now reveals the actual connective tissue between images arising in a shared venue. Now they connect via overlapping tonal fades and recorded reflections, not the stickum of virtual velcro. The extent of this water-colour action between/around images just depends on a recording. Dry recordings cause more empty space, wet recordings show planktonic action flitting within that emptiness. Either way, images gain their independence. The visual aspect of listening which looks at sounds relative to their placement, size, outlines and focus sharpness gains data. Even listeners who hone into architectural elements—a tune's structural mesh of melody, counterpoint, harmony and beats—have more to work with when separation shines its light on all the music's tendrils. It's higher visibility or intelligibility from superior resolution in action. It's a key aspect of full-range Hagen. It's reminiscent of flagship headfi. With today's younger music consumers raised on headfi, speaker sound they might embrace must offer equivalent resolution plus more scale and SPL to justify the expense, size and immobility of a stationary music system. Hagen is small, attractively finished, equivalently resolved, direct and quick. Even its small-woofer bass quality mirrors headfi's lesser physicality. From headfi to Hagen is a very logical progression.

Following Inès' permission to swap drivers, I performed quick surgery to be able to photograph White in my main system. I took no photos of the empty cabs. There's not much to see. They line with thick white poly sheets. The tinned hookup wiring secures to the driver's solid screw terminals without solder or push-on clip. The four hex-head machine screws with counter T-nuts can be properly tightened down without worrying about stripping threads of basic wood screws. This also avoids the need for rubber gaskets to make in-field driver exchanges child's play. The AF-1.9 motor shows individual 'coin' magnets running as a ring beneath the end cap. The AF-2.8 does not. C'est ça. Going forward, what was Black turned White.