The satisfied sacrileger. If you do a properly dovetailed sub for music whilst laughing all the way to the performance bank and very likely the cash-hoarding bank when the last octave is by far the costliest in a passive loudspeaker, buying big speakers only to knee-cap them like a contract mafioso isn't sensible. Cube's Nenuphar v2 below—also in gloss white to show that in matter's of taste, I'm a one-trick pony—is far too much speaker in such a context. But it's what I had to use in my review of the SIT4 to map the amp's performance across the full bandwidth.

With Hagen, the math of common sense returned. Whilst 'bypass' on my active filter still showed surprising extension even in this bigger room, entering our sound|kaos Ripole sub not only added the missing full 1st octave. It applied one 15" woofer per side to the upper bass when my filter setting has that already in 6dB/100Hz. Applying a 5-incher to the same task levels a beebee gun at a tank. By the same token, each halving of frequency quadruples excursion if we want a linear response. Subtracting 2+ octaves from ever showing at the widebander's voice coil reduces its throw tax by about a magnitude. That's very significant when the entire bandwidth up to the treble sits on that one driver. Playing the bypass on/off game from the seat made that point; and that of outsourcing upper and mid bass to a mega subwoofer's grippier more convincing textures then completing the descent to 20Hz.

Speaker setup 101 tells us that tweeters want to be at ear height. With Voxativ's whizzer coincident with its 'mid/woofer', my rather higher downstairs chair demanded that I raise the same stands. Hello Hifistay isolation footers and fully extended stand spikes to make up the difference.

With the SIT4 the designated driver again, woofer duties were handled by bridged Gold Note PA-10 Evo so Pascal-based ultra-silent class D. The end result was me being a truly satisfied sacrileger. I had an idealized version of a very particular sonic aesthetic on hand. Whenever music contained staccato elements, bad boy Hagen behaved as though he had swallowed a handful of percussive poppers. Transient speed and incisiveness without blur or overhang were phenomenal. The upper range of female voices was slightly elevated to give a small dose of beyond-textbook presence. This was far less than with prior White but still active. Listening more off axis so with reduced or no toe-in tunes that down. The soundstage was extremely visual and pin-point locked. The overall gestalt was lit up, airy and lithe so the antithesis of dark, cuddly, heavy and warm. Harbeth fans and annual subscribers to opera balcony seat would pass. Hagen isn't about their more laid-back hall sound perspective. Energetically he's front-row centre though on visual perspective, casts a stage of capacious depth far behind himself.

Like many a Napoleonic character, Hagen's directness and leave-no-doubts diction stand out. His Mini-Me personality isn't a matter of mystery. He's very upfront about it. Knowing whether that matches your proclivities won't take time. I'm back at a diehard headfi freak who came up the dynamic Sennheiser HD800 route, skipped the dark gooey chocolate of early Audeze and Oppo planars then graduated with Raal ribbons and Susvara. If such a listener means to take that gestalt out of the head into the room, Hagen with a €1'400 sealed force-cancelling sub like my upstairs Dynaudio would be an ace candidate. It simply wants an amp of SET-type output Ω to take the widebanders off the leash rather than choke them to death. Overdamping betrays a hyper-clipped cadence with super-short decays, crippled bass and far too much white in the colour palette.